Go, Do, Be.

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01/02/2023  — 

Trip Down Memory Lane: Black Market Music

The flipping of the calendar is an obvious time for retrospection and brief trips down memory lane. I've tried journaling and writing but I don't really have the discipline or habits to keep that going. The mechanics of picking up a pen or putting hands on keyboard doesn't always work for me (evidence: the lack of action on this blog).

I like to keep track of the happenings in my life through photographs - the time and geo stamps are especially helpful in the storytelling. Lately I've been shooting a little video too. It's been sweet to revisit moments of life, to hear a voice or sound, to see someone's gesture that prompts a small flood of memories.

Every once and a while I stumble across someone else's video on YouTube that brings me right back to a moment, a place, a person. Here's one that happened recently...

The video below is two and a half minutes of someone's rando walkthrough of Black Market Music in West Hollywood probably in the late 90s or early 00s. There's not much to the video - it's poor VHS quality, shaky, no narration, awful sound, blurry, bad color. Totally charming.

We see a random view from the street (72 and sunny in west Hollywood), piles of amplifiers, guitars hanging everywhere, people chit-chatting (even eating lunch), racks of gear, display cases full of pedals and effects. It's a mess. It's full of action. If you know anything about music gear it's just a disgustingly opulent - absolutely ridiculous.

Black Market Music specialized in used gear and was thriving at this point. The music industry was at its absolute apex (file sharing was JUST starting - we hadn't yet heard Lars whining about Napster). Mega bands and labels were making piles of money with their recordings and tours. And if the major label music biz was a gold mine, Black Market Music was a major purveyor of second- hand shovels for all the miners.

I had the chance to walk through the shop right around that point in time when I went to LA with Steve Bell & Seth Freeman for a Little John show. I'm pretty sure it was Steve who led us to the shop. He was a master of material things - he helped me buy my bass amp and taught me about microphones, effects, amplifiers, tubes, drums. He was way over the horizon as far as his awareness and understanding of all kinds of gear.

At that point I didn't really know squat about Marshall amps or Gibson guitars. I probably didn't own a guitar amp. I had a Fender Lead II guitar and a Music Man bass, maybe that Ampeg Amp that Steve helped me buy. But I was solidly in Peavey Solid State-land as far as my understanding of amps went. I remember the smell of the place - musty, kinda sweaty, definitely dusty. I remember seeing piles of gear that had spray-paint logos from Van Halen and hair metal bands - gently used gear from tours or big shows. I remember seeing OLD guitars - like don't touch it old. Things that went for $5k (something like $12k today).

I remember a pile of Magnatone amps - I had just been introduced to Magnatone by Joe Gore who played a slide guitar through his to show me how it sounded - naturally overdriven full and juicy and perfect. They were hard to find, probably not in production at that point (though they've recently come back to life) - unobtanium, a unicorn. And here on the floor at Black Market were like 10 of them.

I remember things that were obviously used by pros - oh there's Alex Van Halen's drum cases, those are Tom Petty's amps, that's one of ELP's keyboard rack system. I'm sure there were even better examples that just went over my head.

It's one of the parts of life that I've come to appreciate lately - there are topics and subjects we can learn about that have infinite complexity. The more we learn, the more we see yet to be learned. The amount you could learn blooms and grows and goes and goes. Steve Bell was great at learning all of the stuff. He inspired me to do the same.

Through Steve and much later some of my YooToobers (Johan Segeborn, Kyle Bull, Pete Thorn, Warren Huart, the Guitologist (before he went nuts), Hermansson to name a few) I've learned just enough to realize how much gold was in that room. Looking through today's eyes, this scene is just bonkers.

Couple of droolworthy call outs worth mentioning: That droopy strat thing at 00:38, the hummingbirds hanging in the background next to the hofner bass at 00:42, the red tolex Marshall PA with two (pa) cabinets at 02:20, the pile of JCM800s at 01:03, the spread of snare drums at 01:09, the mountain of 4-hole plexis or JMPs at 01:48, the heap of old EHX pedals at 02:36, the tonebenders and similar pedals at 02:00. Gibson Jumbos sprinkled throughout. Marshall 8x10s tucked into the scenery... Park, Hiwatt... Stuff you just don't see around many places.

Go watch it:

Couple parting thoughts: who's that guy sitting on the Orange cab? Maybe one of the Eels? Some of my friends have told me of their star-sightings at BMM (maybe I'll post a part 2?). Did they let just any band put their show flyer or 8x10 glossy on that bulletin board by the door. There's another walkthrough from another date that shows more purple tolex and more of the keyboard and combo-amp stock.

09/08/2022  — 

Outdoor Doodles

I took a field trip a little while back to test out playing guitar outside. I want to do more of this. Get ready.

10/05/2021  — 

New Day Undone

Hey- Sssshh... Don't tell anyone, but we've put our new record New Day Undone onto Bandcamp before it shows up everywhere on Friday 10/8. It's just for you, so get a sneak peek! Blast it.

As you may have heard, this new record has taken the scenic route through a couple of decades to get here. We wrote a bunch of those songs in the early 00s (maybe even the later 90s?), recorded the band in our SOMA rehearsal space before blert took a long long nap.

As you probably already know, the really good things that happen are usually the result of a group of people coming together to give their best. New Day Undone is no exception - the whole band dug deep to complete these songs. We even roped Dan and Nolan into performing on "Frozener" our reprise of a tune from our last record, For Obvious Reasons.

But as you'll definitely hear, the biggest boost to this rocketship came from Tasha whose vocal performance sparked the fire that'll propel these songs into your head and heart.

We think you'll love this next incarnation of blert. If we're right about that hunch, could you do us a favor? Tell a friend about blert. You probably know someone who would dig it just as much.

10/04/2021  — 

Blert album release: New Day Undone

There's a new blert album about to arrive. Check it out:

For Immediate Release Vernonia, OR and Oakland, CA - Blerito Records is excited to declare the release of the latest album from Blert, New Day Undone which will be available worldwide through most streaming services on Friday October 8, 2021.

CTRL-Z and Escape were released previously in September and December 2020 and revealed the addition of Tasha Danner on vocals. Blert has shown in its previous releases that it has the potential to reach for epic-ness in its songcraft. With Tasha’s involvement the band has realized more of that potential in New Day Undone.

New Day Undone contains guitar, bass, and drum tracks that were captured in the early 2000s upon which the band layered vocal tracks recorded in 2019 and 2020. The result is a blend of old and new sounds which will likely resonate with lovers of alternative and indie rock music.

1 · Escape
2 · New Day Undone
3 · CTRL-Z
4 · Blind Spot
5 · Place Among the Stars
6 · Start Plain
7 · Solitary Lines
8 · Rain's Coming Down
9 · Sold Out
10 · Leave the Lights On
11 · Frozener

More information is available in the following doc.

03/09/2021  — 

Song-A-Day 2021: Mile On Ice

I'm about to share a video pulled together from clips that I shot on Feb 20, 2021 while recording 'Mile On Ice' for the 2021 Song-A-Day adventure. If you know me, you already know that I've been writing, recording, and sharing a new song every day in February as part of the Song- A-Day project. At this point in February I had already written about 20 songs so I already had the workflow and mindset in place to go from raw idea to 'song' very quickly.

In this example, I was able to create a couple guitar tracks to go with drums & bass before adding #vocals. The #performances and the recordings are messy but that's kind of the point - I want to generate and capture an idea before dinner time. In this case it worked out - the tune has moments that I'll hang onto: a killer #bass line, the shift from the hook to the chorus... even a couple lines from the lyrics would probably make it through a rewrite.

Believe it or not, part of what makes this whole thing work for me is turning off the #critical part of my brain and letting the ideas roll. You can hear a lot of self-critical stuff bubbling out of me, but even though I have #doubts about the '#goodness' I gotta accept it for what it is (and move on). I don't really evaluate the work (as a whole) till I give it some time. Coming back to a song after a few weeks lets me hear it with fresh ears, appreciate the strengths, and let me imagine its next (better) form. The whole point here is to #create and boom- there it is!

So give it a spin and let me know what you think. If you want to hear more, go here:

More Song-A-Day music: http://songaday.netscrap.com Go find the #bands: http://doubleplusalright.com http://blert.com http://instagram.com/greacen http://greacen.com

01/02/2021  — 

This damn site

12/07/2020  — 

New Blert Song: Escape

11/22/2020  — 

Bump Doodle on Instagram

09/09/2020  — 

New blert song: CTRL-Z

08/23/2020  — 

Blert - For Obvious Reasons

07/17/2020  — 

Doodles 2020

01/22/2020  — 

Why is Agile Popular?

12/07/2018  — 

#MyMusical2018 Part 5: Other Shows

12/06/2018  — 

#MyMusical2018 Part 4: Doodles (something New)

12/05/2018  — 

#MyMusical2018 Part 3: Open mics and other gigs

12/04/2018  — 

#MyMusical2018 Part 2: Song-A-Day 2018

12/03/2018  — 

#MyMusical2018 Part 1: Doubleplus Alright

06/29/2016  — 

Missing 1963 Bing Log

05/10/2015  — 

Doubleplus-Alright

03/06/2015  — 

Om One

02/19/2015  — 

Music is all around us.

02/17/2015  — 

Leftovers from MP3 Compression

01/13/2015  — 

Favorite Friends Episode

10/29/2014  — 

A Wave

08/22/2014  — 

OMG Even More Artwork From Mad Men, Season 7 (The Art Department)

08/21/2014  — 

Holy Crap Even More Artwork From Mad Men, Season 7 (Peggy Olson)

08/20/2014  — 

Even More Artwork From Mad Men, Season 7 (Ted Chaough, Pete Best)

08/19/2014  — 

More Artwork From Mad Men, Season 7 (Don Draper, Jim Cutler)

08/18/2014  — 

Artwork Seen In Mad Men, Season 7

05/06/2014  — 

Chrissy Tomasco and the 2014 Overnight Walk

02/20/2014  — 

Observed: Scat/Rap Counterpoint

01/16/2014  — 

2013 Overheards and Observeds

12/27/2013  — 

A wave

10/22/2013  — 

A wave

09/25/2013  — 

Instagram Embed Test

09/25/2013  — 

Manatee gig 9/27/2013 at Hemlock Tavern!

06/25/2013  — 

Manatee gig 6/28/2013 at Thee Parkside!

06/05/2013  — 

Manatee gig 6/6/2013

06/04/2013  — 

CTA- the most important part of your page.

06/03/2013  — 

All web apps

05/06/2013  — 

Manatee KXLU session

03/28/2013  — 

Surfing on Easter Sunday

12/20/2012  — 

2012 Overheards and Observeds

08/16/2012  — 

Nuclear Stuffs

03/16/2012  — 

RSS Feeds To Follow

03/06/2012  — 

Viral Widgets

03/06/2012  — 

Content Widgets

02/29/2012  — 

Strata Conference

02/22/2012  — 

Song-A-Day In-Progress

06/29/2010  — 

And Boom!

02/25/2010  — 

Song-A-Day what a difference 25 days make

12/15/2009  — 

Rubicon Project Ad Network Sloughs-off Small Publishers

10/23/2009  — 

Shopping for Used Surfboards

10/19/2009  — 

HELL -- Your Soundtrack For Halloween

09/28/2009  — 

Story of a Surfboard: SF Green Ten-Footer

09/08/2009  — 

Story of a Surfboard: 1963 Bing

09/05/2009  — 

Dings With Stories

08/18/2009  — 

Absurd Film/Foodie Moment

06/24/2009  — 

Allspaw talks at Velocity Conf.

04/05/2009  — 

Menu and Wines from Dinner at Cyrus

03/29/2009  — 

Twitter-Based Blog Syndication Flowchart

03/26/2009  — 

Twitter-Based Surf Report Flowchart

03/09/2009  — 

Top 10 things to do now that Song-A-Day is done:

03/02/2009  — 

Song-A-Day 2009: DONE

02/23/2009  — 

Song-A-Day Notes From The Studio

02/15/2009  — 

Song-A-Day Week 2: Still truckin'

02/09/2009  — 

Song-A-Day Week 1: Awesome

01/26/2009  — 

29 Again: Song-A-Day

01/19/2009  — 

GoFish Becomes Betawave

01/17/2009  — 

Song-A-Day Shopping List

01/07/2009  — 

Espresso. Pulled, Not Stirred

12/25/2008  — 

Merry Christmas!

12/19/2008  — 

FOTC Season II

12/15/2008  — 

Darwin's moth: a survey of behavioral targeting solutions

12/12/2008  — 

100k Pageviews For Free

12/06/2008  — 

Mad Scientist

12/05/2008  — 

The Magic of Surf

12/04/2008  — 

The Darjeeling LTD. Tunes

12/03/2008  — 

Blert, A Zeen

12/01/2008  — 

The End Is Near

10/31/2008  — 

A Great Pumpkin

10/09/2008  — 

New Crop of Food TV

10/02/2008  — 

Time To Take A Stand

09/22/2008  — 

Seth Adds To His Music Store

09/18/2008  — 

Skate or die

09/03/2008  — 

A day on Chrome

08/21/2008  — 

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

08/20/2008  — 

Digsby will change the way you communicate online

07/29/2008  — 

No Effing Way

07/16/2008  — 

twitterfountain, fun stuff!

06/27/2008  — 

Post 1000

06/26/2008  — 

The horror of AOL

06/25/2008  — 

Fun with Wordle

06/16/2008  — 

RIP tastespotting.com

06/13/2008  — 

twitpic, kinda cool...

06/12/2008  — 

Ryan & Chris score surfings hat trick.

06/05/2008  — 

Matt Freeman to GoFish

05/29/2008  — 

Even More Shrimps...

05/28/2008  — 

Drunk Goldblum Meme

05/15/2008  — 

Linda Mar Extreeeem #2

05/14/2008  — 

Double Surf-Swap Happiness This Weekend.

05/08/2008  — 

Super Foodie

05/07/2008  — 

Hello, my name is Stud

05/01/2008  — 

Geo Quiz

04/24/2008  — 

All-Time Favorite Commercial

04/21/2008  — 

Foody Weekend

04/18/2008  — 

April in Carneros

04/17/2008  — 

AdTech: Widgets and Gadgets

04/17/2008  — 

Greacens in the news again...

04/17/2008  — 

Effing greatest video effer.

04/16/2008  — 

All time favorite video

04/15/2008  — 

GFSearcher=Nutch

04/15/2008  — 

Robert Greacen Dies at 87

04/09/2008  — 

SF's fleaflicker works, crowds duped

04/09/2008  — 

bashWebTest Lives!

03/24/2008  — 

Simple Rss Widgets

03/19/2008  — 

COPPA, friend or foe?

03/17/2008  — 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

03/05/2008  — 

Social Widgets

03/04/2008  — 

29 done...

02/28/2008  — 

Song-a-day almost done!

02/25/2008  — 

I can see the light!

02/19/2008  — 

Still playing catchup

02/18/2008  — 

GoFish, For Reals

02/14/2008  — 

More Lack of Engineering

02/13/2008  — 

Engineering... and lack of

02/10/2008  — 

Surfed, not rocked

02/09/2008  — 

Sifting through some stuffs on kodak

02/08/2008  — 

KodakGallery FINALLY integrates with the web

02/07/2008  — 

29 Songs: Day 4,5,6:

02/05/2008  — 

James Blackshaw, wow

02/05/2008  — 

29 Songs: Day 3: More To Come

02/05/2008  — 

QA Interviewing: The Phone Screen

02/04/2008  — 

29 Songs: Day 3: If Yes, Then No

02/02/2008  — 

29 Songs: Day 2: On The Other Side

02/01/2008  — 

29 Songs: Day 1: Took To The Air

01/31/2008  — 

29 Songs Starts!

01/31/2008  — 

Jon Brion on Eli Somethingoranothers

01/30/2008  — 

2005 Directors Cut Russian River Charonnay

01/30/2008  — 

Unwhined: Wednesday: OK

01/29/2008  — 

GoFish spilled, again...

01/29/2008  — 

108 Votes for NetScrap.com

01/28/2008  — 

Break-ins at Lafayette BART Station

01/25/2008  — 

Seeqpod sued by Warner Music

01/25/2008  — 

Unwhined: Friday: OK

01/25/2008  — 

js-kit comments on greacen.com

01/24/2008  — 

Unwhined: Thursday: NOK

01/24/2008  — 

February 2008: Song-a-Day a.k.a 29 Songs

01/23/2008  — 

Chasing the blue dragon: Blue Bottle Coffee Opens

01/23/2008  — 

The horror of the Hayward fault

01/22/2008  — 

Unwhined: Tuesday: OK

01/21/2008  — 

34 million lattes on Howard St.

01/21/2008  — 

What's the Greacen?

01/18/2008  — 

CC, the Casual Carpool

01/15/2008  — 

Macworld today

01/13/2008  — 

OMG

01/13/2008  — 

Technorati? Well, ok.

01/13/2008  — 

Netscrap top queries

01/12/2008  — 

Mavericks today!

01/10/2008  — 

Tuesday night covers

01/10/2008  — 

Today, I am Sven

01/09/2008  — 

Gofish, spilled...

01/09/2008  — 

Caffe Trieste in SOMA is the place

01/08/2008  — 

Vizu Survey on Netscrap.com

01/07/2008  — 

Netscrap's birthday

01/01/2008  — 

Happy 08!

12/26/2007  — 

A letter to Michael Cimarusti

12/26/2007  — 

Zinfandel-palooza

12/25/2007  — 

Merry X-Mas!

12/16/2007  — 

2005 Falcon Ridge Lodi Zinfandel

12/12/2007  — 

ruby, python, or php?

12/10/2007  — 

Zombie Technology

12/06/2007  — 

Hello World, From the phone

11/26/2007  — 

Daniel Boulud on Mojo

09/23/2007  — 

Long time no blog.

09/10/2007  — 

Is it the weekend?

08/05/2007  — 

Carneros loop

04/25/2006  — 

Whack-o-pedia

04/24/2006  — 

Startup moments

04/10/2006  — 

Salento Primitivo

04/05/2006  — 

Sonoma Bikeride

04/02/2006  — 

Selenium: Neat!