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By: Chris Greacen
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.

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

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category = MUSIC
tagses = DOODLE, DOODLES, IMPROVISATION, IMPROV, GUITAR, NOISE, LOOP, ABSTRACT, SEMANTICSATIATION, HARMONICSATIATION, IMPROVISED, LIVEMUSIC, SOUNDONSOUND, MOLATE, POINTMOLATE, RICHMONDBRIDGE, MTTAMALPAIS, SOLOGUITAR, 16MM,
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By: Chris Greacen
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.

By: Chris Greacen
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.

By: Chris Greacen
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