Backlit Fuzz

Last night I played a set at backlitlounge. I was totally psyched that some friends came out to support: Lars, Elysa, DanT, Angel, Haber, and even some of Habe's co-workers! Onyx relocated the event to a cool arty space called the RxLounge, in a nice sketchy part of the Tenderloin near Market St. I was super relaxed about the whole thing. I did zero rehearsing which led to a set which a laden with mishaps, but no one paid much mind. I think people generally dug my music. It was a bit of a departure from what I've heard from other artists, and really mellowed the place out. I was also the only artist to have gaps in between songs. It was amusing that people felt like they needed to clap after every song.

It's an interesting event - anyone can sign up, so the quality and style of artists is really varied. Blipvert, they guy who played after me, went fucking berserk. It was a glitchy kinda thrashy sounding music - not to sonically pleasing, but he gets an A for presence and utilizing technology in new ways. Good times. I will try and be a re-occurring patron at these events, cause I'm loving that there's an home brew electronic music going on in my city.

Dolby and BT

The day after we say the Prodigy I was cruising around on my favorite computer music forum and people were singing high praises for BTs new album. Now, I'm not a fan of BT - I find his music way too poppy and cheesy, though I have lots of respect for his technical abilities. I went to the BT website to learn more and saw that he was playing at the Red Devil Lounge on Monday night. Well shit. I bought a ticket right then and there.

Thus, last night, I found myself at the Red Devil Lounge. I hadn't been there in like 6 years, when I was moonlighting as a bonus keyboard player for El Pulpo. Its a small place - capacity 209 - so I was surprised they'd have big names like Thomas Dolby and BT playing there. Turns it was the first night of their tour, and it was sort of an open rehearsal, where they could get all the kinks out.

It was an interesting crowd. Mixed ages - older folks for Dolby, younger for BT. It wasn't sold out. I hadn't ever heard of Dolby before, but at least half the people there were big fans. Dolby went first. During his first song, everything crashed, and there was 5 minutes of silence as he got his equipment back in working order. His sound was very 80's - using old school synths and drum machines. Having never been exposed to his music before, I can't say I was the biggest fan. He definitely had the talent and a voice to match, but the arrangements of the songs were a little hokey for my digital tastes. I might enjoy more after repeated listens and some lyric analysis. Maybe not. His intersong banter was entertaining though.

BT went second. He didn't get going till 11:15, which was pushing the Monday night crowd to the limit of patience. He brought two additional musicians with him, and recreated his new album "The Binary Universe" in its entirety. Let me say, I was beyond impressed. It was his masterpiece. Its a gorgeous, lush landscape of sounds and beats. Much to my delight - no vocals. It was his opus. Needless to say, I will be picking up a copy.

He works at a level way beyond my musical capacity. Through out the set he played many keyboards, a cello, guitar, xylophone, and couple other instruments. The compositions were incredible. It gave me perspective on the difference between a producer like him and like me. It isn't discouraging - I grew up in an environment where everyone was a better piano player then I. It was inspiring, and spurred me to think in a grander scale for album cohesiveness. Anyhow, it was worth the price of admission. I now have great respect for BT.

Resynthesize

I ran across a really cool IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) album on the internet. This dude, Resynthesize, released his debut album "Heart and Soul Direct" for free on the internet. Its a bit of departure from the melodic downtempo music that I write - its very beat focused and uptempo. I think it kicks ass.

Go check it out

Coke Grenades

On our last trip to the grocery store, I ran across the best thing since coke in a bottle. Now, I love me some coke in a bottle. More then I should. It's only 8 oz of soda, which is perfect for me. It also comes in a kick ass glass bottle. Its crazy expensive, though. So I only get it every so often, as a treat for a being a kick ass human being.

Now they sell 8oz coke cans. OMG. That rules. Little coke grenades.

Thanksgiving Week

My Tday week started kinda funky by having a large mole removed near my left nipple. There's not a whole lot of skin between my mole and my rib cage, so they removed a hefty chunk of skin. Thus I walked around all hunched over like a 80 year man on Tuesday, much to the delight to Stina and Dave Patry (who arrived on Tues).

On Wednesday, we were to meet Stina at the JCC to see her place of work and eat at the adjoining restaurant. Dave and I entered the JCC, walked up to the front desk, and were immediately accosted by a woman: "Are you here for an Event?" and in the same breath "Are you two Jewish?" I stood there rather shocked, as Patry mumbled "not me". By the time I stammed out "um, I'm jewish" she had took our measure, realized we weren't good candidates, and quickly departed. Apparently they were having a Minon, and needed 10 jews to make it official. The JCC made a big first impression.

Dinner at 415 was tasty though. Absolutely incredible sushi. Not cheap though.

Haber was hosting the annual Thanksgiving. Stina decided to make two types of Mac and Cheese, two types of Pecan pies, and an Apple Crumble. Dave made spinach cheese square and I made Yams. I had the easiest Thanksgiving ever - I cowered behind the stitches on my chest, and did almost no cooking and cleaning. It was also our
smallest Thanksgiving ever - 13 people. It was wonderful. Too much food. Too much good food at that. Haber made an amazing turkey and stuffing. Pure Joy. And he has a Wii to boot. Wii tennis is fun.

On Friday we returned to Ft. Funston for Thanksgiving Round 2. That night Dave and I made our way to the Fillmore to see the Prodigy. The Prodigy kicked serious ass. Liam, the Prodigy duder (who was surrounded by racks of keyboards), put together a righteous band - a drummer, a guitarist, and two MCs. I've seen many a front man try to rile up a crowd with various degrees of success. The main MC for Prodigy was one of the best I've ever seen. The sound was perfect. The music selection was great. I saw two things I've never seen at the Fillmore - the front of the crowd had a security setup to stop people from getting on the stage/crowd surfing. The other item of newness occurred when the MC came down into the crowd, to the back of venue, and stood up on the sound duders mixer podium to deliver some "turn the pitch up - smack my bitch up" action. Rock. It was a short, but quality show. I was pumped.

So besides the mole removal and getting sick on Thursday, it was a great week. Dave and I discovered the joys of multiplayer Worms on the DS. All week long. It was great having him around. We look forward to seeing him near NYE.

You're Cut

Well, last week was a really freaking productive musical time span. I had three different artists over to record, I finished up a couple tunes, and I finalized the sale of a commissioned song for a documentary on shark conservation. Hell yeah.

I also started taking a look at the track listing for the upcoming album. I was really struggling with one song - it just wasn't going to fit cleanly. After listening to it I realized that it really didn't fit in the album at all. Its a song that has something like 7 to 8 different sections in about 6 and a half minutes - no mean feat. It took a fair bit of effort to write and mix down due to its complexity, but fortunately I did it so long ago that I'm able to let it go.

I have such emotional attachment to music I'm working on. I definitely lose the ability to judge the worth of a song once I've committed to finish it. After a while, especially if I've completed some songs in the meantime, I can look at it a little more objectively. So, bam, just like that. Off the album. I feel good about it.

Not to let a completed song go to waste, I've added it to the bonus tracks on my website. So, enjoy a new general fuzz track while you wait for the new album to wrap up. The song is named "baby steps". I was inspired by PVision's recent commitment to baby steps of self realization.

Enjoy.

We'll never stop singing

Hans and Heather had met up with Stina and I for the flash dance - it closely emulated their natural habitat. Across the street was the old/new mall that I've never set foot in. Heather led us to the insane food court (you will easily spend $10-15 on dinner, but it'll be pretty tasty). We randomly bumped into Zack and Amanda down there. Heather treated us to a Beard Papa pastry which was beyond tasty. Custard was everywhere. I was down with that.

We met up with Rachel to catch the final show of Killing My Lobster's latest run - KML Faces the Music. It was directed by Andrew Bancroft and the musical director was Olive. It was by far and away the best KML show I've ever seen. It was definitely chock full of Olive humor - very self referential and over the top. It was hysterical. The performers were freaking amped, possibly cause it was their last show of the run. The show revolved around Bay Area culture, and it was done almost entirely in song. Apparently they're going to do a second run in January - I highly recommend you see it if you missed it this run. . .

Flash Dance 5

Amandeep from deeptrouble hosted another one of his kick ass flash mob dance parties on Saturday. This one was next the cable car turnaround at Powell and Market. It was farily amusing to have a dance party that totally obstructed the sidewalk.





There was even a girl doing some badass hula-hoop dancing.



When I was about to leave I stopped by to thank Amandeep for putting this on. He asked who I was. I said General Fuzz. He said that someone else had already introduced themself as General Fuzz. Huh?

Well dude, whoever you are, I ask two things:
1. If you are going to take my name you had better spread the gospel of my music.
2. Whenever, wherever, I will be ready for a breakdance battle to settle this once and for all.

Can't stop till I get enough

On Friday we made our annual trek to the Palace of Fine Arts to see the Hip Hop Dance Fest. I always leave with my jaw slightly unhinged. Its usually like 12-14 different dance troupes doing some seriously choreographed numbers. Most of them are from the bay area. A lot of them are high school students. Ever since it upgraded to the Palace of Fine Arts they always import a couple acts from outside California. We saw a trio from France that was insane. One guy, The Human Toy, dislocated his knee while performing and kept going - we learned about this after the fact. Unbelievable. Its seems that each year they are pushing the boundaries of the genre. This year we saw some seriously stylized ballet like hiphop, some over the top sexuality (which is often not present at all in these performances), and a tripped out ninja posse that I would prefer not to rumble with. It was great.

Flying knives of Joy

I freaking love Benahanas.

I'm not ashamed of this.

Random

I got the most surprising email I've ever gotten to my general fuzz account. Let me share it with you:

Hello, I have a question regarding track 1 Dream Together on the General Fuzz album. The underlying melody seems almost identical to the theme song on the 80s game Starflight by EA/Binary Systems. Is this song influenced by this theme or actually embed it into the song itself? I have this ability to pick out certain tunes and would love to know if I'm right.

Dream Together / General Fuzz
http://www.generalfuzz.net/tunes.php

Starflight 1 Theme Song
http://members.shaw.ca/lorin.mccaffrey/starflight/sfwave.au

Will

Huh. It turns out I've never heard of this game. I sorta hear the similaries, but I'm not feeling "identical" It was nice of him to link the song though.

go home hippie digest, go home

So, something probably happened to me in the last 9 days or so. I shared an awkward banana eating moment at work, though I kinda made it awkward for fun. We finally went to the Olive Garden, and it did not disappoint. I met a dude who's developing a computer music software plugin. That was rad. Matty had his birthday party, and I feel like I contributed to elevating the status of the party to epic.

Stina was in a "let's get rid of shit" mood. I was fine with that. One afternoon I found a couple years worth of relix (my hippy magazine) in the recycle bin. I took them out, and gave them a stern talking to, but it was a ceremonial gesture. But we had waaay too many Playboys. So Matty got a couple years of playboy along with the group gift of Guitar Hero 2. Let me illustrate the epicness of this party:



Notice everyone is either engaged in the video game or the Playboys.

Rock.

Woah - here's something new - I'm pretty consumed with my music. I had Sean Lehe, fucking BADASS guitar player back over on Monday. He had spent 8 hrs in the studio, and then came over to throw down. Which, amazingly, he did. Cello Steve came back for round 2 tonight. Recording acoustic instruments is so much harder then electric guitars.

I'm playing a "gig" at tomorrow night at PlayBar. There's an organized laptop music thingy most Wednesdays at a bar downtown, where peeps sign up for 45 slots. I'm gonna play a set at 10:15. After playing two over two hour gigs, this seems like cake. And I like cake.

What do we do for fun?

I used Thursday as a good warm up for the weekend by going first to Jupiter in Berkeley to catch Surrounded By Ninja’s (awesome, and a fantastic brewery to boot) and then to the Conn Yankee to catch Isabella w/ Garrin Benfield (awesome as usual, and Garrin is great addition with his powerful vocals).

On Friday evening Stiners, Rachel, and I went to the Team In Training dinner to get in the appropriate head space for the tri the next morning. We arrived a wee early, and I convinced Stina to accompany me into the Buena Vista where I quickly enjoyed one very tasty, albeit pricey, Irish Coffee. Oh man, so good. That left me with a nice warm feeling as we sat down in the banquet hall in the Fisherman’s Warf Holiday Inn. I was surrounded by many very in shape people, who seemed to be mostly female. Dinner was not so tasty, but the speeches were good and inspiring. It really hit home that no matter how much physical and mental suffering the participants are experiencing during the tri, these cancer patients experience that at a whole different level, all the time. We left after a stern warning from the head coaches that all the participants should go home and rest.

We arrived back home around 9pm, and I then loaded up the car and headed up to the Pleasure Pad to open up their benefit party. The New Up was trying to raise money to make a video to go along with their new CD. After some technical difficulties I was up and rocking the room (well, as much as general fuzz can “rock the room”) from like 10 to midnight. People started arriving around 10:30 so I did actually have a reasonably sized audience during my set. There were a couple people who were sitting with their eyes closed for like 30 minutes, really paying attention. One lady was doing practically doing yoga, which got more difficult as the night progressed and space was limited. Anyhow, it was a much better audience then I anticipated. I got a fair amount of positive feedback. No one kicked me in the balls. I gave out some CDs and cards. I wrapped it up, got out by 12:30, in bed by 1.

The alarm went off at 5, and we creakily assembled ourselves, packed up the car (like only Stina can), picked up Rachel and her gear, and headed over to Treasure Island.

It was light out by the time they got to set up their transition area. There was some drama with Rachel’s bike, where her breaks were messed up, and tires under inflated. Then after a coach over inflated a tire and tube popped, Rachel who was already fairly apprehensive about the day, hit a new low. Fortunately, many people jumped into action, triathletes were generously plying Rachel with new tubes, and it all got squared away.

Stina’s mental state had been deteriorating all week (much of Friday was spent in a overwhelmed breakdown state). Somehow she captured the same spirit she possessed on our wedding day and had transformed into a beacon of positivity. It was awesome as it was surprising. She was all smiles. She had let go of everything that was out of her control and decided to really celebrate her accomplishments. Their race didn’t start till 9:30, and we had a couple hours to kill. Haber soon appeared on the island, having dropped off Lindsey at the airport around 6am, so we had a nice little crew for some self amusement until the race started.
Randomly enough, Lindsey’s brother Doug is a professional triathelete who was competing in the pro division, which for some reason was held at noon after all the non pro’s were done.

Lars joined us around 9. We donned our custom tee-shirts, Haber doled out some good head gear, and we prepared to cheer.
So, as we often ask around the Krudden household, “What do we do for fun?”

Swim!





Bike!



Run!


Josh Cohen and Zack Shapiro joined us during the bike to help cheer everyone on. Haber had miraculously brought enough costumes for everyone. We were quite a crew, and many a biker was amused by our antics.

Both Stina and Rachel completed the tri safely and with gusto. I was overwhelmed with pride. They kicked some serious ass. Stina had a smile for me everytime I caught up with her. She hates the run, yet there she was, smiling and laughing (and wheezing), some 3 hours into her tri. It was amazing.



The cheering section celebrated with an absurd amount of Kettle Korn. We watched to pro's compete, and it was intense. Doug came in 3rd, still beating the former course record by a minute. Then Josh and Zack headed home to rest up for their half marathon they running the next day. Holy Crap!

Rachel and Jason came over to celebrate their victorious day with some Toe Jam and Earl, Pizza, and Poker. There was much humor as spirits were high. We even invented a new poker game: “do it three ways”. Stina passed out at 8. I then started a song I’m trying to throw together for a documentary about sharks.

On Sunday morning Cello Steve came over to do some recording. That went really well, but I’ve yet to review the material. That afternoon, Stiners and I went out for a walk (it was gorgeous outside), though it was more like a shuffle - she wasn’t moving so well. As we wrap up our walk I get a call from Bryan, a co-worker. He’s taking his son to a show at the Warfield, someone bailed, do I want a free ticket? My mouth says yes even though my body says no. We get back home, I finish a first pass at the song for sharks, and off I go, to see Rise Against and Thursday. I know nothing about these bands.

Bryan meets me outside and gives me a ticket. I look at it – its freaking front row, center on the balcony. Literally the best ticket you could possibly have. Sweet. Rise Against is a cross over punk band. They whip the audience into a frenzy. The floor was a giant mosh pit. The balcony is a left over most pit as the dude behind me keeps grabbing me and shaking me. It was surreal. It was my gratuitous agro show for the year. I wasn’t blown away – they aren’t breaking any new ground musically, but they certainly brought the heat. Thursday fells into the same category as punk-esque band. Too much melody and radio friendlyness to be punk, but it definetly has more mass appeal. I mean, how many punk bands have a keyboard player? They were fine, but I bailed halfway through the set. I wasn’t really feeling the agro vibe right then.

Halloween

San Francisco is a city that celebrates its freakiness, so its no surprise that Halloween in SF is a time of extreme insanity. I feel that Halloween in the Castro is much like Burning Man - something that everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime. Fortunately I've witnessed that spectacle and I'll never ever need to do it again. It's sheer pandemonium, something that becomes less attractive as I age. My all time record for shortest time for Halloween Castro was a total of 5 minutes, when while releaving myself into a bush I turned my head to see DanT passed out on the road surrounded by cops. Good times. Now that 10 people that were shot last night (at 10:40pm no less), I imagine it will never happen again anyways.

Lucky for us, we have friends who live on Fair Oaks in Noe Valley. Fair Oaks gets barricaded off to cars around 6pm and is then in turn is flooded with children. Most of these youngins are sober and do not wield weapons, besides the occasional plastic specter. Almost all the houses really try to step it up with Haunted Houses, Blue Grass bands, and whatnot. Its fantastic.

Zack and Amanda:

have hosted a sweet Halloween party for last 4 or 5 years. They ask everyone to bring a couple bags of candy since the trick or treaters come out in force. Its obscene how much candy they will go through. The earlier you arrive at the party, the more 1-4 year olds you get to see.

A couple years ago they came up the idea of a candy chute. Since they have a deck built on top of their garage, they built a long PVC chute which they can drop candy down. This was a HUGE hit with the kids. So every year they build upon this idea. This year they build this giant Contraption, like a crazy straw on acid, which to drop candy down. Its was AWESOME.
There was often a huge line to receive candy from this beast. It requires at least 3 people to operate this - one to drop the candy, one to help children get their bag under the chute, and someone to direct traffic and keep things orderly. Sadly, my camera was almost out of batteries when I arrived, but I did manage to capture a little bit on film:



Anyhow, we had a great time and so did the kids.

Josh Cohen was dressed as a candy snatcher, complete with 3 or 4 plastic pumpkins full of candy. Around 9, when things had really winded down, there was still a crazy amount of candy left over. I bet this was a first. Josh started dropping obscene amounts of candy down the chute to late comers, laughing manically. The mom's were unpleased, which honestly made it more funny, since I still lie on the side of the fence where you don't have kids. My favorite moment of the evening was when some kids came straggling up street, and Josh asked if they wanted candy. I believe Mom was ahead, hauling their loot home, so they didn't have a bag, and said as much. Josh started to untie one his plastic pumpkins, and while he was considering whether to drop it, Stina quickly reached over, snatched the pumpkin, and dropped it (at least 10 feet up) on the child, who fortunately caught it, and then immediately took off running. It was hysterical. There was no thank you, just empty space which the kid occupied a mere second ago.

Anywho, many thanks to Zack and Amanda for hosting year after year.