Funcrunch live performance videos

At long last, they're here! Full video clips of all nine songs (ten if you count the opening medley as two songs) from my recent band workshop performance are now up on YouTube, thanks to Julie. Watch, listen, enjoy, complain, comment, relive the night, pretend you were there, etc.

Funcrunch in review

Though seeing beyond the bright lights was difficult, we did hear shouts of approval on Monday night when Julie, Ziggy, Mike A., Rex, Steve and I took the stage at Cafe du Nord as 'Funcrunch.'

This was the fifth band wokshop in which I have participated through the Blue Bear School of Music, not counting the one class I took in 2005 where we learned Beatles songs on acoustic guitar, and performed them on stage as a group without the aid of a drummer.

It certainly was what I would call a special group: excepting Steve, all of us knew each other already or at least had met each other enough times to know we were cool with each other. Ziggy was quite adept at switching between a bunch of different keyboard sounds. Mike A. and I locked into a good groove -- I had played guitar with him before, and as I suspected, playing bass with him was a breeze and a lot of fun. Best of all, Rex, Julie and Steve sang in harmony together. I had wanted to play in a band workshop with three-part vocal harmonies, and finally got my wish. I also added some harmony to one song with Rex, since the bass line was simple enough that I could divide my attention without losing track of what my fingers were doing.

As with my last couple of performances, the results were filmed. Video should be available within a few weeks.

If only we could do this every day!


Our set list:

Medley: Money For Nothing/Walk Of Life [Dire Straits]
Doesn't Remind Me [Audioslave]
You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told) [The White Stripes]
Edge Of The Ocean [Ivy]
Owner Of A Lonely Heart [Yes]
Working On My Soul [original song by Rex]
To The Tender (Beauty Marks/Blisters) [Mind Science Of The Mind]
I Don't Believe You [Bob Dylan]
Ramble On [Led Zeppelin]


Photos from the evening:



Photo by Eric Zuckerman



Photo by Eric Zuckerman



Photo by Eric Zuckerman



Photo by Julie Bernstein



Photo by Eric Zuckerman



Photo by Eric Zuckerman



Photo by Julie Bernstein

Here comes funcrunch!

(photo by Justin Flores)

Only five short weeks until my band workshop performance takes place. All the details are below. I wasn't sure how well I'd get it together between the day job, continuous writing for bullz-eye and Performer, and searching out further opportunities, but I can confidently say that we're all playing very well together. If you've got the time, it'll be worth your while to come by and check it out! Otherwise you'll have to wait for the video footage...

funcrunch consists of Mike Avery (drums), Julie Bernstein (vocals), Mike Fortes (bass & vocals), Rex Pembroke (guitar & vocals), Ziggy Tomcich (keyboards), and band leader Steve Kirk (guitar & vocals).

We've put together a dynamic, diverse 40-minute set of classic and contemporary rock. Songs range from well-known classics by Yes, Led Zeppelin and Dire Straits, to alt-rock hits by Audioslave and the White Stripes, to some obscure tunes by bands you've never heard of, including an original song written by our guitarist, Rex. Oh, and there's a Bob Dylan tune in there somewhere.

We will be appearing at Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market St., San Francisco, on Monday, March 31, as part of the Blue Bear School of Music's quarterly band workshop showcase. Each quarter, Blue Bear resides at a local San Francisco rock club to show off the school's talent. This quarter marks Blue Bear's debut at the most excellent Cafe du Nord.

We're expected on stage around 9:30pm. Doors open at 6:30pm. Admission is a suggested donation of $10-$20. You may purchase tickets in advance online at cafedunord.com.

"Seating in our showroom is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Patrons with advance dinner reservations receive seating priority. Due to the limited number of seats in our showroom, dinner reservations require a minimum food order of $15 per person." I have not sampled the menu at du Nord, but given that seats go quickly, I'd suggest eating before you get there. But it's definitely something to consider.

If you have kids, feel free to bring them along -- Cafe du Nord is an all ages venue!

Full Cafe du Nord event calendar for March

Hope to see you there!

I hear the ticking of the clock...

I literally hear the clock tick every day now. The old blue alarm clock that my grandmother gave to me almost 20 years ago finally bit the dust. Much as I would love for time to reset itself to midnight at any given moment, the rest of the world isn't having any of it. I was tempted to pick up one of those CD player clocks, or one of those units that plays music from a portable mp3 player. But I already have enough music playing devices. All I wanted was a time-keeping device and alarm, and I found what I was looking for in one of those wind-up clocks with a real bell alarm. Yes, they are still being made! And if it weren't for the glow-in-the-dark numerals on the clock's face, it could be mistaken for a much older device. The bell alarm is jarring, and since it's wind-up powered, I won't have to worry about waking up late if the power goes out at night (or changing batteries for back-up). Simple solution, quickly implemented.

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More reviews posted since last time... I covered Dengue Fever's new one for Bullz Eye, and a disc by a local band called Diego's Umbrella for West Coast Performer in their current issue. More to come on that front, as always.

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Band workshop is nearing the halfway point. We have now rehearsed half of the songs we've decided on playing, and we're sounding better every time. I had my first shot at singing and playing bass at the same time (on a Dylan tune) in yesterday's rehearsal, which went much better than I thought it would. The instructor encouraged me to immitate some of Dylan's phrasing, and everyone seemed really happy with the results. Our keyboard player, Ziggy, was struggling with the changes, but I'm pretty confident that he'll be comfortably acing 'em in no time. The form of the tune is outside of what he usually plays, and is ironically much simpler than what he generally excells at (progressive, new age-type material). Maybe it's like trying to make Philip Glass play the blues, but fortunately rock n' roll was made for this kind of mixing of musical backgrounds. It's the great bastard genre, and we're finding a way to make it work for us. Being that we all like each other personally, I know it's going to sound great in the end.

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Birthday is coming up (that ticking clock won't let me forget!)... but I have no big celebration planned this time. Nope, just a trip up to Portland next weekend to visit Chris and check out a Saturday night performance by Rachel Taylor Brown (whose new album is excellent, by the way -- look for a Bullz Eye review on that one in the not too distant future). The Portland scene has held my interest since reconnecting with Chris last Fall, so I'm particularly looking forward to visiting the city for the first time and hearing some of the music live, in its natural environment, not to mention hangin' again with an old friend...

New band videos! Part 5 - "Fake Tales Of San Francisco"

...and here we have the fifth and final "Lost The Plot" video post - our closing number, the Arctic Monkeys' "Fake Tales Of San Francisco." Christina chose this one, and it turned out to be the perfect set closer. Julie had fun working her way around the English flavor of the vocals, Christina got some cool bass fills, Djuna and I joined in on those fun background vocals towards the end... it's just a fun song to play all around, and fun for the audience too.



Not sure when my next performance will be, as my musical plans are up in the air at the moment. So enjoy these in the meantime. Better yet, get out there and start playing yourself!

New band videos! Part 4 - "Shut Your Eyes"

For the fourth installment of this video series... here we get a mostly good performance of Snow Patrol's "Shut Your Eyes," which drummer Barry chose. Aside from the end, I think it was one of our best performances as a band. We got the laid back feel of the rhythm down well, and the vocals were pretty tight (just plug your ears during my parts at the end). I never paid much attention to Snow Patrol, and the first time I heard them I was not impressed. But this song is alright, I'll give 'em that.

New band videos! Part 3 - "Somewhere Across Forever"

The good thing about spreading these videos out one post at a time is that, if I forget to mention a relevant factoid one day, I have another chance to remember later. In this case, I wanted to mention that our drummer, Barry, was the one who came up with the band's name - "Lost The Plot." Factor in yesterday's little blurb on the band and I'm sure you'll agree it was an apt name.

The song performed in today's video had, in Spooner's words, a "lame ending." In spite of his criticism, which irked Julie considerably, we kept it as it was and it got a good response. I had never heard this song or the band that originally recorded it, stellastar*, until I signed up for this workshop. This was another of Julie's picks. She sang the lead, and Djuna and I supplied backing vocals and shared some indie-riffic lead guitar lines during the instrumental break.

The laugh here for me is this: before the show, Barry took me aside and asked me to set the tempo at an easier pace than I had been during rehearsals, as he found it difficult at times to maintain the tempo at the pace I was setting. Imagine my surprise when, after strumming the intro at the requested laid-back pace... well, watch and see for yourself what happened:

New band videos! Part 2 - "The View"

Before we look at the next video, a little background on the band and yesterday's video:

This is the fourth band workshop I've played in since I began frequenting the Blue Bear School of Music, and the third I've played in with Bill Spooner as band leader. There were five of us rehearsing together for ten weeks -- myself on guitar and occasional vocals, Christina on bass, Barry on drums, Djuna on guitar and vocals, and Julie on keyboards and vocals. Christina and I had the idea of playing in a workshop together when we started dating, so we signed up together. Julie I had played with before in my last workshop, and we're also co-workers and friends. The three of us all knew each other already, and had played with Spooner before on separate occasions, so we all got along well. Barry and Julie did not mix, however, and Barry occasionally butted heads with Spooner as well. Suffice to say, it was an interesting group that had its fair share of drama, drunkenness and sexual tension. In other words, it was a true rock n' roll experience. Only things we lacked were hard drugs, a tour van and paychecks.

Anyway, yesterday's song was a tough one for Christina going in, but in the end she pulled it off rather well. It was the coolest sounding bass line in all the songs we played, and a song chosen by Julie.

Today, we get "The View" by Modest Mouse. I chose this one. Nobody in the band cared much for it right away, but after a while, everyone warmed up to it and it became a favorite. I take the lead vocals here, and I'll let you be the judge of their quality.



And before I forget to mention, the same guy who filmed the videos of my last workshop did these as well -- Damon Molloy of Dirksen-Molloy Productions.

New band videos! Part 1 - "Texarkana"

On June 28, a little pay-to-play rock band called Lost The Plot took the stage at San Francisco's Red Devil Lounge and made some enthusiastic drunks get all crazy with rock n' roll convulsions. Or we just soundtracked their inebriation. In any case, I was there, playing a barely audible guitar and groovin' hard.

Yes, it was yet another Blue Bear School of Music rock band workshop, focusing mostly on the music of "contemporary" bands (though R.E.M., Prince and U2 are all "classic" by now... but they're alive, so whatever).

I'm going to share five videos from our eleven-song set with you. First up -- our version of R.E.M.'s "Texarkana."



More video (and more text) in the coming days...

30 days till the rock drops; and more updates (always more)

That's right -- on Thursday, June 28, my as yet unnamed workshop band will perform live on stage at the Red Devil Lounge at around 10 p.m. Our set spans twenty years of contemporary rock and pop, with old songs by Prince, U2, R.E.M., and more recent material by Modest Mouse, Queens of the Stone Age, Snow Patrol, Jet, the Arctic Monkeys, and others. We're still a little rough around the edges, but we should be in prime rockin' form in one month's time. Next rehearsal is Thursday...

In other developments, I have nearly completed my third 'Idiot's Guide' for the always entertaining jefitoblog.com. Just a few minor tweaks and it should be ready to go. More on that when I get closer to finding out when it might run.

And, I've started the painstaking process of writing my first ever long-form work of fiction. I have no idea how this is going to turn out, in spite of my rough notes and outline giving me a guide to where it *should* go... I'm subject to changing my mind mid-sentence on this thing. All I will say for now is that I envision it as a philosophical drama with some elements of comedy. I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" and I decided it probably shouldn't be quite as damning of the human condition, but there will be some of that, because the human condition is always ripe for damnation.

No word yet on when the Slayer interview will run. But it will run soon...

Band workshop update with photos (and guitars!)

I have my own digital camera, and I have a perfect forum for sharing my digital photos. Yet, it seems I always forget to carry the stupid the thing with me! Fortunately, my coworker and bandmate Julie seems to have hers on hand almost every day.

Here are a couple of photos she took during our last band workshop rehearsal:


That's me playing guitar.


And here is our fearless leader, Bill Spooner.

We've made it through four weeks of rehearsals, so we're fast approaching the midway point before the big performance in June. We've gotten through nine songs so far at various levels of competency, so there is still a lot of work to be done. And more will be done tonight and over the weekend.

Onward!

Rock n' roll

The band workshop of which I wrote more than a month ago is now three weeks into rehearsals. My brain has been sapped of late, which is why I am only mentioning it now.

This is the fourth band workshop I've played in since I started attending the Blue Bear School of Music. Usually, these rock workshops have at least six people led by an instructor -- one drummer, one bassist, two guitarists, and two singers, and we each choose a couple of songs to create a set that we will perform live on stage after ten weeks of rehearsals. My first workshop in the winter of '06, led by Bill Spooner, added two other members, one playing keyboard and one playing sax. The next workshop I played in was also led by Spooner, and was down to the core six. I played guitar in those two workshops, and switched to bass for my third in the fall. I hadn't planned on being in a workshop at that time, due to writing projects and a personal situation that made it difficult for me to practice as much as I needed to. I was called to fill in a vacant bass spot, and gambling on the idea that I could get away with minimal practice, I decided to do it. It was something different to do, in a workshop led by someone I had never worked with before. I practiced all of my songs for a couple of weeks outside of regular rehearsals, and after that, I wound up not practicing at all. Band rehearsal time was my practice time. I think it turned out OK. Our performance of Free's "All Right Now" was one example of a song where I felt nervous and rusty (in the instrumental break, that is -- the bass doesn't play much at all during the verses), yet for some reason I received more compliments for this song than any of the others:



So now I am back to playing guitar, trying to make more practice time. We're down to five in this Spooner-led workshop, which means I will be singing a little in this one. Only my friend and coworker Julie, who sang in the last workshop I was in, is a dedicated singer. She is doubling up on keyboards, sharing vocal duties with the two guitarists. I have only tried singing one song so far, a song I picked called "The View" by Modest Mouse. Singing and playing this song at the same time doesn't feel like something I can do, so there's some work yet that needs to be done.

Julie writes more on the workshop in her blog, and recaps the humorous exchange between Spooner and our drummer over the beat to U2's "One."

And, most significantly, our bassist is my girlfriend Christina. I had always wanted a girlfriend with whom I could play music, and now that wish is fulfilled! She is actually playing in two workshops this quarter, which is a feat in and of itself. But, as she says, "it's bass." Still, it's a time commitment, and to that, I raise a glass (maybe later tonight, too early in the day right now).

First rehearsal outside of our usual weekly schedule is later this week. Now the real work begins. This is going to be a good one!