Ask Pud

You may have read about my YouTube drama.

Short version: I made a video for a song by the death-metal band Suffocation and uploaded it to YouTube. The video received over 3,000,000 views until YouTube removed it, via Warner Music complaint, for copyright infringement.  The full story is here.

I’m happy to report that not only has the issue been resolved and the video is back on YouTube, but one of the more awesome experiences of my life occured because of it.

Background: After YouTube removed the video, I got in touch with the band’s management: Extreme Music Group.  Their manager told me that they approve of the video and want it back online. I also reached out to Roadrunner Records (label), Warner Music (distribution) and YouTube — they were all surprisingly nice and cooperative.

But the coolest thing happened a couple of weeks ago.  Suffocation was on tour and playing a show here in San Francisco.  A drumming magazine, Sick Drummer, heard about my YouTube story and contacted me.  Somehow they hooked up a free ticket and backstage pass for me at the concert.

The show was great.  Granted, Suffocation isn’t a big as Ozzy or anything, but they’re one of the biggest death-metal bands out there, and there were well over 1,000 people at the show.  Suffocation has been around for more than 20 years and I’ve been a big fan for almost that long — since I was 14.

So I get to the show.  I watch their set.  They rock.  I’m wondering what to do with the backstage pass.  I figure it’s kind of embarassing for some random guy to go backstage like I’m a  groupie or something.  But I figure ‘what the hell’ and when the band gets off stage, I head to the backstage door.  The bouncer shines a flashlight on my pass and lets me in.

The first person I see is Suffocation’s bass player, Derek Boyer.  I approach him awkwardly, “Umm, hi. I made a YouTube video for one of your songs…”

Almost immediately, Derek was like “Dude I thought you looked familliar!”  He called over to the rest of his bandmates, all hidden around other parts of the backstage area.  “Guys!  Get over here!  It’s the YouTube guy! Here’s here!”

They all came out.  Terrance Hobbs, a legendary guitar player said to me, “You have no idea how many times we’ve watched that video!”

One of the other band members shouted, “Can we get a picture with you??”

It was surreal.  Here’s a band I’d been worshipping since  I was a high school freshman.  And here they are, asking to take pictures with me.  It was insane.  And so fun.

We chatted for a while about this and that.  Each member was cooler than the next.  Mike Smith, their drummer and major influence of mine, is famously quiet and was sort of subdued, “Cool man… glad we could influence you.”  I chatted with Frank, Suffocation’s singer, about a show of their I saw in Maryland almost 20 years ago — he remembered who else was on the bill!

They had a lot of questions for me.  They wanted to know the full story with the video, why it disappeared and how it got back online. Later that night I hung out a lot more with Terrance and Guy Marchais, their other guitar player. Terrance gave me a copy of their newest CD and Guy gave me some “Suffocation”-branded guitar pics.

All in all, was a night to remember.  The backstage picture is below.

Artist: Suffocation
Track: Infecting the Crypts

Pud,

Are you really drumming in the header photo of Ask Pud, or are you beating the sh*t out of something for no reason somewhere that just happens to have a cymbal in the background (it could happen). And if so, do you consider yourself “a good drummer”?

SKL

SKL,

I am indeed drumming in that pic – here’s a link to the full photo.  The photo was taken by Scott Beale, a friend and great photographer.  Scott took the pic in one of the “jam rooms” at the Experience Music Museaum in Seattle, Washinton.  We were both there for the Gnomedex conference in 2006 where I was speaking.  

As for being a good drummer, you be the judge.  Just kidding – I’m awesome.  Just kidding.  Seriously, here’s a video. 

I just solicited questions on Twitter.  I should have asked for your Twitter usernames so I could link to them — if you’re one of these people, post your Twitter username in the comments.

Here are the questions and answers: 

What happened to Fuckedcompany.com, the dot-com deadpool? Did you close it cuz it was getting in the way of your real business? Also, were those dudes cheating in the high scores? I could never figure out how those top 5 always got so many points! They must have found a loophole!?

D. Mack Daddy

I closed Fuckedcompany a few years ago because traffic was slowing and I figured my full-time attention would be better spent working on the ad network I founded, AdBrite.  There was a small time when I was working on both simultaneously, but I felt I was doing a half-assed job on both.  I wanted AdBrite to be full-assed (or zero-assed?) so I shut down FC.  

Regarding the folks who were always in the top-5 for guessing which companies would go out of business (the deadpool game) — yes, they found a loophole that I never got around to fixing. I always felt a little guilty  about that. But not guilty enough to fix it.

What is the best way to make money in the adult marketing world these days?

Adam

Selling hand jobs at a bowling alley.

Why don’t you visit my blog more often @www.thechiefbrandofficer.com?

Luke

Spam

What ever happened to alleverything?

WaveGiggleBarbie

AllEverything was a site I made in 2003 that was pretty similar to what is now Yahoo Questions (or Wikipedia, in a way).  See an archive of it here.  As for what happened to it or why it doesn’t exist anymore, I honestly don’t remember. I think maybe I was too busy with FC or AdBrite at the time.  It’s a shame — that coulda been a great site. Maybe I’ll bring it back one day.

When are you launching your new project? BTW – what’s up!

Jim

Hey Jim! (Jim is a friend of mine).  I hope to have something to show in 3-4 weeks.

What’s your xbox live gamertag?

Dylan

I don’t remember. I bought an Xbox a long time ago, spent about 3-days straight playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater and haven’t really touched it since.

Why are you alive?

Anonymous

Because my parents… umm… damn why did you make me think of that.

Is there any such thing as a “recession proof job” these days, now that we’re officially in a recession?

Steve

Pawn shops.

Will there be another bubble in the financial market?

Kris

Yes.

When are we going to have a Lionel Richie sing-a-long?

Kattya

You mean like this?

Why haven’t you begun tracking the layoff situations on fuckedcompany again?

Colby

I’ve been working on other things, and I don’t think I could make Fuckedcompany as funny/mean as I used to, because I live in the Silicon Valley area now and know too many of the people involved. When I was running FC in 2000, I was living in NYC and didn’t know anyone.

I need some ideas for an Old Year’s Night church service.

Pam

Old-fashioned effigy.

Considering the economic meltdown, fuckedcompany.com seems suddenly relevant again. Any interest or plans in reviving it?

Ben

I think I answered that above.

What happened to Fuckedcompany – it seems to be so needed at this strange economic time.. 

Stuart

I’m sensing a theme here.

So that’s all for now.  I’ll try to post more as I get them.  Ask me anything.

Okay, I know I’ve been terrible at answering Ask Pud questions.  I’m going to try to answer more questions.  To make it easier for everyone involved, I created this handy form you can use to ask me anything.

Go ahead – ask me anything.

For some reason the song “When the Children Cry” by 80’s hair metal band White Lion popped into my head tonight.

I had to find the sheet music online, pick up my guitar and head into the bathroom where the acoustics are sweet.

Please excuse my forgetting of the lyrics and chords.

And the classic video:

I’ve had a ton of requests to bring back Fuckedcompany.com over the past couple of months.  Not since the dot-com bust of 2000 have we seen so many layoffs.

I’m not bringing back FC this time around, but I am working on something that I think is relevant to what’s going on.  I hope to launch it within the next 30 days.  Stay tuned and please check it out when it launches.

Pud

Regardless of your politics, you will enjoy this video.

Update: I had the embedded YouTube video here, but it was removed from YouTube likely due to copyright violation by FunnyOrDie.com.  FunnyOrDie is a great site but, currently, the hosted version of WordPress (thusly this blog) does not allow FunnyOrDie videos to be embedded.  Dang.