Underdog

It's an exciting time to be living in the Inner Sunset. Underdog, the tiny organic sausage joint at 17th and Irving, is now open for business. I've gone two days in a row. It'll run you about 3-4 bucks for a sausage, and 2 for organic tater tots. They only use fully recycled paper products and are nice folks to boot. They don't sell beer, so I tend to roll in with a red cup.

Yesterday, when I left, they were vibing on some Messy's Pace. Alll right.

Happy Chrisnukah

I basicially ended up doing a sandwich tour of the greater Boston area. I had several grinders in south boston, and J.Dubbya took me to a fancy sandwich place in Harvard Square. I think it was called Dillians. I also ate a lot of bacon. Several Turkey and Bacon grinders. Bacon for Christmas brunch.

My parents don't throw anything out. So I went around the house and found a few choice items: a decade+ old phone (broken?), a zip drive, and a giant personal tape recorder from 1974. I wrapped them up and gave them to my dad. Merry Christmas.

I got to see a bunch of high school friends. That was awesome. They're all either married or in relationships. We all got older. It's good to reconnect. I'm fired up for some JDubbya + Joie wedding.

We came back home to SF today. Sleep was somewhat evasive in the last 24 hrs. We're both sorta delirious. Stina is watching Mortal Combat and is making accompanying sounds of glee. "It has BEGUN!" The tournament, that is.

Aww yeah. Go Sub Zero. Go.

Go already.

Fucking go dude.

Where's the techno?

This is lame.

Oh, there it is.

Nice.

Peppered with sounds of glee.

I Heart a Good Sandwich

I can't believe that it is raining in Newton two days before X-mas. The weather has been unreasonably warm for an east coast winter. I've gone on a sandwich tour of Newton in the three days I've been home: Marty's (my decade long favorite sandwich), Great Harvest Bread Company (which only started selling sandwiches two months ago), and CNN - the sub shop in Newton Corner. You don't really get good Grinders (subs heated in a pizza oven) outside of MA. I've also been binging on the Genesis 10:10 Hebrew Seasonal brew. Everyone should drink it. Its made with pomegranite juice. Unbelievable.

The cat, Beju, weighs in at about 25 lbs. She's crazy fat. If I chase her, she just hides in places that are difficult for me to bother her in. She's not a whole lot of fun. At least the laser pointer seems to agitate her.

Mom left me the latest Spenser novel on my bed. She also made Chinese Chicken and Peach Yucky for dinner. Dad is convinced that I'll never get to beam from one place to another in my lifetime. Everyone treats Stina like family.

Its good to be home.

Interview

A couple weeks ago, a podcast called "Sounds Good" featured some of my tracks in their show. It's a podcast which discusses electronic music production, and demonstrates different tricks and techniques to use in your virtual studio. After contacting Hens Zimmerman, the duder behind Sounds Good, he asked if I was interested in doing an interview. Oh sure. He's based out in the Netherlands, so we do a little Skyping. I don't think I was terribly eloquent, but he pieced together a nice little 5 min interview in the middle of episode #7.

Which you can download here.

We happily spent the weekend in a haze of holiday parties. It's the only way we can tell that Christmas is approaching, since the weather isn't always helpful indicating what the season is.

Hebrew

I like beer. To the point of snobbery. No lie. So when Jesse told me that his client, Hebrew, was putting on a little celebration at the Hotel Utah on Sunday afternoon, I got kinda excited. Hebrew makes a fine beer.

There were four bands on the bill. JP Cutler was first, so we (Rachel, Lars, Steve and I) got there early. Haber was already on hand. Hebrew was pouring all five of its beers. They were $3, and came in a nice souvenir glass.



We started with the Jubilation ale. It was intense in its complexity. The Genesis 10/10 was second, and was definitely my favorite.

JP Cutler played a great set with his current line up.



Everyone who came with me was really impressed with his set. Steve kept saying how these guys should be playing the Fillmore. His line up, which he says should now be pretty consistent, was stellar. Really top notch players. Jesse has retooled some of his older songs, and I think they have a stronger impact. He played for maybe 45 minutes, to a very appreciative audience.

Then came a theatrical female singer/drummer. That was good. Followed by a power trio named "Action Figure". That one was really out of place in the line up. The drummer went around before the set offering ear plugs to the audience. I think that's the coolest thing I've ever seen a band do. Since I really dig the prog music, this band was right up my alley. He's a short distorted video from their set:



They were great. Then a 8 piece bluegrass band followed. They were good, if you like bluegrass. It was so quiet after the power trio.

What an awesome afternoon. I figured we were really just going to stay for Jesse's set, but, a couple Hebrews later, and it was dark outside and all the bands had played.

Sweet Review

I had a pleasant suprise waiting in my mailbox. AmbientMusicGuide.com did a review of "Messys' Pace":

GENERAL FUZZ
Messy's Place (www.generalfuzz.net)

This is beautiful, intricate, loose and funky. San Francisco producer James Kirsch aka General Fuzz has recorded a fantastic instrumental record of melodic breakbeat and loungey chill. The album's first half is mid-tempo grooves sitting around the 120bpm mark and they bare some similarity to the complex ambient breaks of Sasha's brilliant Airdrawndagger album. Except that General Fuzz always places his melodies way forward in the mix - he's not making club music after all, despite its progressive house lineage - so even at low volume these pieces work a treat. Kirsch's live organ, guitar and electric piano playing is truly funky at times and his layering is exquisite.

The second half is little less distinctive and detours into jazzy sax on "Liquid Jazz", smooching sunset atmospheres on "Lost" and "Bars Of Parmar", and swelling violin with electric piano and bubbly breaks on "Lido". Unbelievable that this album is downloading for free on his website. Someone give this man a contract. Rating: 4/5

Nice. Pat introduced me to Airdrawndagger a while back. It's an awesome album. Right now I'm LOVING BT's new album: The Binary Universe. Its his opus. Probably my top cd of the year.

Now send me a contract.

New CD = almost done.

Trey Round 2

Friday nights show started with Trey picking up right where he left off by having the band march in through the crowd up to the stage. Then they launched into a stellar orchestrated version of Stash. The place pretty much fell apart. The whole first set was really high energy, mostly old Trey tunes. The second set was much mellower, with Trey playing a couple of solo acoustic tunes. The band was really on all night. They did a killer version of Sultans of Swing. Much better show then Thursday.

Trey @ the Warfield, Night 1

Last night Stiners and I went to see Trey at the Warfield. He's touring on his latest album Bar 17, which is a whole lot of meh. I think this reflected in audience attendance - it was fairly sparse in the balcony. He brought the full band with him, which is good. He played a bunch of stuff off his new album, which was less good. Set 1 was much stronger then set 2. Towards the middle of the encore, we departed and began to seek a taxi. Stina mentions to me the she's glad were here before the exodus, and as if on cue, people start streaming out of the Warfield IN FORCE. Wait, now we hear music. Oh shit, Trey took the band through the audience and then outside the venue. Right to where we were standing. So we're more then a little bemused as Trey comes right toward us, full band (like 11 people) in tow, and the audience in hot pursuit. This, of course, destroys our original intentions, but Stina was psyched to be the closest in proximity to Trey she'll ever get. Even if he looks like cousin it.

Bullet Point Life

• Last Saturday we celebrated Haber's 31st up at Fort Funston. It was a pajama jammy jam. They had tap issues, so I had to pick up a new tap on the way there. It was amusing walking into a brewery with my pajamas on. The party was epic because they setup the wii in the garage with a wide screen projector. A great thing about the wii controller is that there's a speaker on the controller. This means when we were bowling, the controller will page you when it was your turn. This is fantastic when the wii is 10 feet from the keg. There was traditional late night 7 layer bean dip from Haber and all was good.
• On Sunday, I played for the first time at a House of Love Cabaret. I've attended a few over the last 6 years of so. It was a little odd setting up a laptop and little keyboard for the short electronica set. Most acts use acoustic instruments. Few acts hide behind a computer and manipulate virtual instruments. I'm not sure how it was received, but I'm glad I did it.
• I saw Clerks 2. It was waaay better then I expected.
• We were honored with a bonus Pat McCarten Wednesday. I'm still thinking about the amazing sushi from Hotai. It was that good. On our walk to get dinner, a tree starting talking to us, and I was pretty psyched. Pat and Stina were a bit disturbed. It turns out the trees mostly wanted a cigarette or some change. itunes ended up siphoning some of my money, and the speakers were set to loud. We discovered a band called "Elbow" They rock pretty hard.

backlit lounge recap

Onyx, the dude who organizes backlitlounge makes a video recapping each of his events. Check it out:

The Rhythm Devils

Stiners and I went to the Warfield on Friday to see the Rhythm Devils. It was a Rex Foundation benifit. This configuration of the Rhythm Devils consisted of the two drummers for the Dead, Steve Kimock on guitar, Mike Gordon on bass, and Jen Durkin on vocals. The show opened up with Planet Drum, and most of the duders from that band sat in with the Rhythm Devils during the rest of the show. Bob Weir was also present for most of the night.

It was a pretty solid show, nothing mind blowing. I learned that Jen is a fantastic vocalist. I couldn't tell you the setlist. Most of the fun was the audience, comprised of the old and next gen hippies. I really try to hit the San Francisco shows where Dead members play at - its a rare opportuninety to immerse myself in the 60's San Francisco culture. I was all about set breaks, and interacting and observing the populace. I enjoy the hippies, espeically the ones who can afford the pricey tickets.

Christmas Tree

When Stiners and I first moved into our own apartment, she requested (well demanded) that we get a x-mas tree. I was fairly opposed to the idea. Having been raised in a jewish household, there were never trees inside the house. My dad built a "hanukkah bush" some thirty-five years ago. Its a wooden box with Christmas lights inside it and a plastic diffuser to make the lights look, umm, cooler. It was hella low matience.

Stina wanted me to endorse the concept of killing a tree, paying a LOT of money for it, putting a stand on it, decorating it, undecorating it, and throwing it out. Sweet. Guess who won that fight? Thus, we got a tree. As a tree newbie, I had no concept of how ridiculously difficult it is to put a stand on it. Two hours later, I was ready to burn the motherfucker. After that year, I learned that I could throw money at it and have the tree people put the stand on it. Money well spent. That is, if you consider paying for a tree and installation money well spent.

So, now Stina gently warns me when tree time is approaching. She knows how grumpy I will get, so she kinda prods me along until the fateful night. We always get our tree at Clancy's, the local tree place in the Inner Sunset. All the employees at Clany's are somewhat off kilter. These are the tree people.

On Thursday, after burgers at Bill's Place, we headed over to Clancy's. Stina carefully selected our 4 ft tree in less the a half hour, and had the people there carefully butcher it. Apparently there were way too many lower branches, so they had to go. The guy who was helping us was completely insane. Since this is Stina's outing, I let her deal with him. At one point he had her holding nails that he was hammering in. After sensing her terror, he decided to hold the nails, and proceeded to repeatedly hit his hands very hard with a hammer. Eventually we had a disfigured tree, an old stand, and he left us to deal with it. I freaked out. I didn't want to have to attach the stand. Eventually another employee, who was far less insane, came over to help. Another half-hour later, we still couldn't get the stand to work. Then, she tells about the other type of stand, the one which is really easy to put in. What? Other type of stand? Are you fucking kidding me? All they have to do is use their dandy drilling machine, drill a hole, and the stand screws in. OMG! We're getting one. Right NOW!

So, we did.

All those years, we lived in ignorance. Get the screw in stand, people.