There are several new videos now playing on our Youtube channel. First up is classic Mastermind power trio footage from the 90’s… most people haven’t ever seen this material performed live so we figured we’d put it out there. Brainstorm is broken up into three parts (Youtube has a ten minute limit) so watch it via the Mastermind (classic) playlist and it plays the segments straight through in sequence.

The new playlists separate the various things we do so fans of the prog-rock stuff don’t have to wade thru the bluesy stuff and visa versa (tho’ we think it’s all good stuff). For fans of the ladies of Mastermind, more recent video will be up soon but we thought it would be nice to go back to the beginnings first. To see the new uploads just go right to the Mastermind (classic) playlist. Subscribe to our channel to be notified when new videos go online.

There is tons of this footage going back almost 20 years. Since it’s all analog video it isn’t quite digital quality but you’ll get the idea. Reminiscing how cool some of the the early material is, you can expect we’ll be doing some new stuff in a similar vein.

Let us know you enjoyed it, give us a few stars while you’re there!

More to come!

For the first time in eight years I feel a real sense of hope and promise for the future, that the dark clouds lingering over us all for nearly a decade are beginning to give way. I have lived the majority of my adult life under the fascist warmongering Republican right and their Neocon empire building agenda. Today I celebrate the possibilities the future holds.

I am not so naive as to think things will change overnight, nor nearly as much as I might like, but Barack Obama as President, a black President in my lifetime (!), is certainly a reason to believe things *can* change. It is no coincidence the most prolific years of Mastermind were during the Clinton administration. So drink a toast with me to the promise the future holds.

In the past two months music has been spilling out of me like water as the Neocon regime coming to an end seemed like it just might happen. I have written and assembled 3 hours of new music! At least an hour of which is destined to become new Mastermind, not to mention another two hours of music in the can. So now the task at hand is to get it all recorded and get it out there.

Rich was here and we watched Obama’s speech as the President-elect together, so I know he feels pretty much the same way I do… hopeful. We can do it. Yes we can! Hallelujah!!

[UPDATE: Hasn’t quite work out as I had hoped. Could be worse I suppose. -Bb]

It amazes me how quickly time seems to go on one hand and oh so painfully slow on the other. I can barely believe it was nine years ago today – 09/09/1999 – that I finished mixing our last full length studio release Angels of the Apocalypse. Surely it cannot have been so long ago! Yet at the same time it feels like we’ve been under the dark Neocon cloud for decades. Perhaps because we have, going back to Reagan, but I will refrain from getting into that here. It’s no secret I have deep disdain for Republicans and the people running this country so moving right along I will try to give a brief retrospective of how things came to be as they are (or are not as the case may be) regarding Mastermind.

So what did happen? The first crack in the armour was when Rich moved an hour drive away severely limiting our creative time together. Although it wasn’t apparent at first as he diligently made the drive to rehearsals and gigs, it became clear over time a few hours here and there is simply not enough time to do anything other than just run thru stuff to keep the machine running. I still had a drummer, but much less of a collaborative partner.

Adding a full time female vocalist took us too far off our original course. Not to detract from these lovely and talented women, but in retrospect a female vocalist may have been the biggest mistake we ever made. Although we were one of the first heavy bands to do so, when Evanescence hit the ensuing flood of fem-vox bands left us in the dust. Taking Mastermind out as a bar band simply to keep going was also a mistake that took us even further away from our original direction. I should have stayed home and worked on new recordings but…..

Changing over from analog tape to all computer recording also changed my work methods which slowed things down considerably. Dicking around with computers all the time was simply no fun, I’d rather just play guitar! The relentless march of digital technology and highspeed Internet also hurt the music business at large and though we completed a new album in 2004, we couldn’t get a label to pick it up. I’m not blaming this totally on labels or the Internet, the change in musical direction we were going thru was surely a contributing factor. But it didn’t help. The morphing from prog to metal was also not something I was totally comfortable with either and after a point my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.

Finally, the revolving door of a half dozen bass players put a serious damper on my will to carry on. Each new player meant starting over from scratch and I just couldn’t do it again. When the last one left in January 2007 that was the death knell as I saw it and a chance to just make a clean break and start over. Rediscovering my roots with the 2005 Cream reunion I was remembering WHY I enjoyed making music in the first place, and in disconnecting my synthesizers I also rediscovered the joy of simply playing guitar. Taking a dive into the blues I grew up with has been refreshing, made me a better player, and has brought me full circle to a point where I am writing new music that I actually enjoy again. The previous blog gives some insight as to where that’s going.

So there you have it. Not that we haven’t been doing anything these past nine years! We played more live shows than ever before, recorded a whole new album, released the well received Broken EP in 2005, and put together a whole new act – The Berends Bros Band – but this date stood out to me and I felt a need to reflect on some of the things that have happened over the years. ~Bb

Five years ago today at around this exact time the United States of America – MY country – attacked Iraq in a preemptive war. I recall vividly the sinking feeling in my gut as I watched with horror the initial “shock & awe” bombardments on live television… like seeing a loved one in car accident, I could feel a dark cloud of despair move in over top of me.

This was not MY country doing this, it was the Neocons who have hijacked the place. There are a million other web sites discussing that so I won’t get into it here. What I want to say today is the dark cloud that hangs over us all really put a damper on my enthusiasm for… most things. Including making music.

I have said in passing that I am waiting out the current U.S. administration to be able to breath again and I really think this is true. Looking over old date books, the final mixing sessions for (what may someday be) the 7th Mastermind studio album were during that fateful month of March 2003. In fact they were during the two weeks preceding the attack.

There are other factors that contributed to Mastermind getting bogged down which I shall discuss at some point, but I can’t relax and feel creative when so much is wrong in the world. The insidious feeling of something major gone awry made music seem so trivial. Ignore the smoke and smile…? I couldn’t do it.

Since 9/11 (and I don’t believe the “official” story for one moment) the world is a different place. An uglier, less friendly place. And I don’t like it, not one little bit. Now I feel at least a faint glimmer of hope as the 2008 Presidential elections loom. Not that the choices are all that good, but at least it is SOME kind of change. Ron Paul is the only guy who seems to be telling the truth in any fashion, but I’m not holding my breath… oh wait, yes I am.

[UPDATE: learning more about RP and his libertarian B.S. I decided he is a total dick. -Bb]