general fuzz

This festival was the epitome of convenience. A giant, Bonaroo sized festival half a mile from my house, in GG park. How sweet it was.

Friday was the day when fences came down. It was the shortest day with the biggest headliner, people had to come in from work, and everyone arrived around the same time. Things got out of hand with crowd congestion, and I bet a lot of people had a negative experience. I didn’t. I sat with Stina on top of a hill and watched it all happen, greatly amused by crowd dynamics. We even magically ran into Angel and Thom while playing throw the bottle. I saw a little of the duo, a little of beck, and plenty of Radiohead. Then it was fun watching all these people spill into our neighborhood. All the local stores had a banner night.

Saturday was all about laying the tarp down in the main stage area, and staying put. It’s an approach that works well for me at a festy. I saw Dredg (meh), Galactic (always fun), Steve Winwood (still strong and spy for his age), Ben Harper (A-MAZING), and a little Primus (Les Claypool is a normal dude, I swear).

Sunday was ballz to the wallz. I’m trying to build up my Burning Man legs, and I gave a full 100 percent. We started with our first glimpse of sunshine that weekend with ALO, then Stars (bad sound), Andrew Bird (only interested when he’s playing the violin), Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (she gave 120 percent, and they were totally smokin), Broken Social Scene (I love their albums, and they recreate those songs with a ten piece band - it was stellar), Rodrigo Y Gabriela (unbelieavable), Widespread Panic (finally a full jam band - Jimmy Herring kicks so much ass), and then finally Mike Gordan (Mike’s unique brand of jam band). Whew. I bounced from stage to stage all day long - and they were pretty far apart. I was so done after that.

We ran into all of our friends at one point or another, made a few new ones, and I officially started passing out my new CD. The festival was probably not the best thing for GG Park, but I sure had a BLAST. My top picks were Ben Harper, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings,  Rodrigo Y Gabriela, and Broken Social Scene - all bands I’d never seen before. The food was expensive (well, everything was expensive - but lax security helped make up for it), but super tasty selections from local merchants was a good idea. Actually, the whole thing was a good idea from my perspective - but I’m sure lots of residents feel differently.

I do have some pics, but the computer + internet seems to be cranky, so, boo to that. I leave for Burning Man in few hours. . . . .

Steve Kimock is probably my favorite guitar player alive. I sometimes ache inside when he’s in the zone - he’s that good. I experieced that ache several times during two nights of Kimock goodness - first the Zero tribute to Martin Fierro @ the fillmore, then with the Everyone Orchestra @ the GAMH the next night.

The Zero tribute was more touching then I expected. His seven year old daughter came out and sang a tune. The was a rotating cast of characters streaming through the stage, with great pictures of him through out his long career projected on the stage. I actually spoke with Martin a year or two ago at the SEVA foundation show - he was sitting right in front of me, with his daughter in his lap. He seemed like such a joyous, generous man. He was quite a sax player, at any rate. Man, he ripped.

The EO show was special since there were two general fuzz collaborators on stage, along with one to-be collaborater. I’ve now seen EO more then I ever thought I would - and I still really enjoy them. My respect for Matt Butler (conducter) has grown considerably - its not easy to manage 11 people on stage, give everyone time to shine, get the audience involved, and have everyone get down. It’s not without the occational trainwreck, but thats what makes it exciting. When he silenced everyone but Dan Lebowitz and Steve Kimock, I almost wet myself joy. Good thing I was wearing my “show pants.”

Climax of summer is approaching, and I can hardly wait. I’ve been hunkered down, prepping for the triple shot - Outside Lands music fest -> Burning Man -> General Fuzz album release. Good times on the horizon.

Jason Haber was largely responsible for organizing my fairly epic bachelor party, so it was a matter of principle coupled with revenge that I organize his. Many months back he vaguely requested having a red team vs. blue team type of thing, so I ran with that idea and themed it “Jason vs. Lars” as they are both engaged and have been good friends since middle school.

Twenty or so of us form two teams for a long afternoon of entertaining competitive events.

Events like monkey torture,

long distance loogie,

and nipple tweaking.

There were even judged events, with celebrity judges consisting of people of close proximity to 20 men in jump suits.
My favorite judged event was having Jason and Lars propose to each other.

Goooooooooood times.

By the end of afternoon, we were totally spent - except for Matt . . . .

Team Haber DOMINATED over team Lars. It was a total blowout.

After some manly downtime @ chez Krudden,

we rallied for round 2. We had assembled a list of 30 tasks for Haber and the group to accomplish, and we did shockingly well. Shockingly.

We got much of a muni car to sing “We are the world with us”,

while A-town did pullups.

Haber gave us a speech about “how it is”,

we got thousands of signatures from women pledging not to sleep with Haber (this guy translated our “contract” to Italian),

and Tony got kicked in the box.

So, yeah. It was a nice 13 hour party. The late night girls and boys met up @ chez Krudden the final blow out.

BIG UPS to TonyB for the killer pics.

We bid farewell to our sweet slightly mangled car, which took us on many a great adventure.

On Sunday, Stina, Rachel, and I went to enjoy day two of the free North Beach Jazz fest. The line up was surprisingly rather jamband friendly - One the One (whom I really dig), the Dan Lebowitz group, and New Monsoon. There was actually another group, who supposedly headlined, but it was the worst kind of free jazz, and hasted our departure. Well, sorta.

I have a show buddy that lives in my neighborhood.  I saw her during the festy, and offered her lift home in Rachel’s car. There was some weirdness when we were ready to leave while she determined if she wanted to go with us, and after a long-ish while, she decided to. I wasn’t able to read the signs very well. Long story short is that she’s had a very difficult time lately and proceeded to have a fairly substantial panic attack on the ride home. Our journey went very slowly, and we pulled over several times along the way. I eventually agreed to talking with her when we got home, which was taking on a lot of responsibility. In the end, she bailed during the last stop on the ride home, and took a cab back to the festival to meet up with some of her friends.

The whole experience was really intense, and rocked me to the core.  I had already resigned myself to talking with someone who was a in really tough, emotionally unstable place, and then abruptly I didn’t have to. As soon as I was able to begin to process this event, one of my first thoughts was “something positive (for me) is going to come out of this” This was a little jarring and unintuitive, but I accepted it. I’ve experienced enough tough emotional situations to recognize that good things always come out of them. At this point of my life, I associate intense experiences with personal growth.

I felt terrible guilty for not offering more support, and fairly responsible for her. After I processed the event a little more, I started to see a few other things. Right after I was resigned to talk with her, Stina quietly but insistingly told me she would come with me to talk with this lady. That was the most beautiful and selfless gift, and spoke volumes about who she is. Stina also really helped me come to terms with what level of responsibility I really wanted to take on with this person. Rachel was really excellent at setting boundaries for what was acceptable, and helped move the situation along, as well as being very tolerant and understanding. I brought this into her car - and while it sucked and was fully my fault that the person came with us, I didn’t feel that Rachel blamed me. So while this was a pretty negative situation, it really made me aware how much I love my friends (slash wife).

Something good did come out of it.

All summer long I have been looking forward to seeing Lettuce at the Independent. Fortunately, they didn’t disappoint, two nights in a row. Lettuce is seven piece made up of Berkelee School of Music grads, and these guys take the groove to the funkiest place around: my pants. Oh yeah. Two nights of shakin it as hard as I could. They were a force to be reckoned with over a decade ago - I think with the passing of James Brown spurred them to re-band and make a new album.  Excellent song composition coupled with a commitment to the pocket kept the smile glued on our collective faces (when they weren’t melting).

The bass player, Erick Coomes, blew my shit apart. He is too good for this planet. The guitar (Eric Krasno) and keyboard (Neal Evans) players made up two of the three members of Soulive. On the first night, Neal’s (keyboard) synth keyboard broke (he still had his organ and clavicord). So on the second night he replaced his synth with his bass keyboard (he plays redonkulous keyboard bass in Soulive with his unbelievable left/right hand independence), and on occasion Erick would drop out and let Neal rock the key bass. Then Erick would mimic his ridiculous bass lines by ear - and then Neal would drop out. It was SICKNESS of the highest degree.

This piece by Gizmodo is awesome - especially if you have fond memories (or a current obsession) of Lego’s. Also, a peek inside the secret Lego vault.

Ah yes - one thing I neglected to mention is that during all these celebratory doings I also managed to complete my fifth general fuzz album on Monday. Done and done. I had to finish it by this week if I was to leave enough time for CDs to be made by the time I go to Burning Man.

I thought I was really on top of it - I had it mostly finished by mid June, thus leaving plenty of time for final touches and what not. My dilemma was that I really struggled with the length of the album - it clocked in at 45 minutes, and felt it was a little short. I sat with it for a week, and in my standard neurotic/obsessive ways became increasingly unsatisfied with its length. I had Dave SG review it, and he agreed that it was a little short, which pretty much sent me into overdrive. I frantically set out to do what I do not do naturally - compose a song in a short period of time in a specific style to fill a transitional gap on the album. This stressed me out to no end. In fact, I’ve never once been successful at doing this. Normally music just flows as it does, in its own time, and compositions have a mind of their own. For example, there are couple solid tracks which I explicitly did not include on the album because I didn’t feel it fit in with the general mood I was trying to cultivate (read: mellow).

There were several false starts, and I mentally gave up on it each time. One day, after reviewing some musical tidbits I had recorded through out the year, I decided to expand on a pretty piano lick to see where it would go. I started sketching out the track, and went through a totally different mental roller coaster attempting to compose something which I felt would be worthy. In the end, I managed to write the track that bridged my perceived track gap, and finally capped off the album.  I neglected sleep, my wife, and all the responsibilities that I’m now desperately trying to catch up on. After countless tedious hours self mastering the album as a whole, I’m truly relieved to have sent it out. I’m no longer tweaking bits, and I don’t have to listen to it for a while.

Stina was wondering why I wasn’t rejoicing after I sealed the envelope. There’s such a long tail to finishing these albums that it’s hard to let go. I’m still too close to it - am I really 100 percent satisfied that everything’s perfect? Probably not. In time, when the music isn’t so deeply burned into my brain, I’ll be able to look at it with pride and distribute it with joy. Already, though, I’m starting to feel good about it - certainly better then I ever have previously. It’s certainly my best effort - though not my most accessible. I’m pretty ok with that.

So, yeah, I now need to finish up a fancy flash widget for the “making of” page, then do that write up, and then it’ll be released. Fortunatly, I’m not feeling any pressure to finish that. It’ll get done eventually

Oh, and the album art is AMAZING, and there’s a whole back story to that, so I guess that’ll have to part of the write up.

So the last week or two has been pretty fun and jam packed. Summer gets like that. We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversery in true Krudden style - we headed up to Clear Lake CA to see Styx open up for Boston. Screw High Sierra

I have to say that Styx put on a better show then Boston, even though the Boston songs are much dearer to my heart. I mean, c’mon, Boston “Boston” still has a firm hold on my top ten albums ever made. Styx had high kicks, audience participation, and a lot of energy. The epic moment of the show was when Styx launched into “Sailing away” a freaking sail boat came right behind the stage.

The extra extended version of “Foreplay” totally rocked the casbah though, and had me reminiscing about my high school band “Lunch.” Lunch was a real good time. We could rock that tune pretty hard.

On our arrival home, we had some familial vistors - Stina’s aunt Patti and her two cousins Carmen and Bailey. They stayed with us for 48 hrs, and it was a nonstop celebration. They brought some of Grannie’s ashes (which was refered to as her heart) so we could leave her heart in San Francisco.

We jammed in an insane Saturday with Amanda’s Baby Shower -> the Roberts family visitation -> Whiskey Tasting.

The boys of shakedown


We bought out the remaining whiskey inventory of a closing restaurant to have a smancy tasting.

Good times

Oh, and then I checked out the new Yoshi’s SF with some killer Salsa (Doug Beavers y su Conjunto Rovir) and got in a car accident on the way home from work yesterday. I’m fine - car is less so.

awesome