Tag Archives: Music Scene

Besties

It’s been a long and weirdly deflating winter. Milder than it should have been for weeks, wetter than it should have been for more weeks, and cold but not for long enough so far. The whole mess in Gaza continues to be an affront to supposedly Western democratic norms, but then again, the ongoing one in Ukraine is also a long-running festering sore. The climate summit was hosted by the head of a Petro-state’s national oil company and attended by over 4000 lobbyists; the climate crisis has devolved into nothing but the script of a bad 1990’s disaster movie. 

We seem to be living in the shadow of many megalomaniacs, as I have mentioned in prior outbursts. I feel a particular sense of failure about them as a group, as they are all of my generation. When I misguidedly thought that we were all reaping the benefits of the baby boom on our cruise towards a better place, some were in fact being formed to become tyrants. Viktor Orbán, two months younger than my brother, Xi Jinping, 3 years older than me but a year younger than Putin, a year older than Recep Erdoğan, baby boomers one and all. They obviously were not concerned about what car to drive, where Frank Zappa’s house was in Laurel Canyon and what was the best modern novel. The best car for them was chauffeur driven and bullet proof. They could plunder enough personal wealth to buy most of Laurel Canyon and the best book is obviously one written by them telling the proles what to do. There are some other minor characters strolling around the world stage, Nehandra Modi is an elder statesman having been born one year after the partition and departure from India of the British is 1950. He is well-loved by the Hindu majority of Indians and feared by those of other faiths, but he loves a bit of authoritarianism alongside his vegetarian and abstemious lifestyle. Benyamin Netanyahou, born the following year, is meanwhile bombing children with US-funded and supplied weapons in an effort to prolong the ‘war’ against Palestine helping him to avoid criminal charges, let alone the admonition for the terrible sequence of events that the supposed hard man of Israeli politics oversaw, that led to the horrific deaths of 1139 of the citizens he was supposed to protect. But the country is at war and that’s no time to stop taking action, or look at what you are doing for now and the future?

Lurking and gurning, stage left, is public enemy number one, the Donald. He is actually the oldest of this august group, born the same year as my sister in 1946. He is ahead in any poll you care to read, across most age groups including for some frightening reason the young. He is leading over everyone’s favorite grandfather Joe Biden. ‘Sleepy Joe’, as Drumpf dubbed him and Fox have continued to remind everyone, is at best underappreciated, at worst sleepwalking into an electoral disaster. Not that the Democrats don’t have experience with that, just wait until the numbers get worse mid-year and some bright spark will suggest Hilary should come back and throw her hat into the ring. Biden is four years older than Trump and wears each year like a decade. He walks across a stage, or down a flight of stairs and if successfully accomplished, we all breathe a collective sigh of relief, like parents watching their child negotiate his first nativity play as Shepherd Number 2, little Joe didn’t fall over or drop his Crook.

He is however single handedly keeping Western Democracy functioning. He is keeping China from invading Taiwan, he is keeping Putin out of Ukraine and doing this while what passes as the Republican party nowadays careens around the Washington political institutions trying to stymy him in anything and everything he does. The Federal Reserve has tried to kill the economy under Biden, but he has survived and the economy has survived. A little bruised but still punching. The general standard of living has improved and improved most for the people at the bottom. The jobs are still more in demand of job fillers than the prior decades of people hunting in vain for a job, a situation that continues to support modest and successful wage rises and better conditions for Union workers. The administration has ramped up green energy infrastructure, even if most of it has occurred in the south and southwest where it’s easier to build anything, period.

Sadly, Biden is the very embodiment of Rodney Dangerfield. He is old and he does not get no respect. Our common hope is now reduced to Trump being so deranged during the primary campaigns, where he will assume that the nomination should be his by right, without having to go through the motions, and that the legal convictions pile up enough doubt that enough people hold their nose, forget about his age and re-elect Biden. What then happens we can probably look forward to another B-Movie script too.

So as 2023 slips into collective memory I am not the most enthusiastic about what 2024 holds for us. There was some great new music created in the past year or more accurately discovered by me in the past year. So in the spirit of making an effort to finish on an upward tone here are some highlights of what the young people have been doing musically while my cadre have been busy fucking shit up: 

The links are to Bandcamp/YouTube but for those inclined there is a Spotify playlist here.

Geese – Album: 3D Country – bunch of young gents from Brooklyn or at least currently based there. They defy simple description but sound like the product of many nights drinking and listening to old 90’s geezer rock like Primal Scream’s Exile on Mainstreet Phase or Ash or Supergrass, but through a very American lens, almost a C&W bastard child. 2122 or Mysterious Love

Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here. Where do you start with this? Yachty is a 26-year-old from Mableton Georgia, rapper, cool looking guy, man about New York City, hanging with the stars. Had some big hits including Broccoli with DRAM. All so normal then this drops. This album is the stepchild of Axis Bold as Love, Fulfillingness First Finale and Dark Side of the Moon, just insanely layered and fun and if Floyd or Stevie Wonder had the use of a vocoder this is what they might have sounded like. My favorite album of the year without question. Drive me Crazy or Black Seminole.

Fever Ray – Album: Radical Romantics – Karin Dreijer is a unique voice and has produced some of the most interesting electronic music of the last 20 years as half of The Knife and her solo stuff as Fever Ray. Some of her output is admittedly hard work but she has a great turn of phrase and the very Swedish electronics work well. This album is melodically stronger and dare I say it quite fun, the live video is worth finding. Kandy or Carbon Dioxide for the atmospheric gas fans amongst us.

Baxter Dury – Album: I thought I was better Than You. I was late to the Baxter Dury party. I was a massive fan of his Dad and had the good fortune to meet him once and have a drink with him while he serenaded my girlfriend to the dulcet sounds of J.J.Cale. Baxter has his Dad’s way with a lyric but has added his own louche style, girl backing singers a key part of his sound. I have consumed his early stuff now thanks to Rachel for the introduction to I’m Not Your Dog which for obvious reasons is popular with the French. Aylesbury Boy or Celebrate Me ‘lick my head’ indeed!

Steve Mason – Album: Brothers and Sisters. I have been a fan of Steve Mason’s happy, clappy, mellow soft rock since the Beta band 3Eps days and their 30 seconds of stardom in High Fidelity when John Cusack drops it into play. He continues to make great music and it’s all pretty upbeat, he has also done some dub versions with Dennis Bovell and that deep bass sound has permeated his work. There is yet another reworked sample of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s qawwli song Musst Musst as well. Brixton Fish Fry or No More.

Will Butler + Sister Squares. What happened to Arcade Fire? There was a period when they defined cool, “it” and relevant and then they disappeared into a haze of seriousness and a bad Christmas album. Will Butler was the earnest front man and happily this album, his 5th or so since the Fire went out, is fun, upbeat and catchy, still with Will’s quirkiness at times. Saturday Night or Stop Talking.

Hania Rani – Album: Ghosts. Hania is an accomplished Polish jazz pianist who has played with Portico Quartet and released some moody piano instrumental works like “On Giacometti” from earlier this year and her memorial pieces on behalf of Ukraine. This album shows her amazing voice and cool arrangements, interesting rhythmic stuff also going on from the Portico’s who back her on several songs. Don’t Break My Heart and Dancing with Ghosts.

Do Nothing – Album: Snake Sideways. In the wake of the earnest singy-shouty bands from the British Isles like Idles, Fontaines DC, BCBR or Yard Act comes Do Nothing. Two well received Eps were followed this year by the Snake Sideways album and it’s a lovely little grower. You have to like the spiky post rock guitars and Chris Bailey’s voice but there is some really great stuff here that rewards repeated listens. Amoeba or Happy Feet.

Ian Sweet – Sucker. Ian Sweet is the stage name of Jillian Medford and is the other side of LA to LDR’s glossy Hollywood glitzy antics. Her songs are of the young poor strugglers that make up most of the striving artists and actors in SOCAL. Gritty electric pop with some production that really pulls it together. Sucker or Fight

Skinny Palembe – Album: Hardly The Same Snake. Doya Beardmore grew up in South Africa but then moved to Doncaster of all places and his music reflects a global vibe that works as well in Donny as Jo’burg. It swings, it has a jazz inflection but works as a good collection of songs and his voice is more sustainable than Alex Turner’s striving eeforts at crooning. Don’t Be Another or Like A Heart Won’t Beat

Lana Del Ray – “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?” Lana continues to get better and better, and this oddly named paeon to LA, the Carpenters and 70’s soft rock is superb. Couple of self-indulgent spoken voice segments by guests apart this is faultless. She has more confidence in her voice so happy to share the vocals with others. She wrote this on her phone and then built it up over time with collaborators and finally Jack Antonoff to pull it all together in an LDR album way, her 9th for god’s sake.  Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd and Fingertips.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Murder, Oral Sex and Cigarettes. The RP&P is the performing name of Glenn Donaldson who lives in the Inner Richmond (I know as he released an album called that) in San Francisco and is prolific to say the least. He can be accused of sounding like Morrissey but he is way much more than the baritone which is indeed at times a bit familiar. All heart ache and frustrations, very, very catchy songs and then a throw away guitar instrumental that is glorious. What will heaven be like? Or Use This Song If You Need One.

Where did all the face melting go?

There was a time when any self-respecting band featured a self-confessed king of the fret-board, a string-bender extraordinaire, a shredder. Bands played long extemporized songs featuring guitar solos for at least half the length of the song. In a twist there later developed a genre of bands whose whole style was the long rambling instrumentals that were made up on the spot, live, around a base melody or motif, the jam-band, whose music arose out of love for the Grateful Dead. However, as to be expected with a bunch of Deadheads the live noodling was short on melody or rhythm and long on meandering. As much as the blues rock of Clapton, Page and Beck was long on solos they came through the same pop training with the YardBirds to know that solos should be parts of songs not the reason for the song.

The blues from Chicago and Memphis produced great guitar highlights but few self-indulgent solos, even the magii of BB, Albert and Freddie focused on their guitar as punctuation for their songs, maybe they understood the audience in a blues club came to dance and not to play along with the guitar. The arrival of more and more ‘heavier’ music brought the long emotive solo, Skynnerd’s ‘Freebird’, Zep’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the Dan’s ‘Reeling in the Years’, Niel Young and Crazy Horse’s ‘Down By The River’ made way for metal and Guns’Roses ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’, and album after album of pouting masculine rock from AC/DC, Sabbath, Ozzy, Judas Priest, Bad Company, Panthera, MSG, Queens of the Stone Age, Van Halen. The list is sadly nearly endless, over the 30 year period from 1975 to 2005 nearly every rock song features as the key selling point the guitar solo, squeezed out at high decibels and high register. The perfect accompaniment for Beavis and Butthead to head nod along to before building up to the guitar climax where the aficionado would play the guitar solo themselves on an imaginary guitar in the air. The perfect climax accompanied by the face distorting into various shapes, in time to the various notes and string bends, effect pedal and shrieks in the classic ‘face melt’.

Unsurprisingly, not a lot of women were a, interested in taking part in this bizarre ritual nor b, encouraged to play this kind of guitar as it is hard visually to make the best effort at being attractive while gurning along to the guitar in your hand. Joan Jett made a career out of one song that both celebrated and parodied this phase in music with “I Love Rock’n Roll”.

The clock spins forward and the guitar solo got lost along the way, certainly as a staple. Whether it was just the self-indulgence of it all. Drum solos lasted even less time. Other than the Doors, Rick Wakeman and ELP, keyboards had never really held the crowds attention, it’s the same with the modern version with earnest looking guys hunched over computer keyboards desperately trying to look rock while yet another loop starts in a synth driven band. The fossilized white rock approach probably didn’t help and people wanted something new and while melody will always be king, his queen is a good lyric. So RnB, rap, alt-rock and pop abandoned the guitar for the most part, at least the part you could play on your air guitar.

Post rock brought the noise and the technical chops, but you would hardly accuse Mogwai of long wanky guitar solos. St Vincent is one of the hardest guitar soloists playing today, but she always tethers the solo in her song structure. Jack White has a great blues touch, but he seems to have got lost of late in a cage of fuzz and reverb, and he is too much of a smart businessman to mess with the needs of streaming, so nothing he releases is ever over 5 minutes and most under 4 minutes. So where are the guitar licks for those who hanker for some twang without the torch song accompaniment?

Well, Uncle Jim is here to help! The guitar hero is alive and well, he is just hiding out in Niger, Houston, Leuven and Peckham. I realized that what drives Mdou Moctar was wanting to play electric versions of taureg songs and having been forced to build his own first guitar he was not going to let tradition get in the way. He brings a hard rocking energy and the guitar leads everything, and he will happily solo his head off, especially since achieving some traction in the West and is now backed with a band.

Kruangbhin sound like they are also from somewhere off the beaten track yet without insulting my friends in Houston, they are not, they are Texas through and through but they have a unique sound that is not in anyway country or western. They are guitar led and long on instrumentals, a re-imagining of the classic rock power trio, Beck Bogert and Appice but Bogert is in a mini-dress and heels and the front two wearing matching Beatle-mop wigs. Mark Speer, the guitarist, has very good technical chops and can play tons of styles and his sound is unique, lots of clever down tempo stuff but he can let it rip, especially live.

Leuven is known as the home of the largest university in Belgium that had been around since 1425, and is also the home of Stella Artois. Like Cambridge without the pretensions and lots of lager. Brutus is a hard post-rock band with classic hard rock vocals although in a twist, it’s actually the drummer Stefanie Mannaerts, who does the singing while beating the crap out of the drum set. The guitarist Stijn Vanhoegaerden can shred. 

South London is the home of Dry Cleaning. In the way of the world they have been classified as yet another arty, spoken-word English rockband alongside Squid or Black Country, New Road, who both broke through around the same time, post Covid. If you listen to them, particularly live, there are two things going on, for sure the surreal visual images elucidated by Florence Shaw, and launched like float glass on top of the batshit riffs of Tom Dowse’s almost hardcore guitar. Dowse, a fan of Sonic Youth and Pavement had spells in metalcore bands, he played support once for his heroes Converge. What is interesting about Dry Cleaning is that being in their 30’s they have none of the fears of not doing something, in case it prevents fame and/or glory. There was an interesting comment by Mike Skinner, aka ‘The Streets’, who at 44 is promoting a film he has spent years putting together: “Essentially, it’s all nostalgia. Most of a musician’s career is nostalgia for those few years when they were the thing…. When you’re a musician, your 20s are amazing, and then the rest of your life is about dealing with that.” Unsurprising that many bands disappear only to decide to tour their eponymous, multi selling album 25 years later, when they are all in their late 40’s, and probably need the cash.

I wonder whether it was just the amazing options that computers delivered that killed the guitar? To the budding musician you could learn to play guitar, endlessly playing chords like ‘Play in a Day’ with Bert Weedon, trying to replay the riff you heard that you cannot get out of your head. Hope you find someone else to play with, the way that most bands started for over 50 years. Or you could learn to play basic piano and then GarageBand, Pro Tools, Reason or Logic Pro will open up a complete panoply of musical styles, sounds and rhythms just for you in your headphones – you don’t even get to annoy the neighbors “I’m calling the police!”. For sure, there are never a shortage of indie guitar bands around, but the vast majority of music is not that anymore. I am not sure many 15-year-old boys are playing, on repeat, a shredding guitar solo, while they airplay the imaginary chords and melt their faces to each note; Spotify would only go and interrupt it with something else they are sure you want to hear anyway, or at least something they have been paid to play you.

The guitar solo is not dead, it has just seen better days. If you want to air-guitar away while pretending to do some housework, play this: I added a few older guitar classics for your enjoyment – hopefully Spotify leaves it as is, it boils my brain when they decide to add a song to my playlist playback….

  1. Mdou Moctar – Nakanegh Dich
  2. Khruangbin – Maria Tambien
  3. Dry Cleaning – Hot Penny Day
  4. Brutus – Victoria
  5. Television – 1880 or so
  6. Taste – Blister On The Moon
  7. Pavement – Fillmore Jive
  8. Modest Mouse – Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine
  9. Drop Nineteens – Delaware
  10. White Denim – Cheer Up
  11. Viagra Boys – Research Chemicals
  12. The Velvet Underground with Nico – Run Run Run
  13. Turin Brakes – Sleeper
  14. Thee Oh Sees – The Dream

Settling into a Saturday

There is a glorious luxury to settling in to a lazy Saturday. Not a Saturday full of tasks around the house, no chores, no pressing need to battle the great unwashed in the shopping center. Saturdays waking slowly, slightly hung over from the relief of Friday evening, drinking in the sounds of the birds, soft light of Spring through the silk of the curtains. Saturdays rituals, reading Blind Date in the Grauniad app, debating whether to get up and get croissants from the bakery down the road, pondering the culinary choices for the weekend. Looking forward to the Fulham game, this year has been odd, not just because we have to get used to the expectation of winning but because success brings the attention of Sky and games moved to Friday nights, Sunday lunchtimes and 1.30Pm kick offs. Today is a treat, a normal British Saturday 3.00pm kick off which fills the end of my French afternoon nicely.

Dressed for an unhalfbricked Saturday morning

I dont want to go all Nigel Slater and confessional but one of the other treats is wandering through the cookery tomes to find inspiration. I have flétan, Atlantic Halibut, from the football loving fish guy at the weekly market. I also have the last remaining cabbage that survived the winter, or survived me harvesting them too early assuming they were struggling, sweet potatoes and a large cauli to do something with. Coffee and one of the French biscuits that they call “Petit Dejeuner”, which are whole grain and have chocolate nibs and nuts, accompany a catch up with Private Eye. I know my biases are just being confirmed but the journalism of the Eye is the one consistent investigative effort holding the despicable and corrupt ruling Conservative party to account as they undermine or destroy what is left of the England I had the good fortune to grow up in. It’s ironic that at this very moment, across the plagued island there are many of my peers reading through their Saturday’s Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph feeling the same disgust and distaste but about whoever their target of their privileged ire is today, likely some part of the woke, liberal elites that are in their eyes undermining their world.

Tomorrow France goes to the polls to elect the President for the next 5 years and by the time you read this we hope that we are not reliving that sense of bewilderment that we felt when the desperate and angry elected Donald Trump and voted to leave the EU. There are many desperate and angry French people who Marine Le Pen has spoke to with resonance about their cost of living, their frustrations when they fill up their battered old Peugeot 208’s with diesel to drive the 40 minutes to their poorly paid job. They blame Macron. They blame the establishment. They blame them for their lack of the piece of the western liberal pie they feel they deserve, they blame the dark skinned people for taking their jobs, for causing crime, for not being French and Mme Le Pen nods along with them and smiles in agreement when they vent their spleen. She promises France Unicorns like all populists, “tous et n’importe quoi’, no taxes for the under 30’s, reduced VAT on diesel, no hijabs, no benefits for foreigners, standard stuff. The divisions across Europe and the Western World that are exploited by the Populists are thanks in no small part to the efforts of Mr Putin aided and abetted by the uncontrolled greed which powers social media to be such a sustained force for evil. However, globalisation and capitalism has failed all but a moderately sized slice of French society and that is reflected in the polls where over 60% has voted for either far left or far right candidates. If there were such options in the USA we would probably see that kind of reflection too.

Saturday is also a day to reflect on what music have I been listening to or newly discovered this week, new vinyl arrivals have been slower of late as I am trying to be less compulsive. I got the quite lovely Wet Leg album this week and its no surprise they are the darlings of the rock media currently, as well as the new Jack White which is a nice and quite surprisingly good return to form. It’s also a day to dig through the back catalog and revisit old favorites. I consume vast amounts of music but quite a lot of it blends into itself. I definitely have different preferences for different moods and contexts.

As my Saturday moves sleepily at first it gathers pace and then late morning the coffee kicks in and energy levels go up so this playlist brings its game from folky to funky to just fun, enjoy!

Listen here to:

  • Who Knows Where the Time Goes – Fairport Convention
  • Cigarettes out the window – TV Girl
  • VCR – Antlers
  • Furry Sings The Blues – Joni Mitchell
  • The Melting of the Sun – St Vincent
  • Debris – The Faces
  • White Rabbit (remix by Marcel Dettman) – Jefferson Airplane
  • Superman Lover – Johny Guitar Watson
  • Cosmik Debris – Frank Zappa
  • Who The Cap Fit – Bob Marley & The Wailers
  • Slipping Into Darkness – War
  • Could Heaven Ever By Like THis – Idris Muhammad
  • Bicameral – The Range
  • Magic Mountain – Eric Burden
  • Ooh la la! – Goldfrapp
  • Into the Twilight – Jack White
  • Ohh la la (Mexican Institute of Sound remix) – Run the Jewels
  • The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore – PJ Harvey
  • The Turning of Our Bones – Arab Strap
  • Fluorescent Adolescent – Arctic Monkeys
  • Feel Like A Girl – Coach Party
  • Ur Mum – Wet Leg

It is 5AM and you are listening to Los Angeles

Looks like 2010

“My Dad got a Fender Telecaster when I was 7, before that he would goof around on a crappy keyboard and a drum set, he got from a surfer buddy, but the look of that Telecaster, man, I was hooked.” Nate Wrigley didn’t get his own until he was 22, he had played cheap copies, “Walmart guitars” as he called them. He didn’t mind as he liked the trashy sound. He had never decided what he would do with his life, therefore was hesitant to attend college. After high school, Nate wrote songs and played with bands in the preternaturally surf obsessed backwater that was Pacifica. His comrade in arms in the struggle not to conform to the corporate drudge was his cousin Kyle.

Kyle grew up surfing in Seal Beach. His mother, Nate’s aunt Amy, had settled there after college and married a handsome and democratic-leaning refugee from Orange County. Kyle was smart like his Mum, and got into Long Beach State University and chose without much thought to study Marketing. The one thing he had enjoyed at CSULB was volunteering at the performing arts center, the school had a quietly impressive performance space sponsored and named after the Carpenters, who were alumni. The arts and artists themselves were, as you would expect, targeted at wealthy locals rather than the students so it ran the gamut of Al Jarreau, the Beach Boys, Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion and the odd classical artists not able to make the big leagues in LA. They would sashay up in their Lincoln Navigators and E-Class Mercedes convertibles with the casual SoCal mix of blue jeans, (men and women), sparkly tight shirts and big hair for the women, suit jackets, open neck dress shirts with bouffant chest hair and chains for the men; deep tan compulsory for all. This was Long Beach after all, not real LA and yet it somehow could never create its own identity. People made good money there in the port and real-estate but never Hollywood money, never stupid money. Kyle liked working the sound board and backstage. Even if he was not a big fan of Al Jarreau or Journey getting to work alongside their roadies and technicians was a good learning and like Nate, he was into music and playing drums or bass guitar. He never played at the Richard and Karen Carpenter PAC but played the working bars down by the container port at weekends with various short-lived bands. 

They played bar-room rock, 60’s covers and in the summer of his junior year Nate had spent the whole summer crashed at his apartment and they both played with what was basically the band Wavves, but missing a couple of folks. Wavves were a band that had some success the year before but were having to take a hiatus after the abrupt cancellation of their first European tour, after the lead singer, off his face on valium and ecstasy insulted the Spanish crowd, started to fight the drummer midway through their third song and got driven off stage with an avalanche of water bottles. So Kyle and Nate played drums and guitar and did some vocals with the rest of Wavves while the lead singer and main man did some long overdue rehab at his record company’s expense and the drummer left to join the Scientologists. They got to taste touring life, as in driving around Southern California and Arizona in a rental van, staying at Motel 6s and playing larger bars and clubs as the warm-up act the Broken Wavves.

That came to an abrupt end in September when, rehab successfully completed, the mainman returned alongside two old buddies from Jay Reatard’s band and promptly fired Kyle and Nate after their last gig as Wavvers in Barstow. They got paid off but their career in the lights came to a bumpy end as they had to go home via Greyhound, Nate’s Walmart guitar in its carry case, the drums were the band’s luckily, so that was one thing less to schlepp across the Imperial Valley.

Nate went home to Pacifica and nothing much and Kyle finished his last year at CSULB. After 4 years of learning about 20-year-old ad campaigns for detergent, cars and cereals and mid-20th century management science he graduated. He looked around at what the world was offering a young man in 2008 and the answer was not a lot.

He tried out for several ‘marketing’ jobs but that seemed to be code for him sitting in a Dilbert cartoon doing call center work with a bunch of equally desperate young graduates trying to really get excited about their monthly call quotas. The world of Monday morning sales ra-ra sessions with bad muffins, neon orange juice and coffee strong enough to strip paint may have worked briefly as a motivation tool during the 1980s but it was a self-parody by the time Kyle was in his third customer service job. It was servicing a TV cable and internet bundling giant, and of course it wasn’t actually a good job with benefits for the actual giant, publicly-listed company. It was an hourly paid job for an outsourced service provider, working out of an anonymous 5 story office building in an equally anonymous office park without sidewalks, or stores or places to eat, in a suburb of Reseda.

The San Fernando valley was hardly the place of your dreams, unless they were pornographic. It seemed far from the beach and the SOCAL lifestyle he had grown up being part of, but the rent was cheap. He shared a condo with Kent, a college buddy in Canoga Park who had an accounting job in a shiny glass office building with manicured lawns and a fountain out front in Westfield Village. Still no sidewalks, or stores or places to eat but that was standard developer chic and its LA, so everyone has a car to go and get some food to bring back to their desk and eat, quickly and guiltily. His roommate was chill, low maintenance and being Korean American had family in the Valley. Kent would be away most weekends with them and would bring back mounds of Tupperware containers, full of insanely good homecooked food; as long as you didn’t mind chile, spice and garlic you were golden. With his roommate gone he could practice drums for hours, he had to use pads to prevent the neighbors from wanting to kill him but technique wise, it taught him better control than just pounding with hammers.

After they had been in the apartment for a year Kent came up with a strange proposition. It turned out he had a girlfriend Shayla, who he had actually been spending most of the ‘family’ weekends with. Shayla was a petite, bouncy, blond Mormon from east Texas who he met waitressing at the Applebee’s near his office. Kent’s deeply religious parents wanted him to marry a Korean girl, who had a degree in a real subject like accounting or life sciences and who was evangelical in outlook. Shayla was striking out on all three of these so she had become the secret girlfriend. Kent’s cunning conundrum solver was to have Shayla pose as Kyle’s girlfriend and for them all to move in together. They talked it over some brewskis and the deal was sealed. They would move into a larger house and Nate became the 4th roommate. If and when Kent’s parents came over to visit, Shayla was Kyle’s life problem and in return Kent got regular guilt free sex, Shayla moved out of her shithole converted motel and Nate could get the band together again.

They rented a down at heel large 3 bedroom 1950’s ranch-style house in Northridge with the only items of mid-century life style that no-one , other than the Maytag Guy, to this day wants: a 1950’s electric stove, washing machine and fridge. More importantly it was detached and had a garage which became the practice room. Shayla decided that maybe she would learn bass as her shifts were mainly evening now, she got better tips, so she had time in the day to futz around and practice chords. She had no noticeable musical talent but stuck at it and she had a pretty good sense of rhythm. Kyle kept up the customer service job listening to the elderly customers struggling with the switch from the cable box that had not changed in 40 years to a new controller and all the joys the newly accessible interwebs brought them. Mostly they just wanted someone to talk to and Kyle would do that. He was compensated for talking to people and as long as he got high service scores, which he did, he would listen to their gripes and family concerns, just as if they were technical issues to be resolved.

Nate got a job in Kinko’s, doing photocopying for harassed parents working on their kids’ homework projects, solving minor technical issues for the many realtors working out of their homes, accepting parcels, selling office supplies, generally being nice.

They started writing songs, in their minds crappy pop songs about their crappy lives but their relentless optimism cut through and when they got asked back to play the same pubs, bars and small rock clubs around the Valley people liked their songs. They played a couple of times as the Beach Bunnies then found out someone else already had a band called the same, then settled on Tiny Bunny. They played 2 or 3 gigs a week, all booked by their own efforts asking for slots, then promoting with their own hand designed and laid out posters, luckily they knew where to get printing done cheap. They didn’t exactly build up a following or anything but they noticed, even as 3rd on the bill at Country Club in Reseda or the Glass House in Pomona, people would actually listen to their set not just studiously ignore them and shout, talking to their friends with their backs to the stage. One night the following summer Kyle, Nate and Shayla had come off stage to almost a round of applause after their 20 minute 6 song set of self-penned instant classics. They were finishing their free beers with Kent, who by this stage was booker, roadie and manager by night, still staff-accountant by day, when an unattractive guy in his lost 30’s sporting a Road to Ruin t-Shirt and a bleached white denim jacket came over to them and said “Caught your set guys, you write this stuff yourself?” When they managed to nod affirmatively he introduced himself. “I’m Jake Gaines, I do A&R for Mom and Pop Records, we are looking for rock pop acts so we might be able to help each other, can I buy you a drink”.

The fact that he said the magic words A&R and drinks ensured they were all smiles and they took their drinks out back to the smoking room, more commonly called the garden. Kent did most of the talking in his manager role. He looked the part as he didn’t dress like the others because he had come straight from work and had basically removed his tie from his button-down work shirt as the only nod to casualness. Nate’s sported his surfer dude meets Kinko’s look and Shayla and Kyle’s more obvious efforts to be pop stars was mainly on-stage attitude rather than a look but they went as far as the ubiquitous black t-shirts, jeans and Chuck Taylors.

Kent got slightly pissed when Jake spent most of the time addressing Shayla’s chest rather than look at him or the other two. But Gaines dropped the right names of bands he had signed Freelance Whales, Tokyo Police Club and Shadow Shadow Shade, who they had supported a couple of time as Beach Bunnies, so they felt at home to be associated with, if not kindred spirits maybe folks they admired.

Two days later they found themselves in the downtown offices of Mom & Pop. The address was actually in Culver City but as they drove through the shiny skyscrapers atopped with big media company names they exchanged glances and “Dude!” exclamations.  The four of them were a little disappointed when the directions turned them away from the glitz and glamour down a slightly seedy back street and to the office. It was a beige, 2 story 1970’s office building that would not look out of place hosting a dry cleaners or a realtors, not very rock and roll at all. The record company was actually based out of New York so the LA office was smaller, on a cheaper budget and more sleepy than they expected. They were greeted by the receptionist and walked through the 3 quietly working young kids to the brown glass Board Room and offered sodas and coffee. At least in here it was a bit more R’n’R with 2 framed gold records (not anyone they had heard of) and framed tour posters of acts on the roster. Jake walked in wearing a slightly sheepish grin followed by a heavily tanned and gold chain bedecked slim guy in his 50’s wearing what could best be summarized as pimp casual. “Marvin Klein, heard a lot about you guys, thanks for coming in today, you got coffee, soda, what can we get you?”. He welcomed them, sat them down and told them how excited they were to have them sign to their label, how much Jake had sung their praises and how their accessible pop rock sound was something that’s missing from their label. Jake then excitedly jumped in and explained that they would start promoting them on YouTube and getting them touring slots with real stars, and threw out names Andrew Bird, White Stripes, The National, LCD Sound System. This was starting to sound more like a teenage dream rather than a business meeting. Marvin asked whether they felt they had enough material for an album. Nate tended to be the mouthpiece, so he explained they had 10-12 songs they really liked that they had played live, and the audience liked, and they had been playing with some new ideas adding a keyboard and effects. The others sat there oscillating between sheepishly looking down in their laps and checking out the ridiculous showbusiness style and way of talking that Marvin had, holding court. Shayla again got loads of eye contact and Kent squirmed. He felt a fraud as the pretend manager, which was not helped when Marvin described how he would get them a real manager who would help them “monetize your merchandise and get your brand going, we gotta get several revenue streams going, get you exposed on all the platforms like Spotify and I-tunes”. After what seemed like the whole morning flew by, but actually turned out to be 48 minutes from entering the door and falling back through it into the morning sunlight, they stood on the sidewalk with a 14 page document that they should take to their attorney and if ok, sign and send it back, “so we can get going and make Tiny Bunny the hottest band around, make you guys famous, and make us all a shit ton of money!”

They stood outside and looked at each other, no-one said anything for what seemed like a moment in time frozen until finally Kyle, who had not said a word finally said. “I don’t know guys, I would go on tour, but I never really took this as a serious job up until a couple minutes ago. We have to decide if we really want to make an effort at it. It’s been a real long, slow practice over the years to get here, I am not sure I am ready to just do this. What if we fuck up? What if I fuck up, what if I am just not fucking good enough? Nate and I have been doing this shit since we were kids and we don’t have 10-12 songs we have 7, 7 fucking songs after what? 10 years?”

It was all giggles, applause, and stage lights in the eyes as a break from mundane day jobs until then. Now it was a job and none of them had really trained for it. What sounded so carefree and fun in the room with gold disks and the smooth guy with gold chains and silky speech now seemed like a slip’n’slide to serious work and growing up.

“What the fuck are we going to do?”