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Studio Work and Podcast Interview Part II - California

September 5, 2008 - Labor Day Weekend at the Studio - by Shane McConnell [System Lord]

Fellow Droogies!

A lot of exciting things have happened at the studio since my last visit. The construction is coming along at a rapid pace. I was surprised to see how much has changed since my last visit and that was only two weeks ago! On this trip I finalized most of the network configuration and cleanup of several computers, mobile phones and computer bugs. Dave had me install a huge file server and a killer local area network. There is so much data that we are thinking of installing a second file server just to have the extra space so when the sessions begin there is no chance at running out of storage space.

On Saturday Dave and I ran to the local Fry's and bought a bunch of RAM to upgrade several of his computers. Justis had one of his buddies at the studio and after they got finished doing some chores and grunt work, they picked up the guitars and started jamming. I have my eye on a Axxion that Justis had, which he has now traded for an Angel of Death flying V. I'm going to have to twist Dave's arm to part with it, as I believe there are not many remaining in his collection.

I also tried out dinner at the California pizza kitchen which I have to say was not that good, I'll stick to the Chicago style pizza. Ha ha.

One of the cooler things I did on this trip was tell Dave that I was having trouble with learning the riff from Architecture of Aggression. He had no problems picking up a guitar and showing me the riff, which I thought was totally awesome!

On Monday we hit the grocery store and Dave bought a bunch of food for a cookout at his house. I asked him if he wouldn't mind letting me play grill master because I have quite a passion for flipping burgers and steaks on the grill. He didn't mind, and luckily the cookout was quite a success! Dave and I also shot a bunch of video around his house and I got some footage of all of his music awards (there was quite a few). We also did a sit-down interview at the studio. You should see this footage surface in a podcast or in the studio progress videos that are appearing in the fan club in the near future.

On my return flight home, the purser told us that we were being joined by the US Olympic water polo team. I sat next to a female Olympian! She was very friendly and we chatted here and there. Apparently they were flying to Chicago to be on the Oprah Winfrey show.

That's it for now!

Studio Work and Podcast Interview - California

July 28, 2008 - The Weekend at Dave's New Studio - by Shane McConnell [System Lord]

Hello fellow Droogies!

I have just returned home to Chicago after a weekend in the San Diego area. I stopped off at Dave Mustaine's for part of my trip and I helped him out with a few things around his new studio / warehouse.

After first getting to the warehouse, Dave had said that his tour staff had just completed loading in all of the Megadeth tour gear...and sure enough, it was all there! Wow, I have never seen so many flight cases, racks of audio gear and cool Megadeth paraphernalia in one place. I was going through a couple flight cases with Dave and we got into a case that contained a few stage backdrops. We pulled out this HUGE backdrop and Dave said that it was the backdrop from the Countdown to Extinction tour. I thought to myself, "ok this is crazy, I'm holding the backdrop from a concert that I had seen like 14 years ago as a star struck metal head and would have never thought that I would be here now holding it in my hands helping fold it up."

When we finished with the backdrops Dave asked if I would go through a guitar rack and make some labels for the cases. So I started into this rack of guitars and after going through a few Dean VMNT's and running into a ESP Axxion, I come to this case with "Jackson/Charvel" on the outside. Now for some of you super hardcore guitar guys, you may be thinking at this point just as I was-"Is the number one in here?" I flip the latches and pull out a silver Jackson KV1. I hold it up in the air towards Dave and I yell "Is this what I think it is?!" and he walks over and says "Yep, that's my number 1.."

I thought to myself, "Holy sh*t, I'm holding the ultimate piece of Megadeth history, right here." Pretending like I was now holding a nuclear weapon that was showing stress cracks, leaking plutonium and with the slightest bump or miscalculation, would ignite and destroy half of mankind- I very carefully placed it back into the case and slowly stepped away. It was a very cool moment.

After that I started setting up the new computer network and talked with James LoMenzo about a couple ideas for the computer set up that will be on the studio side of the space.

Stay tuned for upcoming audio/video podcasts at the MegaFanClub and iTunes!