By: Chris Greacen - 11/18/2024
Doubleplus Alright is psyched to have their song Feelin' It included in a fantastic compilation that just arrived on all the streaming services. This Is A Compliation Vol. One includes songs from some of the best independent punk, rock, and alternative bands playing in the bay area right now.

If you want to know the state of music in the bay area today listen to every bit of this thing asap.

Through Lee's Solar Van Saturday and Bang The Bay events, Doubleplus Alright has been able to see and get to know folks in a bunch of great bands: Family Obligation, Dark Satellite, CuVa Bimö, Fuzz Kit, Delta Wave, The Strange Ones, and of course Elegant Trash. Great music all around of course, but more importantly great people. Worth following all of these bands.

Couple notes on our song - we recorded our song Feelin' It at our home in Oakland Music Complex with our previous drummer Jackson. This song is from the first batch of Doubleplus tunes that Chris wrote back when we formed the band (contemporary with Um, No, Turn It Around, Bye Bye Bye). Jackson turned it up several notches on this tune with his background vocals and a killer drum fill at the very end.

Hoping to share much more music with you.

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By: Chris Greacen - 08/09/2024
In the late stage of the pandemic, I was looking for ways that Doubleplus Alright could play a show. Our extended band-family was contending with compromised immunity, essential healthcare employment, and a general desire to avoid getting covid. There weren't too many venues hosting shows at that point so there weren't many options.

Eventually I came across a guy who installed a solar charger and batteries in his van in order to host outdoor shows on a beach in Berkeley right on the SF Bay. He booked about 6 bands on occasional Saturday afternoons and he called it Solar Van Saturdays.

I went to a couple Solar Van Saturday shows. I met the bands, I met their fans, and I met Lee. Lee is also the lead singer of his band Elegant Trash who plays every one of these shows.

Doubleplus Played a couple of the Solar Van shows as well as helping Lee to bring his regular festival to the Baltic Kiss club in Richmond. (Note: we're playing Sunday evening 8/18/2024, be there!).

At some point along the line I got to know everyone in Elegant Trash and learned a little about what they were working on - more recordings, a world tour (Brazil in 2024!), as well as balancing this with the rest of their life.

As it turned out, I have some of the skills that the band needed to get unblocked with their recording. I saw a chance to pitch in and help with some of the recording and mixing of Elegant Trash's next record and jumped on it.

It's out TODAY. Check out Taking over All of the Land on Spotify:

I'm really psyched about how this came out and how it represents the band at this stage. If you're curious, I'd love to tell you (or show you) all about it - how it was recorded, how we mixed it.

By: Chris Greacen - 10/12/2023
Couple of great photos worth sharing from our double-double on Saturday 10/7 shot by Paul Ivey.

We're grateful for the chance to share these songs with friends at a place like Tamarack. Grateful also to the other bands who played: Da Pupz and Cassowary. Would do this again in a heartbeat.

Next up for us: we have to record some music. We've started work on Record #3 and we haven't even really done #1 yet. We'll get there...

More about Doubleplus Alright over on the website.

By: Chris Greacen - 10/05/2023
My band Doubleplus Alright is doing a "double double" (animal style) on Saturday 10/7 playing two of our favorite spots in the bay area:

First, we're taking a batch of brand-new songs for a test drive at the coolest spot on the bay: the Solar Van Saturday event at Rocky's beach (aka Barkley Beach). The U.S. Navy Blue Angels will be doing their level-best to distract us while we bring the goodness. It's not just us though, some of the coolest bands around will be in the crosshairs.

• Solar Van Saturdays
• Barkley Beach - on the frontage road just north of Ashby.
• 12:30 Facekicker
• 1:10 Doubleplus Alright
• 1:50 Elegant Trash
• 32:30 Eggos of Justice
• 3:10 Lost Puppy Forever
• DONATIONS WELCOME - these generous folks put on a show here twice monthly. Worth every penny.
• ALL AGES

Find more about the Solar Van Saturday event on the FB event.

Then that evening at Tamarack Oakland, we'll play with Da Pupz making their first appearance in a club and Cassowary who are getting back to the groove of playing live shows after a short hiatus. Fun fact, Doubleplus Alright was supposed to play at Winters Tavern at the beginning of the year but they had to drop for some personal reasons. We're psyched to make it happen now.

• Tamarack Oakland
• 1501 Harrison St, Oakland, CA 94612
• 6pm Doors
• 7pm Da Pupz
• 8pm Cassowary
• 9pm Doubleplus Alright
• $5 NOTAFLOF - 100% goes to the venue
• ALL AGES, ALL RAGES

Find more in the FB event for the Tamarack show.

BE THERE!

By: Chris Greacen - 01/02/2023
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.