Good afternoon everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien, company alive from TFNN, 12 noon Eastern time on Thursday, middle of the trading day. We've got all the markets in the red right now. Little bit of volatility to the downside with the S&Ps, negative by 14 points, trading at 44.78, NASDAQ 100, negative by 42 points, 15,323. You have the Dow and the positive earlier in the session. Back to the negative by 74 points right now, 35,286 and we get the Russell, negative by about half a percent, negative by 10 points, trading at 22.26. We jump around to commodities, crude off 70 cents at 67.66. Get the gold contract catching a bid. You see an acceleration in gold there. Now we have some geopolitical news out there. Unfortunately, news of a couple of explosions outside of the Kabul airport. Looks to be some US troops wounded, not what you want to hear in any way. Looks to be a little bit of what's spook in the market. You could say not sure how that translates quite into S&P territory in terms of negative action, but nonetheless, that's where things got a little bit volatile. You trade down to a point of 44.65 about an hour ago. Since then though, the S&Ps have bounced back about 15 points right now to 44.80. We continue looking at what's going on in the markets. We jump to the 10-year. You get the 10-year right now trading down three ticks at 1.3316. We're looking at a 10-year yield. I believe we're approaching 1.36%. Let me pull it up right now as we speak. Looking at the 10-year, jumping around. We're talking about a yield right now, 1.35%, 1.35%. Still an elevated yield as we've seen the price pull back. We have the virtual Jackson Hole event starting today. We got some Fed speak out there already. You had ballered out there early this morning. He was talking about pairing back that stimulus as early as ending at March of 2022, wrapping up some of those numbers. Chairman Powell, the main event he'll be on course for 10 a.m. tomorrow with his speech, don't imagine he'll be as harsh in terms of his rhetoric, in terms of what we've been hearing out of some of the hawks out there early this morning. What else we got going around? Jumping around to the VIX this morning, we have the volatility index spiking above 19. We're back to 1777. Let's take a quick look at some of the stocks with earnings. We got Salesforce out with their numbers last night up 4.7% today. Alta out with their numbers given back all the gains to be actually in the red after strong, strong numbers for them last night as well. William Sonoma out with numbers. They give back some of the gains still up about 10% on the flip side of that dollar stores. Not where you want to be today. Dollar tree down 11% dollar general. Climbing from the lows still down about 4% so far today. And after the bell, I believe it is we get Peloton Peloton up about 8 10th percent. They got a $9 and 64 cent move quite a move for $117 stock. We got to replay this hour folks, but live program. Steven one, David two, Tom a three. We'll be right back.


Today I'm going to be taking a quick look at Bluestar Linux. Bluestar Linux, this is not the first time I've actually taken a look at Bluestar Linux on this channel. I did a video about Bluestar probably six years ago. It's been a very, very long time. I did a quick installation and first look of Bluestar way back then, but I don't remember anything about it. I've never actually went and revisited Bluestar since that video so many years ago. So today what I'm doing is I've downloaded the latest release of Bluestar, which was put out really just a few days ago, like five or six days ago. They had a new ice. So I'm going to go ahead. I've already run through an installation of Bluestar in a virtual machine off camera. Now I didn't want to put the install on cameras because you guys probably have seen a million of these Arch Linux based distributions installed before most of them use the Calamaris installer. And that's exactly what Bluestar Linux uses to. They use Calamaris. If you've seen one Calamaris installer video, you've seen them all. The one thing I will say Bluestar's version of the Calamaris installer does have a section called look and feel, which is a little weird. I wasn't really sure what to do with this section. I could see that it provides like seven or eight different themes to choose from. You know, I guess it changes the wallpaper essentially, but I really can't tell if it does anything other than just simply changing the wallpaper because all you get with your little options is you can see a thumbnail of I guess what the desktop would look like if you choose that theme, but I can't really, the thumbnails are so small. It's hard to tell if it actually changes like the plasma theme or the icon set or anything like that or the fonts, whatever it happens to be. All I can see is that choosing a different theme essentially chooses a different wallpaper. I'm sure again, that's probably more to it than that, but I've already ran through the installer. The installation took about 10 to 15 minutes or so on my machine a little longer than what most arch based Linux distributions take. One minor thing I will say at the very end of the installation, there is a pop-up window that you need to close.  It's a little different than most Calamaris installations because most of the time you don't have this weird pop-up window. It's almost like a terminal window, but it's not a terminal. It's more like a yeah dialogue box or something like that. You actually have to close that box before you can proceed and finalize the installation. So be careful on that. If you're going to step away for a few minutes, just know that at some point you do need to confirm or close a window for the installation to complete. One of the things that made me want to check out Bluestar Linux again was I was taking a look at DistroWatch and I was saying what some of the latest distribution releases have been. And instead of getting a new release of something, what I noticed is I'm sitting here looking at the top 100 page hit rankings of DistroWatch. So this is essentially a list of the popular distros, although this is not a good metric as far as which distributions are popular on Linux because Bluestar Linux is number 44. And I forgot Bluestar Linux even existed, even though I did a video about it like six years ago. You're right. I don't know anything about Bluestar Linux. I'm taking a look at it. You know, it's based on Arch Linux and it did have a recent release. I was like, well, let me grab that ISO and take a look at it again because if it's ranked number 44 on DistroWatch is probably something that needs more attention. So, you know, I went ahead and grabbed the ISO from their source forage. So I guess they don't have a proper website. They just host everything on source forage. And there's really not much information really on this page. One really confusing thing about Bluestar is it mentions that it is offered in three editions. There's a desktop edition, a desk pro edition. So I guess it's a desktop professional edition includes some probably extra software, more advanced features, things like that. And a developer edition, which we wouldn't play around with. I'm sure that's probably for development, probably of Bluestar Linux itself. But if you go to files and go to distro, there's not three different versions of the ISO available. It's just Bluestar Linux 6.5.8 is the latest release. And that's what I grabbed. I grabbed that ISO. So I don't know if that is old information, if they're no longer doing three different editions. I did notice that they had a note here that this particular ISO would not support the desktop desk pro and developer option that the desk pro and developer options, even though they would be listed. The installation of these would result in an error. So I'm assuming that's probably what's going on with this latest release as it's just one edition, which I'm assuming is the standard desktop edition. That's what I'm going to claim that this is. I could be wrong for those of you that know better when I actually showed this on camera. Let me know in the comments down below what I am running. So let's go ahead and log in to Bluestar Linux and take a look around. The first thing you'll notice is the login manager here, which I'm assuming is SDDM, is not really themed in any way. It's very, very ugly. It's not a good theme. All it has, if I move my head, it does have the Bluestar Linux logo here on a plain black background. It's kind of strange that a distribution that really claims that it is a beautiful distribution. That's what the Sourceforge page says Bluestar is. It's an easy way to install large and it provides a beautiful desktop. This is not a beautiful desktop. The login manager needs some work. The Sessions, obviously KDE Plasma is the desktop environment for Bluestar Linux and they are only using Plasma on X11. Xorg, right? So there is not Plasma on Wayland as an option. I'm assuming they've removed it or they just didn't install all the Wayland stuff to make Plasma on Wayland an option here, which is understandable. Plasma is still a bit experimental, so they've only provided the X11 session. So let me go ahead and log in here. And the desktop loads and the first thing you'll notice is it's kind of a retro kind of look. For those of you that were around on Linux as far as using desktop Linux 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, this is kind of what desktop Linux looked like. It's still held on to a lot of paradigms of Windows and Mac. For example, Windows, of course, is famous because it has all of those dang icons that you can add to your desktop, which a lot of Linux desktops these days really don't allow you to do or it's not enough fault. You can see we have added back some desktop icons. This is basically your file manager bookmarks here on the desktop. And then we have a please donate button. I'm assuming to donate to Bluestar Linux. We also have a weather widget here, which is 13 degrees. That's not my location. 13 degrees Celsius for one thing. So it's not set to Fahrenheit and the location is Bond. So this is obviously Bond Germany. And I believe Bluestar Linux is based out of Germany.  I don't think this is a cocky. I think this is again one of the little plasmoid widget thingies which is exactly what this is this section of bookmarks here file manager bookmarks as well as the weather widget. I've got to be kind of honest with you guys. I don't like having all this stuff on my desktop. Like, you know, if you want to go ahead and provide the file manager bookmarks by default, that's fine. But the weather widget that you know, I mean, somebody would have to go in here and actually edit it to show the the correct city, you know, the correct location as well as, you know, Celsius or Fahrenheit depending on where you are in the world. And this widget here the system monitoring information that is probably should be on a far right hand side of the screen is kind of in the center. And this is actually set to 1920 by 1080 resolution. Now this is a virtual machine. So probably on physical hardware that might actually have drawn itself in a correct spot. But even if it hadn't drawn itself in a correct spot, this is a really ugly system monitor again, for a distribution that claims to be aesthetic, beautiful, you know, very eye catching, very pleasing. I don't like the little widgets on the desktop, they all kind of just need to go away. I do like the dock at the bottom. And I do like the icon set, you know, this very colorful kind of pastel icon set, you know, actually is quite appealing to me. And this dock, by the way, I'm assuming it's latte dog being that this is KDE plasma. Yeah, the latte spacer is the widget that I just clicked on. So this latte dog. And what do we have in the dock? Well, we have the dolphin file manager. Let's go ahead, launch that and take a look at the theming. The theming is a little weird to I don't like this weird grayish kind of hint to the theme. And then you got blue icons. Again, it's kind of a weird kind of contrast. I don't completely hate it. But I probably go with a different theme. By the way, the other widgets here in the front of the latte dock peek at the desktop, I'm assuming as a show and hide. So if I click it at hides all the windows that are on the screen, if I unclick it, it will show them again. And then we have the workspace switcher. So we have four desktops essentially by default. If I click on desktop to move around desktop to now. So if I launch a different program like VLC, you know, VLC is on workspace to but if I click back on desktop one where the file manager is, you know, we can quickly swap between them with the mouse with this particular widget. Let's go ahead and see what version of VLC we're on. I didn't mean to make that full screen. Help and about this is VLC 3.0 dot 19 VLC. One of the most popular pieces of free and open source software on the planet. It is a very nice feature field media player multimedia player plays audio plays video plays all your DVDs and blue rays and things like that. Let me go back to the first desktop. Let's go ahead and close out of the dolphin file manager. Everything else that's pinned to the dock here includes the console, which is Katie ease terminal emulator. And while we have the console look, let's go ahead and zoom in a little bit. And let's do a username dash R. Now they also came out about five or six days ago. The kernel that it shipped with was six dot five dot nine. And again, the login manager said we were obviously using plasma on X 11. So is there even any Wayland installed? Where is Wayland? Yeah, there is some stuff in user share Wayland. I did aware is pipe wire pipe wire is the default audio server these days on Arch Linux. So I'm assuming pipe wire would be here and it is usually we have the binary for pipe wire. Let's see if H top is installed out of the box. It is. Let's see what kind of system resource usage we're using using 1.1 gigs of the six gigs that I gave this virtual machine and that that's Ram, of course. So that's kind of high actually for plasma. Usually plasma be using about 600, maybe 700 megs of the six gigs of RAM that I would give this VM. So there's some stuff going on in this VM probably in the background. I'm not exactly sure what that is, though. Now I'm assuming some of what is sucking up some of the RAM or the widgets. Also, if I go to the top, we got a panel. This panel here you can see is the KDE panel, the menu system. We've got some transparency. I don't really have any blurring, which, you know, sometimes does use a little CPU, but this is just standard transparency. What we do have a SysTray and the SysTray has Octopi running. Octopi may be checking on updates that will use a lot of CPU and RAM. So that's probably why H top was a little high as far as what it was reporting.  It's kind of hard to read the transparency too in this panel. It's very strong transparency, like it's practically almost fully transparent, right? And so it makes it very difficult to read the text because it's just too transparent. You know, they need to add slight transparency when you put transparency into effect on anything, whether it be with your window managers, desktop environments, the panels, the docs, terminal emulators, adding transparency to things like Emacs and, you know, never make these things too transparent because it makes them practically unreadable. Like I can't read all of this because it's the text from the panel here or from the menu is bleeding into the desktop, which has text on it because of this little plasmoid thingy that's on it. So, yeah, I would have to get rid of that transparency if I were actually going to install this on physical hardware and, you know, actually live in it, see what else is pinned to the dot. So I'm assuming these are applications they think are rather important. We've already seen the file manager, the terminal. We've seen VLC. Gimp is also installed. Let's go ahead and launch Gimp. This is Gimp 2.10, obviously from the splash screen. And if I go to help and let's go to about this is Gimp 2.10.34. Let's close that out. Also, pinned to the dock. We have LibreOffice Writer. So that is the word processor for LibreOffice. We have FileZilla, which is interesting because that's not a program most desktop Linux users will need. FileZilla is a FTP client. So File Transfer Protocol. This is sending files on your local machine to a remote machine, a remote server, for example. So if you wanted to do something with SSH or SFTP or secure copy or, you know, things like that, this is kind of like a gooey way of accomplishing that. So FileZilla is a program I've been using for probably 20 years or more. I used FileZilla even when I was a Windows user, like, you know, 15, 16 years ago before I switched to Linux. So FileZilla, another really popular piece of free and open source software, but it's not something that, again, most computer users will need.  We have the little email icon. So that is Thunderbird. So this is Mozilla Thunderbird for our desktop email client. Most people these days probably don't have much use for a desktop email client. Now I do. I actually still use desktop email primarily.  I've never been a webmail user, Gmail user, things like that. I've always just registered my own domains, you know, and set up my own email addresses for desktop client. For the web browser, it looks like we're using Mozilla Firefox. Let's go ahead and launch Firefox. We go to Help and About Firefox. This is Firefox119.0. Close that out. And the only other program we have in the doc is Pigeon, which is an internet messaging client, which is a program that very, very few Linux distributions ship these days. Most people don't do instant messaging anymore. Now, when I first switched to Linux, you know, back in 2008, right, to desktop Linux Pigeon was a standard program that almost every Linux distribution did ship with, but it was specifically a desktop Linux distribution because instant messaging was still kind of popular way back then. These days, nobody uses things like IRQ and, you know, AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger and all of that stuff that, you know, we used way back then. We do have the KDE Plasma System settings as a quick launcher in the doc as well, which I may go ahead and play with some of this. For one thing, what is the theme? It doesn't look like either Breeze or Breeze Dark is set. It's hard to tell, though. If I actually click on them, does it change anything? We're obviously using a dark theme, but if I click on a light theme, does it really do anything? Hit Apply. Yeah, it does apply. Okay. Breeze Dark, hit Apply. Yeah, and I actually like the standard Breeze Dark theme. You see that kind of weird, almost sickly, greenish hue that the previous theme had went away. I also now can actually read the little plasmoid widget thingies because they have a background instead of solid transparency. It also fixes the panel at the top. It's got slight transparency, but now I can actually read it. So I'd probably just go with the default Breeze Dark theme. Even the dock here now has that black border at the bottom that also makes it rather nice. The only thing I don't like is I lost that really cool pastel, squarish icon set. Now, the icon set is not nearly as attractive, unfortunately. If I go back to system settings, I wonder if I can go and change that back. There's workspace behavior. How do I get?  If I click Appearance, this is the Blue Star theme. These are the same options that I had in the installer, by the way, in the Calamari's installer. So I think I've had this problem with the system settings before is if you just go to the home, you have Breeze and Breeze Dark, but then if you have this separate appearance thingy, right, you've got something else. So but Breeze and Breeze Dark are also in here as well. But what I am using, I'm using this, this one here, which is Antelope Canyon. But if I wanted to switch to something else, for example, big splash here, let's click apply. And let's see, probably it's going to go back to a very transparent panel and desktop. But I mean, really did anything change? Oh, not much difference. I mean, it didn't set the background either. Let's hit apply. Okay, now it looks like I may have crashed the desktop trying to set it a second time. Let's try a different one. It looks like it keeps going back to the default wallpaper and everything. So I don't think any of this is actually working. Yeah, none of that is actually working. So for me, you know, can I just go back to Breeze Dark from here? Yeah, Breeze Dark works. I'm just going to go with that. I did want to check out some of the wallpapers, though, but I can do that by right clicking on the desktop configure desktop and wallpaper. And let's go ahead and make this window a little bigger. And let's go ahead and check out some of these wallpapers I wanted to check out like big splash here. Yeah, that's a nice wallpaper. I don't know if that's like a default KDE wallpaper or if any of these are specific to Blue Star. Let's see if there's any Blue Star branded wallpapers. I am not seeing any. I think these are just generic KDE plasma wallpapers. I don't think there's anything necessarily unique to Blue Star regarding these particular wallpapers. Let's do something that's kind of fall colors since it's, you know, late October as I'm recording this video.  So you got to hover toward the top to get this to unhide itself and just seeing what's in the panel. We have our date and time. Well, we also have a lock screen shutdown button. I wonder why you need those there because you also have them here in the panel. That's kind of weird having them in both spots. It's not like those are things you ever want to hit by accident either. So I probably wouldn't have quick launchers for those just sitting on the panel. That's just me though. We have a quick launcher for the calculator, but if you really needed the calculator, thought it was important why not have it as a quick launcher in the dock. I have quick launchers in both places. We also have this little system load widget. So it's kind of like a graph letting me know I guess CPU usage. We've already seen the system tray here, which got a lot of the usual suspects as far as volume manager, network manager, and things like that. But Octopi is here. Let's go ahead and click on Octopi. And just clicking on Octopi doesn't actually launch it because you have to run Octopi by typing user-bent Octopi. Is that a permission problem? No, no. Again, I am in a VM, but I don't think this is a VM problem. I think that's a proper bug there. I actually launched the terminal and type Octopi. Would it actually launch? You must run as user-bent Octopi. Okay, let's do the full path. User-bent Octopi. And that does run. So yeah, there's a problem with it just calling it Octopi. Even though it is in user-bent, and user-bent should be in the shell's path, that is weird. But that is a bit of a bug. But Octopi, for those that have not familiar with it, is a graphical package manager. It's not, you know, fancy. It doesn't have screenshots and things like that. It's a very old-school graphical package manager, very similar to Synaptic. If anybody's ever used the Synaptic package manager in Debian or Ubuntu or any Debian-based distributions, Octopi is very similar to Synaptic. It's just for Arch Linux instead of Debian-based distros. Let's see how many packages are installed out of the box on Bluestar Linux. So if I do a Pac-Man-Capital-Q lowercase-q, it should give me a list of all the packages installed line by line, right? So if I up arrow and pipe that into WC space-l, it'll tell me all the packages that are installed via Pac-Man. 1,588 packages are installed. Not exactly lightweight, but I wouldn't say it's terribly bloated either. Let's go ahead and clear the screen. What about any of the third-party distroagnostic package managers like Snap or like Flatpak? Let's do a where is Flatpak to see if it's installed. It is not. The Flatpak binary is not here. Where is SnapD? SnapD is also not installed. Now, of course, you could always install Flatpaks and Snaps. And of course, you can install that images as well if you need them. But I just wanted to go ahead and verify that those are not enabled and installed out of the box. So there you have it. That's a very quick and cursory look at the latest release of Blue Star Linux. It's essentially Arch Linux with KDE Plasma. It's got some theming choices and not necessarily theming choices that I would have went with. But again, it's all subjective. That's all personal. I do think it is a pretty sharp looking and interesting distribution. If I go to the panel here, you can actually see it's got a full suite of software installed. It wasn't just the programs here installed on the dot. We have a development category that has a ton of stuff in it. The graphics categories got plenty of stuff in it. Image viewers, PDF viewers, paint tools, things like that. The internet category has a few things in it, including a bit torrent client under office. We have the full Libre office suite as well as our address book and organizer and things like that. So definitely not light on packages. It's pretty much got everything installed ready to go out of the box that a desktop Linux user will need. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. And of course, I'm talking about these guys right here. Gabe James, Matt Paul, Wes, Armoredragon, Commander, Angry George, Lee Mathos, Nate Erion, Paul, Peace, Arch, and Fidore Realities for Less, Red Profit, Roland, Solastry, Tools, Devler, Ward, Gentoo, and Ubuntu and Willy. These guys, they're my highest tier patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This quick look at Bluestar Linux would not have been possible. Shows also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. All my supporters over on Patreon. That's this list right here. Each and every one of these, ladies and gentlemen, they help support my work. I don't have any corporate sponsors. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software, subscribe to Distro Tube over on Patreon. Peace, guys.


What's up guys Isaac here representing the realized man, and I began a lot of questions about what exactly is this page about this blog What is the point? What's the mission statement? So I decided I might clarify it for the underwear Okay Let's start with background story. See for the past three years or so I've been looking at a lot of these personal development books a lot of these personal development Samoas and e-books audio programs all these things and I've noticed one underlying Common motif between all them. I'm gonna show you guys right now.   It's a lot of you know wishful thinking a lot of stuff that just doesn't work and The reason these guys are successful is because they appeal to people's humanity You know the human nature for one in the quick fix the easy solution so they can trick you into believing that you close your eyes and Daydream about your favorite house and your favorite car. It's gonna appear Well in reality, she doesn't work that way and if you do that you won't get anything you get what you deserve nothing Because you're doing anything. It's as simple as that But these guys can sell their products. They can sell their e-books. They can you know put on these big shows and Get along real well But haven't you ever wondered why is it that all the people that tend these things aren't actually successful? It's only that guy the front is because the people in the crowd the suckers the personal development gurus aren't really giving people The truth they aren't giving the raw facts. They aren't telling them the facts that Actually are going to make you go from position a the position B They're not discussing it legitimate issues like How do you form good habits? How do you actually form habits? How do habits, you know Come upon you like how do you create habits? How do you for example? Get a great capacity of willpower. How do you get more willpower? How do you? You know program your subconscious mind. Can you program your subconscious mind? What's the difference to a subconscious mind a conscious mind? What what is ego depletion, you know deep psychological issues that Often ignored was a too complex for the layman See I like to call what I'm doing here for deep personal development because we're going real deep to root cause of what's gonna Make someone do something and what it takes to actually get shit done and be successful Now this obviously is not going to appeal to the masses. It's not going to appeal to the majority of people Majority people are gonna come to his website and I read the article and I'm gonna be telling the truth They're not gonna like the truth and I'll plug out, but this isn't for those people. I don't really care, you know I'm out for that select few people that actually want to take their lives to the next level that want to actualize their full potential and become the best version of themselves and just kill it, you know those people know that there is no easy way to it and they will actually Acknowledge the facts and admire my work. So if you want these people that actually want the truth and want to get to places Come over here to this channel And we're gonna be doing lots of good things. So make sure you subscribe to the email list And I'll be sending you some articles and all kinds of value through there the YouTube channel heaps of free content there I'm gonna be pumping out heaps of you know, good mindset type things entrepreneurship type mindsets, you know Personal development Relationship advice all that stuff that you think of to actualize yourself to become the best version you can possibly be and Be one of the select few people out there that are actually killing it in life and don't live a life full of regrets And I hope that clarified some things for you guys and Stay tuned. Let's stop the discussion


This story perhaps more so than any other really demonstrates how little respect the Democratic Party establishment has for its progressive members Now this isn't surprising to anyone on the left if you've been paying attention But this story in particular is so egregious that even some centrists are looking at it and they're saying Okay, this is a little bit too far so the D triple C is the campaign arm of the Democratic Party and This organization has one goal the chair of the D triple C Sean Maloney has one goal literally It's to get incumbent Democrats re-elected. That's what he's paid for but this individual is So craven that he has announced that he's going to try to sink the career of One of the members who he is literally supposed to be protecting So as Kenny Stancil of common dreams explains Representative Sean Maloney the leader of House Democrats campaign arm tasked with protecting incumbents has come under fire this week after Declaring his intention to run against first-term progressive representative Mondare Jones in a newly redrawn New York Congressional district a move that critics have slammed as cowardly and potentially harmful to the party's efforts to keep control of Congress Maloney chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced his plan to mount a primary challenge against Jones Less than an hour after a New York court released a draft of the state's new Congressional districts Which are expected to be made official on Friday despite the fact that Jones currently represents three quarters of the 17th district Maloney's decision to run against the incumbent in New York's August 23rd primary received the blessing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some other high-ranking Democrats the 17th district which President Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020 is Slightly more friendly to Democrats than the 18th district which he won by eight points and where many commentators believe Maloney should run for re-election Instead after being blindsided by Maloney's announcement Jones only viable options Assuming New York's draft redistricting plan hasn't been significantly revised or to take on the D triple C chair or Challenge fellow first-term progressive representative Jamal Bowman in the 16th district So this is absolutely outrageous and just note how Eager members of the Democratic Party's leadership are to get rid of progressive members of Congress It's absolutely insane. Everyone in unison should be condemning this but Nancy Pelosi gave him the blessing the job of Sean Maloney is to protect incumbents and He's going to take on one of the incumbents who he should be protecting and in doing so may jeopardize The Democratic Party's control of Congress and Nancy Pelosi is like That's fine. I give you the green light and meanwhile Nancy Pelosi is campaigning for an anti-abortion incumbent Over a progressive woman who's challenging him Jessica Cisneros. I mean the Democratic Party establishment I mean they deserve nobody's respect They spit in our faces constantly and then they expect you to support them monetarily when this is not okay now if Sean Maloney Sean Maloney did do this. He would have a massive advantage as the chair of the D triple C He controls the party's cash. He controls the data the infrastructure. I mean he could do Anything he wanted to easily crush Mondare Jones and Mondare Jones if he wants to keep his job in Congress His only option is to run against his colleague in a neighboring district who's also progressive basically ideologically indistinguishable and In the event Mondare Jones decided to do that Then what would happen is a conservative Democrat might win and we might lose two Progressives because Jamal Bowman currently himself is already facing a primary challenge against a right-wing Democrat So in the event Mondare Jones enters that race and Progressive split the votes then that could lead to this right-wing Democrat reaching a plurality and then we knock out Two progressives. It's a nightmare situation, but I mean of course That's why the Democratic Party leadership wants this to happen because they want to get rid of progressives They're a thorn in the side of the Democratic Party establishment Even if Progressives try to do whatever they can to appease you go along with what you want bow down to you. It's still not good enough They want them gone It's ridiculous now progressives as a result of this are going to try to oust Sean Maloney The problem is that if you have the speaker of the house's blessing you're not going to be able to do that So what they're doing instead of just ousting him him is launching a pressure campaign For example, AOC is calling on him to step down if he's going to do this primary because you can't be in this position of power Where you control the campaign arm of the party and then compete in this primary It's completely unfair. It's a conflict of interest So as Heather Cagle of punchbowl news explains representative AOC tells me she'll demand Representative Sean Maloney to step down as D triple C chair if he runs against the fellow dem I don't think you should be the D triple C chair if he's going to challenge another member It's completely inappropriate and she's exactly right. I mean the Democratic Party has not learned back in 2016 They had Debbie Wasserman Schultz who was a former campaign co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign And then she was the D triple C or the DNC head in 2016 And that was an obvious conflict of interest and then we later learned that internally she was trying to sabotage Anyone who wasn't Hillary Clinton in that race? And so here we have a Democratic Party power broker who's trying to launch this primary campaign against someone And he's expecting to do this while still in that position and Nancy Pelosi has given him her blessing I mean this is outrageous Now it's so bad that even some centrist Democrats are calling this out For example, Richie Torres who is no progressive is denouncing this saying the thinly veiled racism here is profoundly disappointing A black man is ideologically ill-suited to represent a Westchester County district that he represents Presently and won decisively in 2020 outrageous. He added there's a simple solution here Maloney should run in New York 18, which he mostly represents Jones in New York 17 Which he mostly represents Bowman in New York 16, which he mostly represents problem solved. Yeah He's absolutely correct about that. I don't agree with Richie Torres on many things But you know credit where it's due. He's absolutely right about this and I commend him for speaking out This is not acceptable and it's not like if representative Maloney chose to rerun in the district that he's already representing I mean, it's slightly different, but even if he did rerun, he's still overwhelmingly the favorite It's just that he'd have an easier time winning in a general election In the 17th congressional district, which is why he's willing to take out Another member of congress potentially two progressive members of congress just so he has a little bit easier of a job I mean, what happened to actually trying to compete and win voters over? Sure, this is a slightly new district, but it's still overwhelmingly your district I mean, can you not convince them with policy? It's just absurd now I do want to get to some more reactions here because I think that everyone is rightfully upset about this Indivisibles Ezra Levin writes two words for this cowardice hypocrisy Maloney's job is to help Dems win tough seats He's now abandoning his own district to run against a fellow democrat in a safer district Maloney is running from a fight. He's supposed to be leading embarrassing disgraceful behavior David Nure of the Daily Costs writes assuming the map is finalized as is Jones would represent three times as much of new york 17 As Maloney, he's also vastly more progressive than Sean Patrick Maloney One of the most centrist Dems in the house Jones even had more cash on hand than Maloney as of march 31st 2.9 million versus 2.1 million. Yeah, I mean there's there's nothing left to say This is completely unacceptable And again, it shows you how much they hate the left and this isn't the only example I mean in Buffalo, New York, india walton literally defeated the incumbent democrat in a primary and what did he do?  I mean how many high-profile democrats spoke out against that This is this is what happens time and time Again, the the democratic party is fundamentally corrupt and broken to its core And nothing will ever change so long as leadership as it is remains in charge And if you don't like Nancy Pelosi, well Got bad news for you the next person to uh succeed her. Steny Hoyer Jim Clyburn, they're as bad if not worse if we're talking about steny Hoyer So I mean there's no uh, there's going to be no change in leadership for the foreseeable future So this is what the left has to look forward to and as a result the democratic party is going to wonder Why they're hemorrhaging support why the left and young people just don't want to support them It's because of things like this. Do you enjoy watching independent news shows like the humanist report the rational national and the majority report But oftentimes youtube doesn't deliver our videos to your subscription box. Well, I've got a solution for you It's called the opt-out app available right now in the ios app store coming soon to android Opt-out is an app made by and for progressives where they take all of the most popular independent news shows and they put them in One convenient location You'll find all your favorites on there like the humanist report the rational national the majority report And the app is updated multiple times per day So your news feed is constantly up to date if you enjoy watching independent media This is the app to get downloaded today


The presidential candidate of the new Nigeria People's Party, NNPP, Sen. Moussa Kwankwaso, has denied any planned merger with other political parties ahead of next year's election. He said that these while addressing newsmen in the Belkuturgun state, shortly after he addressed NNPP members as the party's secretariat in the capital. Sen. Moussa, however, pledged to strengthen the Niger-esummed forces with one million recruits if elected president. Meanwhile, stage chairman Olaq Moussi, Ogini, said no Nigerian is expected to vote for the ruling party in 2023. We are not among the three or four parties in this country. But 2023, next year, by the grace of God, NNPP will win the election at national and all other levels. So these are people who are field politicians who have nothing to tell Nigerians other than to spread unnecessary rumors of merger. Merger is already gone. We have our candidates in all the parties. Everybody is campaigning. So that one disregards our answers. What you say is that the government of NNPP under the leadership of Dr. Nabi Moussa Kwankeza is ready to take Nigeria out of poverty line. Kwankeza is coming to liberate Nigeria. Kwankeza is coming to bring good tidings to Nigeria.


Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart Van Der Zee and today I am joined by Mr. Rami Anton of A&F Drums. Rami, welcome to the show. Thanks, man. Thanks so much for having me, dude. I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. It's been recommended a bunch. You make some of the most innovative and beautiful drums that are truly on another level.  So congrats on that, man. I mean, really, they are amazing. Thanks, man. It's a team of people. I always have to emphasize that because it takes an army over here, man. For sure. It takes an army. Yeah. But thank you. That's very, very, very considerate. Absolutely. And I just remember, like, and I'm going to learn, we're going to learn all the dates here, but it just seemed like you, I know it's, you've been a lifelong drummer and we'll hear about that.  But you're not like a hundred and whatever year old company like Ludwig.  We're five. Oh, my God.  You have. And we did come out running, but I would say we came out chasing because it's felt like chasing since we started. Yeah. Yeah. And I say that with the utmost gratitude because we're chasing because people reacted so quickly and really have been so supportive, man. Yeah, it's unique. It's not, there's, there's a, you've, you know, you've got a niche in the market and you're going for it. But so let's just like jump in here. And I mean, really, you as a person, I'm so interested about your background because I feel like you are really the brand. I know you said it's a team of people, but obviously you're the, you're the man behind A&F. So tell us about your background, how it all started and how you actually got into making luxury drums. Yeah, I'll do the Twitter version, man. Born in Egypt, family migrated to the States. I grew up listening to Eastern music first. So odd rhythms, odd accents. And when I finally kind of got exposed to Western music, 4-4 was an odd thing for me because there wasn't so much variation, at least initially rhythmically. So that's kind of like, you know, my ears gravitated towards this odd space and then 4-4 was odd to me. And very strict parents to a certain degree as far as careers, as long as I did well in school, I could have hobbies as I pleased. And one of my hobbies was playing drums. I loved it. And I started tapping on things when I was three. My father, he plays piano, recognized that I could keep time.  And so he supported it that way. But again, as long as it was a hobby, we're good. Don't think about doing this outside of the house type of thing.   The rules are expanding a little bit. It's like, you can play with the family. Totally, man. Yeah. Like my first band for 12 years was playing with my dad. Wow. And I knew nothing else. And it was Eastern music. It was a lot of European music. Very rarely was there any Western music in those sets. Then I get to college, my second year in college. This couple of buddies of mine are writing these songs and they're playing this coffee house. And like, man, it would be so cool to have, you know, drums or percussion. And I was like, well, I could like grab a conga and play.  I mean, I can bang on stuff. You know, I can keep time. Because again, I had no gauge outside of my dad. Had no gauge if I sucked. If I was any good, if I was, you know, I just had no gauge. And I played this coffee house gig with them. And that turned into my first band. And lo and behold, I could play kit to Western music. And people thought it was great. I don't know, man, it just kind of took from there. Flash forward, graduating college. I got a full-time job as a probation officer. And I'm going to law school. Wow. Nothing to do with music at all. And I get to almost at the end of my first semester of law school. And I totally have like a panic attack. As I'm driving to school, you know, to pick some stuff up and then drive to work. And I just, I remember thinking, there's no way that God gave me these ears to hear music and play music and it not have an avenue.  And if I'm going to see about this thing called music in my life, I have to do it now. I can't do it later when I've got family. Because at least I didn't think that way. You know, 21 years old just freaking out in the car. So I drive to school. I drop out of law school. Drive straight to work. I quit my job. Had a great supervisor there who actually encouraged me at that point. Jumped in a van with eight guys and played reggae and ska music, basically. Up and down the California coast, you know, making zero money. That's awesome.  Yeah, for sure. And you know, when you start playing out, again, a lot of musicians learn this early. But this is, this is, I'm 21 at this point. Haven't played out much at all.  And I start to realize, oh, okay, cool. I can actually play drums.  Where'd you come from? I was like, man, I just didn't know. I just didn't know. I had no idea. Yeah. You know? And then in that season, ironically, just discovering music, really, really discovering music more and listening more now that it's my career. I almost felt like I just, it was my responsibility to now study this thing that I was doing. And I loved it, man. I just, I listened to so much music and really fell in love with, you know, how do I be the guy that's playing on the music that's recorded? Like, what's that guy called? Yeah. And at the time I took a, or I was playing in a band that got a production deal and it was time to go in the studio and the producer's like, we're only bringing the singers in. We don't, we use studio musicians. I was like, cool. I didn't know anything. So I was like, yeah, that's how it works. That's fine. And then the guys in the band are like, no, man, you should really get Romney in. Like, he can do this. And they really fought for me, ironically. And so the producer's like one song. He comes in one song, he plays the house kit. You know, it's miked. That's what he gets. And if he can really do it, let him play the record. Wow. Right? So I go in and that was actually Flo and Eddie. So Mark, Mark Volman was the producer and that's who I was going in the studio. Oh. You know, to record for. And not only did I do the song, I did the whole record. And then he hired me to play with the turtles for a gig because their drummer was out of town. Oh, man. And so it started to click like, oh, cool, man. Like, this is, this is my career. Like, I love this. And I think I'm actually good at it. So as long as people will have me, I will play drums. And I did, man. I played drums on anyone and everyone's recording that ass, whether there was zero money or it's massive budget and did it for about seven years straight in LA, just always recording commercials, film records, didn't matter. Just get in the studio. Do the best you can do with whatever gear you got. And at that time I'd collect, started collecting a vintage gear because the sound and the vibe and all the things about these old drums was fascinating to me. And so vintage drums in the studio recording with as many people as possible. And then, you know, I get a call and it's this massive tour with a huge artist. It wasn't even an auditioning. The guy saw me play two days earlier at a local gig and said, you want this gig? Wow. I said, I do want this gig, but I'm leaving a lot of studio work and a lot of like first call producer things to do this. And I've never made this decision before. I don't know about this. I don't know how this works, but I love this artist. I love his music. And I grew up listening to it. So that was sealed by that. I was about to say, can you say who it is? I mean, man, that's awesome too. Yeah. Yeah, it was sealed. And so I did, man. I went on the road for, I went on the road for about, I think about four or five years. Wow. I had no idea. That's awesome. Yeah. Recording, writing. I mean, it was, do you talk about a dream gig?   Right? Yeah. But that's not how everybody tours. And I learned that after the fact, right? Yeah. What years were the, you know, the session times and then into your time with Seal? Yeah. The session times were 96 to 2002. Okay. And then Seal came right at the, right at the end of 2003. And I was with them through 2000, I want to say 2007. Man, that is awesome. And I left because, yeah, it was amazing, man. It was amazing. I left because I signed a record deal with one of my writing buddies, Universal, and we had to go promote. If you sign a deal as an artist, you are obligated to label. So I couldn't be committed to Seal and that. And so that's, that was my musical journey. I did the, you know, when we, when I left Seal to do the Universal thing that led to a lot of writing songs for movies and TV and film and commercials and stuff and did a lot of that. And that was also in the season where we moved to Austin from LA, got married, moved to Austin, had a studio here, always had a studio here, writing, recording, making, you know, making music basically always producing as well. Wow. And then, so that's my, I mean, that's my musical journey. I've always played, written, produced on it. Wow.  And you were kind of ahead of the curve with like the everyone having a home studio because, you know, you need to get it all done.  It's something special about drummers, you know, being able to step out and do more than just the drums. Yeah, I think the minute you start thinking, man, I want to have a family, but I don't want to give up music. That is such a big statement. And to try and actually make that shift, you've got to, you've got to like figure out, all right, what about all the possible revenue streams that I actually can get excited about? What, how can I work harder at all these revenue streams to make sure that I can keep making music or be around music and support a family, you know, and eventually put kids to college, like all those things that you want to do and... Yeah.  It was traditional upbringing, but the work ethic that that burst in me, I think always stayed with me. And so I always felt, no matter what I did, I had to do the best I can, I had to make sure I, you know, like I, I was able to drive as many directions as possible to create those revenue streams and keep doing what I was doing. So that's kind of a... Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.  And that's why they encourage you to do that. But wow, that's awesome. So that's a good journey. I can't believe you were, so you said you were a parole officer? I was, I was interning at the probation office, the probation department, where I was going to college. And then when I was my senior year, I got offered a full-time position as a probation officer. Probation officer, got it. Yeah, which I took because I thought, okay, I knew that going to law school, unless I was number one or number two in my graduating class, I was going to get zero court, like zero time in the courtroom. And that's what I loved about law, is actually getting in and arguing cases. And so litigation wasn't, wasn't possible for a grad, you know, law school grad.  So you get immediate courtroom experience. I get it, it's criminal law, but still it's courtroom experience. And so if I was working as a probation officer and going to law school, I had to shoe in at the DA's office as soon as I graduated. Yeah. That was the plan. I got interrupted. Yeah, it's all who you know. My wife is an attorney, and I think there's a little bit of it where she loves her job. But I think sometimes it's like you even said where it's like, it's a safe thing to go to law school. Like it was like, well, I'm going to go to law school because that's what you do. I can then keep going to school, which is safe, which she does love the law.  But she was a juvenile public defender for about five or six years and some serious stuff like in the courtroom defending kids who have done some pretty bad things and you have to get them the best, you know, situation that they can possibly get. But it's a little more serious than what I do. Well, yeah, man. I saw it all. I saw all the cases and there were certain divisions that I just within a week I was like, I'm not handling those cases. Get me out of that. And we don't have to get into that. But yeah, that's a tough job. Scary stuff. No, it is. But all right. So you're in Austin.  You are married at that point. Not that that really matters, but it does. Obviously you're married at that point.  So you're working on a lot of film and television stuff you said and just recording, writing music. Take it away from there. What happened after that? My wife and I were going to a church here in Austin, a pretty big church. And one of the pastors and I, we lived on a golf course at the time. I love golf. And so I'd go golfing with one of the pastors there and one thing led to another and somehow I took a role overseeing all the arts at this mega church. Lots of beautiful things in that season. It's not all, it's not all great, but some of the most beautiful things that came from that season was the ability to share with other young artists my journey and hope that from the things that I've done and decisions that I made that were good and decisions that made that were horrible they could glean some wisdom and take that and go. My wife and I opened our home daily to people that were struggling artists. You know, it was all focused on artists, but artists going through addictions and breakups and financial hardship like the list is long, right? And we just found ourselves really comfortable and peaceful just being there for people especially in the artist community. So that part I love. We did it for five years together. That's awesome. And then towards the end of that I felt a pull. I was actually getting some calls to do some more touring and I really wanted to work with this one artist specifically that called and we had done a record together and then a few months later he said, man, put together a band with me and let's go tour this thing. So that was Ed Koalczyk from the band Live. Yeah. So we went out. Yeah, we toured together and played and just had a ball for about I'd say for about three years or so. And also during that time there was a Japanese artist that I was and this ties into A&F. There was a Japanese artist that I was working that I had recorded his records, played drums on his records in LA for many years. And he called or his management team called and said, hey, this artist, the artist wants you to come to Japan for two and a half months and do his 50th reunion tour. But he wants you because you played on the records he wants you to do it. And at first I said, man, I can't leave my family for two and a half months. He's like, no, no, no. Your family, everybody. We got you a flat. We'll take care of everything because I had my wife and my two kids, a nine month old and a two year old. Oh, man, I can totally understand that is insanity. Yeah, like the diapers and the formula that luggage alone was three times everything else we took. Cause we didn't know what was out there. We had no idea. Yeah. Yeah, man. So I spent, I spent that time in Japan. And so before I left for that, I kind of made this like decision of my wife, hey honey, I've been playing drums for a long time. I will. And I've always bought vintage gear. Right. So I want to buy like two amazing snare drums. I want to spend what we would never think of spending, but just to commemorate, you know, kind of like all this playing I've done in my career. Yeah. And she was like, yeah, absolutely. Do it. So I spent a lot of money on two snare drums. I don't want to say what they are. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And it took them with me on this, like excitedly taking them with me on this nine, you know, nine or 10 week tour in Japan with this artist. And these are, you know, these are 40,000 seater arenas that we're playing. Indeed, within, within, I don't know, the first three songs of the first show, I'd gone through both snares and they weren't, they weren't doing what I wanted them to do. Interesting. They were doing what they were built to do. They weren't doing what I wanted them to do. So it was a very personal thing that I wanted. And I realized, okay, I'm going to have to figure out did I buy the wrong drums or like what? Anyway, so I come back from that and kind of with a little bit of a vengeance, like I got to, I have to figure this out for myself. It's nobody else's responsibility. I want a certain sound. I should be able to figure it out and kind of went on that journey. And that journey was, you know, it was about a, I would say maybe two years of kind of discovery, if you would. And then six months of, you know, I know exactly what I want now. I know how it has to be made. I know exactly what it needs to sound like. I got to find someone to help me make it because I don't make drums. Well, I was going to say, so are you in the garage, you know, with like a lot of your drums are metal, obviously. So you're like hammering metal or are you more just like trying different drums that you like? I like this size. I like this metal. I like this, you know, kind of hoop. So you're just experimenting. Yeah. I'm taking everything that I loved about vintage drums and dissecting it at this point. In the studio, every single snare drum that I own, like the vintage stuff, listening, looking at the way they're made, trying to figure out, man, why is this drum that I bought for $40 that, you know, looks like somebody's garbage made in 1890. Why does this sound so good? What is it about this drum? You know, and this drum, I know Ludwig is a popular company and they've done so many great vintage drums. Why this snare? Why is this snare so special and so soft after? Why do I like this so much? Why do I like this sound so much? You know, just those kind of things. And then finally kind of going, all right, I think I know exactly what I want. Who could I find to help me build it and not and be okay not offering creative input? Because at this point I'm like, man, I just need the brain dump exactly what's up here into a drum. And if someone could do that for me, I mean, I'll pay whatever, but if someone could do that for me and be okay not offering creativity just yet, like creative opinion, it sounds weird. That's interesting. It was a very selfish project, you know? No, but sometimes with any creative endeavor, it's like, sometimes you don't want people's input. Like, on anything really, where like, even if you're like, I don't know, it's like someone will come in, if you're mixing something with music, say like halfway through, like, oh, that snare is too loud. And it's like, I know, I'm not mixing the drums yet. And it's like, just get out. Yeah, there was, I think there was a pocket, or not a podcast, it was a TED talk. I'm trying to remember who it was. It won't come to me right now, but the gist of it was, you know, the minute you start editing, creativity stops. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting, like, if you want to have a creative session, with not editing in that session. Yeah. Just get it all out. Get it realized the way that you see it, and then start to edit and go, okay, these are the things that work, these are the things that don't work. But if you don't get it out, that's going to be extremely frustrating. Yeah. And so I did, man, I found a guy, a local guy, really sweet, honest dude, and he was making drums at a wine barrel, like, that was really cool. Hadn't worked with metal before, but just a really good guy, you know, and this was a hobby for him. He had a dig egg, you know, and a beautiful family and everything. And he lived a mile from my house, and so he was like, hey, man, I'll pay, pay for your time, I pay for all the material, if you're willing to, like, conquer this with me. And he did, man, we did it, and it was about six months of back and forth, and I was one of them crazy.   A single tear. Exactly. So, let me say this, I did not design our drum initially to be this what looks like a relic, you know, it wasn't an intentional design for aesthetic. My mission was, I love Rob Brass, I love the sound of brass. I don't want to worry about sweating, bleeding, dropping the drum, like, I want to build a tank. Yeah. But I want to build a tank that's a workhorse that I don't have to think about. And so, that's a really concise direct, you know, statement. But man, to accomplish that, because you start to think about, well, what kind of lug is going to be the most simple design, but not restrict the resonance of the shell. Like, why don't you start to get, it's like the iPhone. So easy to use, man, but if you take that thing apart, the complexity is insane. Yes. So that's where it got really detail focused on how to do it. And so, Rob Brass continues to age. The sweat, the blood, all that stuff just adds to the character. So you don't have to clean it. Yeah, no, really. Man, you said it, like a relic is a great way to put it but there's something about it that just looks like I don't know. They're almost like cinematic. You know what I mean? They look like they could be in a cool, like old, like almost like a sci-fi movie or something that's in a not too distant future. And they've been in a few. Since we've created the company, Dumbo was the biggest one, but yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. I've seen that watching it with my son and I don't think I noticed that. That's awesome. This is the drum kit in all the circus scenes. That's awesome. Yeah, you'll see it. Yeah, I will. But that was the heart behind the design. It wasn't this like, we weren't trying to be intentional about, you know, an art deco era design. It was like, no, man, make it so that I think it happened to it that I worry about. Yeah, well, I mean art deco, boom, obviously that's you, that is it. This episode is brought to you by dream symbols. I want to talk a little bit about the dream symbols recycling program. The recycling program is simple. Bring your broken or unwanted symbols, all brands accepted into your local dream dealer and you can earn $1 for every inch of symbol you bring in towards the purchase of a new dream symbol. For example, bring in two 20 inch symbols for recycling and receive $40 off the price of a new dream symbol. It's that easy. They, in turn, take the symbols recycled like the re-effects crop circles and the naughty saucers. Check them out online at dream symbols.com and follow them on social media at dream symbols. Do you consider yourself like a design minded person where you pay attention to those little like minute details?  Like everything is details with you when it comes to food or aesthetic, you know, metrosexual, like she'd say that. My sister would too. But yeah, I've always loved design and aesthetics, but I never thought of myself in that role or in that way. Of course, until A&F and I realized, oh man, I love designing you know, colors but designing with purpose and with a historical merit. So every color that we release has some kind of story attached to history. You know, the hardware even there's in-depth historical research that went into where we got to with our hardware. So I definitely look somebody said this John Aldridge said this once and I've used it ever since. You know, we look back to move forward. And I feel like my design aesthetic is I look back to move forward all the time. Especially with drums. I mean, we look back to our you know, our forefathers and it just kind of like you know, things haven't changed that much, but we're really working with the blueprint that they've laid out for us. Absolutely. But all right, so you didn't just create this drum with that guy you worked with there. Do you want to say his name? Yeah, Steve Fertinetti and he was the original F in A&F. I was going to say, okay, cool. Yeah, so we started well, we didn't start anything. We just created this A&F thing and decided let's sell like 25 of these we won't even sell anything. We made one for me, made one for him. I posted some videos and pictures on Instagram producer, engineer friends, drummer friends were like, dude, how old is that thing? Where'd you get it? And I was like, no, I made it man. This is my take anywhere play as much as I want beat around drum is amazing. And I have to think about it. And then like, great, well, I'll take two and I'll take one. I can start it. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not what this is. Nice. This is my drum. You know. So then we're like, well, let's make 25 since we've got people that want to buy it that right now. And then that became 50 and then it became 75 and then a friend of mine called and said, hey, man, I'm doing this thing for South by Southwest and I want to use you playing drums in different areas of Austin on the street as bumpers between segments for this series that we're doing. And I was like, okay, I show up by snare and it's like other weird drum kit that's going to be a little bit odd. Let's make a drum kit. Well, that's like, that's very loaded because you're like, wait. Yeah. I'm sure Steve was like, what? Yeah. He's like, no, man, I made a snare with you. I'm not a nightmare. I'm not going. You know, no, man, he was really supportive. I think he fell in love with it too. You know, just like his work was being obviously recognized and celebrated and people were buying it and excited about it. So there's just a sense of pride that goes into that. But yeah, the minute it turned into like massive orders and renting, you know, leasing a shop and hiring people, you know, he was kind of stuck in that, man this doesn't pay me to do like enough to do full time and absolutely right. And I have a family and I really don't want to do this full time. I want to be of, you know, family I want to have my nice job and just thing. And so I'm out and you know, and it was totally understand and I was definitely going at this point. I want to do this. I want to keep doing this. I want to make as many things in my head as I can. If people want to buy, I'm great. If they don't, I'm cool with that. But I'm putting money into this and I'm going. And so that's when it clicked. And my wife was also sitting right behind me going dude, what is this money in our account and what are you selling? Like what's going on? Yeah, what are you doing?  It just like was okay, this is a cool drum. Oh, you want one? Okay, I'll sell one.  Oh, they wanted, they want two. Oh, you want 20. So it's it's just like a, you know, you're doing something right when it naturally picks up there. But correct me if I'm wrong, you are out your builder at that point. So what did you do then to find a builder and that's the thing, man. And I really I'm so grateful that I fell in love with vintage drums early and was able to study how they were made and and just because what what we figured out when we designed our lug concept is, you know, there, this was a unique thing and hadn't been done this specific way before we were able to patent, you know, our first first patent I've ever had, you know, on on our lugs and our aesthetic, the look of everything. And so we made it simple. Once we figured it all out, we simplified process. This is where my business thing comes in. It's like it's great, but if it's complicated, you can't duplicate it enough to make a business out of it. It's got to be simple. There's got to be a way to streamline without affecting quality, right. There's all these things you've got to balance out. And I started doing that early. And so when we hired our first guy, Steve was still there. He trained him, right. And then from there it just kind of went, went, went, went. So our processes are really simple. The hard part was getting the design right so that it could be simple in process. Does that make sense?   So that makes, makes perfect sense. So you were, I don't know if incorporated is the right word, but at that point, A&F was a business.  So yeah, well, that was my wife. So my wife was like you have to form a company and pay taxes on all this stuff to your company because if you pay through personal, it's going way more and you are actually, this is a company. So you've got to treat this for what it really is. Don't try to force it into our personal income. That's weird. Yeah. And so we formed LSE and at that time also one of my good buddies who was with me through that season where I was working at the church and also, you know, a sponsor of AA and NA, you know, men, right, going through that. So like we did a lot of life together. He at the time was also entrepreneur and saw the opportunity and said, man, let me partner with you on this. Let me come in on this and I'll do these parts of the business and, you know, kind of break it up you, me, you and Steve. And so he came in and so May 1st we formed the company May 1st of 2016 was the official forming of ANF. By then we had already made snares. We had made drum kits and so we were just catching up. We were racing to catch up. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.   You've got the huge bass drums. You've got the kind of single you know, tension rod construction on a lot of drums. I mean, it's just unbelievable. I mean, what would be I don't know, maybe without giving away your secrets, but like what would be if you're going to come out with a new drum set, does it start with you like putting pen to paper and kind of just like writing down your ideas and drawing something out like what some of these really cool designs is that all coming from you? It starts with me and finishes with the team. That's how it works. And so a lot of the stuff up until now for the most part. These were things that I would make shift in the studio to get sounds for a record. So it's like, man, I really want as fat snare. Let me grab, make glad this old floor tom that I have and cut it down and put some wires on it. Nobody made 18 inch wires at the time. So let me get 16 inch wires and let's let me take let me have this, you know, in my arsenal and the pancake was like, let me take this banjo apart in the middle of a session actually took a banjo apart makeshift snare and go. And so I was drawing a lot from all these things in the studio that I think drummers at the time, I think drummers would want to actually buy something like this that's already done if they heard what it does and engineers and producers would love it too. So let's just make it. I mean, we can make it. Let's make it. So that's that's how those things happen. It's like drawing from my years in the studio and sounds and soundscapes and just creating vibes and turning it into drum. And then the other side is kind of my rebellious like, man, everybody's programming beats now and pop songs like there's some great drummers that can play that stuff. And I remember when I was doing session work, I mean my first big session was playing live beats for the first Black Eyed Peas record. So I was in there, had all my vintage drums and kick snare hat, different variations of kick snare hat playing down beats, you know, they'd sample eight bars of it on the MPC, but it was still a live drummer. And then you started to see that kind of go away where people are just sampling sounds and creating and it kind of broke my heart. I was like, man, there's drummers out there. Yeah, I can play this stuff way better than that program and faster. They just need sound. They need more arsenal sonic arsenals because that's what you have with program. You can start tweaking sounds and stuff. And so the pancake, the gunshot, the rude boys, like all these things were sounds that the drummers can now take back, you know, the groove. Like take back, man, fight the computer. Yeah, no, for real. I mean, it's kind of like I mean, I've heard other people say but it parallels, you know, when like, you know the computers coming in and taking jobs away from drummers obviously kind of parallels like the silent movie thing when those drummers were losing their jobs and stuff.   I mean, there are the A&Fers, people who just really, really, really, and I've played a few kits. I played one at the last PASIC that happened in person and they're not just like you've been saying this entire time. They're not just pretty drums. They also sound awesome. They serve a function. They like, you know, they don't just talk the talk. They walk the walk. I mean, they're worth the money. I feel like people just and it seems like they're like a it's like a showpiece in your you put it in like your living room or something. Functional art is what my wife calls it. Yeah. For sure.  Boom, you've been just killing it has have things from what from what I can see as an outsider things have just progressively been going up and up and up. Is that fair to say? Yeah, man, you know, 2020 leaving Nam January 2020 was position to be one of the biggest growth years for us ever enter covid and this is such a secondary thing because the primary thing was people's lives and health and jobs like the mess that covid brought we were somewhat insulated large largely because we are a very conservative financial model of a company I chose to do that very early and you know, we have very little if no debt and everything we do is we can pay for it. We do it if we can't we wait type of thing. And so that sustain this so March April May of last year you know really tough because covid just had started to do its thing and then around June started to swing back up and then July exploded and we're back on growth track into this year. Nice. And I think next year is going to be explosive with all the tours and the shows and everything coming back in full swing you know so probably this year too but you know you're really going to feel it I think next year so yeah just on the growth path trying to be as responsible as we can covid definitely you know again very secondary this is like third world first world problem but it's your life I mean it's your livelihood so it's like yeah it's important. It kicked us in the balls man. Yeah. Mainly for getting supplies like getting raw brass getting wood for our shells like getting materials and then shipping you know the shipping companies have just been they're having a restructure everything because it was painful so delays man I hated up until covid rarely would we be late on making a drum from our lead time you know and it used to be 8 weeks on snares 12 weeks on kits and after covid you know we've fallen almost 2 months behind sometimes so we you know we were and I will say like it wasn't that we weren't doing the work here and able to keep up it was like it was just getting materials like for example Remo had closed during covid for at least 2 months. Yeah I heard that. So we couldn't get heads like drums are all sitting in the shop ready to get heads on them and we couldn't get heads I started calling all of our retail partners who you know their shops were only online at the time and just buying as many heads as we could but also they needed you know because for their customers and these wouldn't be logo heads right and so I had to ship had the ship drums out with whatever heads we could get with a note saying as soon as we get logo heads I'll send you replacements don't worry like we're going to make this alright but man it was a cluster mess yeah so everyone's in that position though and in covid there's so many things where like it affected so many things where like like I had to buy longer screws to hang like a shutter on my house that blew off and it's like oh you can't get them nope can't get a 5 inch screw or whatever it's just like things like or there's something like at a grocery store it was like yeah we're out of cream cheese we couldn't get it. Yeah because we've got A's, Lowe's and Home Depot all you know within 3 miles and same thing you go in there to get just any materials that we just haven't been able to get try to get it from there and some of the shelves are cleaned out and they're like oh yeah man we're a 2-3 month back order we have no idea when stuff's coming in because you know and here's the thing you start to learn that I mean man like 80-90% of some of the stuff is coming from overseas and specifically China right and China is shut down and they're really tightening up on all the shipping out because they're trying to be safe for the right reasons you know yeah so that's what was happening it's like you just couldn't get stuff yeah well but I mean it seems like that's kind of well I want to say that seems like it's kind of coming to an end but honestly I mean you see these like home builders and things like if you want something done in your house I mean prices have tripled and lumber I mean it's it's insane now how are you guys let's kind of transition into what A&F is going to be doing in the future I know you said 2021 is looking like a great you know year so far all you know albeit with the price of things expanding you know of like materials and things being hard to get but what can the A&Fers out there look forward to yeah man I do want to say to the the statement that you said things are getting seem to be getting better it's gonna get worse before it gets better unfortunately yeah because the other thing that Texas got hit with was a snowstorm and a grid you know that that basically broke down so that was an additional added time but anyway what we did is we hired two more people as of last week and now we're on this like mad dash to catch up but again we're just running in issues getting materials so what we did was we are buying materials in massive bulk we're basically putting a lot of money in right now so we're buying a year's worth of materials whether it be metal or wood and it's going to take longer to get those materials but once we get out of them we'll be able to catch up at like rocket speed pace because two more people in the shop means three times as much work done at the same quality right that's where we're at there we're continuing right now what I'm focusing on as far as design is concerned I want to finish out our hardware series our drum sound is done and that's hopefully we'll be landing in the next couple of weeks like the first batch of those they're already sold but that's great and then I'm finishing our kick pedal I'm finishing our drum thrown I'm finishing our hardware bag and a full a full line of drum bags and then you know ANF hardware is going to be making other areas of music including guitar stands and microphone stands things like that that we've been designing same aesthetic same approach sitting with the mic stand we have the luxury of having Rupert Neve designs here in Austin wow that's nice so we've been working with them just gathering information in their wisdom and their knowledge to try and make a full studio mic stands bags for microphones making those making bags for guitars and a few other instruments so we're just using what we've done and the method that we've done it and applying it in other areas where we see a need I should say yeah and I mean you're a drum company for sure you've almost created a lifestyle brand where it's a very certain aesthetic where like you said where you're very detailed a lot of attention to detail and there's a lot of people like that who want their gear to be kind of a work of art so it makes perfect sense that you're expanding into those other markets just as many microphone you know nerds out there and guitar guys and girls and people who love all this stuff who want to put their gear in a nice case or spend that little extra to have a guitar stand that is really kind of a work of art so it makes perfect sense you're not overstepping you're not stepping too far out yeah and trying to stand behind it too so let's have a lifetime warranty on manufacturing if it breaks or tweaks or whatever and it's because of something that we made not because you dropped the kit off of a two-story building we can still fix that by the way and we have we fixed a completely demolished brass kit in an accident that nobody got hurt thank god but the drums were squashed but you know on the manufacturing side we'll replace it fix it and replace it right away and get it out to you as quickly as possible on the hardware it's a little bit different the hardware's got a two-year warranty which is consistent with most of the hardware that's made out there today the bags are a five-year warranty consistent with a lot of the bags that are out there today the high-end bags like B&B, Briggs and Raleigh that come stuff yeah sure but yeah man it's taking what we've done and applying it in other areas where we see there's a need an opportunity for us to actually fill that need with pride like with integrity I should say and like most pro drum sets and pro gear they're you know you get what you pay for so these are not you're not selling beginner drum sets so I think people have a lot more pride in something that they've had to maybe save up a little bit for or you know you feel it more like it's an investment into your career and your studies as a drummer when you buy these because again they're not the cheapest drums in the world and I think you get what you pay for and if you want quality you gotta pay for it that's for sure the tough part for any company right now but you're gonna start seeing it across the board not just instruments anybody who's making anything um prices are gonna go up because commodities are going up the price of wood the price of metal all that stuff is rising and so we're we're trying to hold back as much as we can to see what you know what we can do to cushion that blow but um you know we haven't raised our prices since 2017 and we only raised them in 2017 because in 2016 we were making stuff out of our garage or a small shop and it was a small quantity in a minute and things took off were like whoa we're not making any money on this overhead goes up and yeah you just start to think it through you're like well I don't want I hate raising prices but if it if you absolutely have to I hate more the idea of closing our company right so yeah I think we all want you to be around and not go out of business you didn't raise less of two evils right but yeah so we're trying to assess that now and figure out what it's gonna look like we we honestly won't know until we start looking at the new prices of commodities once they're landed here and you know whether they're coming from Colorado or San Antonio or many have like wherever we just we got to look at the pricing and make an assessment but you're gonna start seeing it across the board man I'm a cigar guy I love cigars and this year I saw cigars take a hike about 30% so we're not we're not I don't see that kind of hike anywhere in our future yeah but we do have to figure out what what it's gonna look like unfortunately yeah but you know you just gotta chug through it and it is what it is I think everyone's in the same boat so well as we finish up I think we can tell people where they can you know find you and order drums and all that stuff but before we do that I want to give a couple shout outs here so I had I've had multiple people suggest this episode but originally Rob Andre who works with you obviously who's a team member he suggested you like last year and was like man it would be a great episode and so thanks to Rob and then more recently Brian M Johnson reached out via Instagram and sent me a picture of his awesome set in his like cool looking I think like apartment and and it's just a beautiful you know it's just like I said it's he's got a cool plant next to it and it's just a nice it's like a piece of furniture yeah so so thanks to those guys and then I want to give a shout out to Corey strange who did some great work with you guys designing the box for your hardware Corey's amazing man I I wanted our packaging to have a personal touch and I asked Corey if he wouldn't mind hand drawing every you know piece of hardware that we're releasing to scale so we could put it on the box that way yeah he took every stand made a hand drawing and we created it we created digital versions of it and it's on all of our packaging and he's he's just incredible man I love that guy yeah he's awesome his his art is phenomenal and and just that idea alone of doing like a true to life illustration of the hardware and I think it's so cool and it kind of goes back to early early early early you know forties drum catalogs where they wouldn't have pictures they'd actually have illustrations and I think it's awesome about looking back to move forward I loved that those old catalogs we do have something that is in the works around that and I'll talk about that in a feature date once it's getting closer to but yeah we looked at catalogs and that was a huge inspiration and you know the other thing was the practical aspect of when you have hardware and boxes sitting in shops most of the time you know your retail guys got to take it out for someone to at least see it and mind you you know we encourage all the dealers to have it on the floor and so that people can try it but there's also the fact that just walking through you can look at the box and know exactly what's in the box just with the drawing so there's a practical component to that as well but yeah really awesome and again I didn't get to say this but Rob came on as our sales director and he said he was one of the three people that recommended that we do this together and he's been an incredible incredible value add to our company man he brings so much so I can't say enough good things about all those guys yeah for sure and then I wanted to also I think we've talked but I always see on Facebook Brandon Bogle I just wanted to mention because he runs the I think the A&F appreciation the A&F page on Facebook and I just think it's so cool when someone is so passionate about it I just wanted to kind of give him a mention of like you know it's cool Brandon it's cool that you're doing that and love the company so much to represent it and just you know spread the gospel of A&F that guy's a rockstar man such a rockstar yeah for sure so all right on that note you know it's pretty obvious usually people can just find your website but why don't you tell people where they can you know go and order A&F you know where they can find them where they can try them all that good stuff yeah yeah so our web page is AM is in the NCF is in frank drum code dot com on our web page if you're looking for dealers you can go you can go in the and pick the I think it's retailers page and it has all the dealers globally that have A&F drums in the shops if there's not a dealer in your city that that sells A&F you know we sell direct as well only to places where we don't have representation because you know we're still small we're not everywhere but we're trying and then the other thing I want to encourage everybody to do is subscribe to our YouTube channel because we we just launched something called A&F live and it's a basically it's a live cast where we showcase some gear we have some interviews but you can you know you can ask questions in real time and we'll answer them live there's there like 45 minute episodes and then you know they'll they'll live on our YouTube channel after the fact as well but that's we're trying to create a resource where we can continue to answer and educate and do everything we can to inform people of you know the who why where what of A&F yeah man that's awesome it's good to be community based and reaching out to people and you know and obviously drummers like being listened to and talking to their companies and just doing what you're doing right now of talking to me about this and people can listen is an important thing because I didn't know any of this stuff so it's cool to know the man behind A&F has such a cool background in you know drumming and touring and production and really it's born A&F is born out of your own necessity that really like hey everyone else can take advantage of your you know desire to make a great drum for yourself and now five years later it's just such a happy birthday I mean this will be out in May 2021 I'll release this you know this month and you made it you're the big you're halfway to a decade thanks man yeah big celebration super super grateful for the support really can't can't say enough praise for just everybody's support in this in this journey it's been incredible absolutely cool well Rami show and for everyone listening Rami's gonna hang out for a couple more minutes and we're gonna do one of the Patreon bonus episodes that we've been doing recently and I want to hear Rami about these just like the far out kind of like symbols that you that are in the crazy shapes and stuff and and just sourcing them and who's making them and all that stuff so if you want to hear that conversation you can go to drumhistorypodcast.com click the Patreon button and I'm sure we'll talk about some other stuff as we do it kind of spirals off into other things but yeah you can donate a little bit of money and you'll you know be involved in that so anyway Rami thank you so much for coming on the show and spending time with us and again it's a and is in Nancy fdrumco.com for everyone out there who can check out ANF but I think everyone knows a lot about ANF because you're there man you're a very popular drum company thanks man thank you thank you for doing this too with us this is awesome if you like this podcast find me on social media at drumhistory and please share rate and leave a review and let me know topics that you would like to learn about the future until next time keep on learning


Prime Minister, Honourable Philippe J. Pierre, has actioned immediate anti-crime measures to support ongoing tactical efforts by the Royal Saint-Lucie Police Force to suppress a recent flare-up of gang-related criminal activity in Bruceville, V-4. And right now we are taking immediate measures to stop it now, sort two measures. We are bringing the RSS to help us on the ground to deal that issue. Two, we are further enhancing the facilities for the police in terms of vehicles, in terms of numbers. Three, we are going to parliament with emergency legislation to give the police emergency powers to suppress crime. Four, while we are doing that, we are trying to see if we can improve the morale of the police, trying to see if we can deal with other issues with technologies, scanners, drones, etc. And finally, we are enhancing our social programs for these areas. The Prime Minister delivered an address to the nation on March 11, 2023. He reassured the V-4 community and Saint Lucia of his government's commitment to maintaining law and order throughout the island, and also outlined some of the measures taken to extract offenders from Saint Lucia's peace-loving neighbourhoods and communities. We are taking charge of the situation. We will succeed. We will build a safe and more secure society. We must fight these criminal networks called gangs and encourage our young people to reject their lifestyles. Especially in terms of tragedy, we must come together as a nation. We must support one another and work together to prevent future acts of violence. We will not let fear envy and hatred divide us. We will stand together as Saint Lucia's and work towards a brighter future for all. In recent months, the Prime Minister has facilitated additional assistance from friendly governments, namely the French and the United States, and also from the regional security system to bolster operational and tactical capacity within the ranks of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force from the Office of the Prime Minister, Rihanny Isidore.