New Sounds: Late Night Old Man Jam BS

When I’m not holding down the fuzzed out, fucked up low send in The Loyalists, I have some occasional musical inclinations that lean toward something different.

I started work on this mellow little joint last year, and got lost along the way (not that there’s much to it to get lost in, but that’s just how life goes). I jumped back on it this weekend, and spit out this two-minute jam.

The drums are programmed — because I don’t have anything like an MPC right now to sample and chop sounds — but I played the bass and guitar, though an Ampeg V4B, and did the recording and mixing through a Presonus Firebox into GarageBand on an iPad Pro. The result is pretty rough, but the process was fun, and I think the tune is too...

Familiar Paths, New Angles

I tend to traverse the same paths. My commute between home and work, the errands I run around town, and the tracks of my life are generally through streets that I'm very familiar with because I'm on them with such frequency. The trick is keeping my eyes open — a trick I'm still practicing most days — because even though they look like the same streets, that's not always the case.

With that in mind, I've been carrying a little digital point-and-shooter more often lately, and shooting as I go. The results have been mixed, but here's a recent collection of passable photos I've snapped in the streets as I've made my way through my various routines...

The Loyalists, "Decision Baby Makes Moustache" [Music Video]

I play bass in a busted noise rock band called The Loyalists. We’ve been together for a while, put out two albums, played some shows. We've also spent plenty of time not doing anything. Anyway…

My bandmate Colin, who plays cello and guitar and writes most of the songs, is also a filmmaker, and from time to time he puts together something for the band. HIs latest work in that vein is this weird video for the equally weird song “Decision Baby Makes Moustache.” 

I've always thought the title of the song is really awful (/awesome), but the song itself is a fun instrumental with a sort of sloppy drunken, belligerent Krautrock vibe. It’s the last song on our most recent album, Ride the Trashheap of Sound, but we’ve been playing it live for a long time, closing shows with it since around the time our first album came out. It’s pretty noisy, and in the live setting, it emerges from the sonic mayhem at the end of the song before it — a blitz of amp feedback and cymbal wash. (Fun fact about The Loyalists: There’s sonic mayhem at the end — or beginning or middle — of most of our songs, so it doesn’t really matter which song comes before "Decision Baby.")

Colin's also made videos for two other Loyalists songs — "The Casing and the Slug," and Black Ribbon. Much like this video, they're compellingly odd. Enjoy.

Happy Accidents: Expired Film Fail

Some months back, I had a few rolls of film developed, and added a few shots to the black and white film gallery.

Most of these photos were shot between April and July of 2017, I finally had the film developed in early August, and then immediately left the country for a couple weeks. When I returned, I didn’t really look back at these (had lots of travel photos to go through, and lots of every day life stuff to deal with).

Fast forward several months, I was recently reminded of these shots while digging back through LightRoom. Among the black and white photos was an out-of-place roll of color film... Turns out that, when I was preparing for a quick trip to Los Angeles in April, I accidentally loaded a roll of Kodak color film I thought I had thrown away. It was one of a handful of rolls I found in an old camera bag, and they were obviously expired. When I realized what I had done (which wasn’t until I ran out of film at 24 shots, thinking I had 36), I figured I’d get the roll developed anyway, just out of curiosity — I had gone through the trouble of shooting it, might as well see what I got.

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Most of the photos were shit. The expired film was exceptionally grainy, the color was really washed out, and the overall effect was not just that of a Hipstamatic ‘70s camera filter, but truly that of long expired film. Bad.

Two images I made at The Getty Center, however, caught my eye: a photo of a hedge and rail (below; an image similar to one I made in digital black and white on the same trip), and a multiple exposure photo (above) that occurred at the very end of the roll, because the film had stopped advancing...though it took me a few snaps to notice because I accidentally loaded a 24 shot color roll instead of the 36 shot roll of TriX I had intended to use, and on top of that, the advance mechanism in the Minolta I was shooting with was breaking and about to fail completely. (It suffices to say that it's good habit to throw away old film, and not do 100 things at once while loading film into a failing camera.)

As far as happy accidents go, I like these two photos. I think the hedge shot has real texture to it, beyond just the extra graininess of the expired film, and a depth that grows the longer it's observed...if that makes any sense. I think the multiple exposure is cool, too — three (or maybe four?) shots from outdoor entry area at The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, all washed out in grainy yellow, yet still somehow pretty well separated.

These two shots kinda made the whole roll and experience worth it.

Spain, 2017

Gracia, Barcelona

Gracia, Barcelona

In August I spent a couple weeks in Spain, mostly in Barcelona, with a few nights in Bilbao, and a day trip to Figueres.

Throughout the two week trip, I snapped about 1100 pictures with a Nikon D7200, then boiled all those down to a couple dozen keepers, which I posted in a gallery called, so imaginatively, Spain 2017. (I’m still looking back over all the photos — it’s a lot to go through — and I may add a few more to this set.)

This should go without saying, but these photos do not even come close to covering the sum total of my experiences in Spain. 

Gothic, Barcelona

Gothic, Barcelona

I ate amazing food, and drank fantastic wine, cocktails, and beer. I traversed countless streets and explored myriad interesting little nooks in incredible neighborhoods. I witnessed the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and then attended not one but two local neighborhood celebrations that are hundreds of years old and can't be stopped. I waded through a massive crowd at free concert by a contemporary Spanish pop star, who I randomly had sat across from on a short flight to Bilbao without knowing who he was (the passengers asking him for selfies was my first clue to his fame). I visited the titanium-wrapped architecture of the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim museum. And I dug a little bit into the heavy handed influence of Antoni Gaudi’s classically odd style, on display throughout Barcelona. Mostly I just wanted to wander the narrow streets of neighborhoods like El Raval and Gracia on warm days and nights, exploring and stopping to eat and drink in vibrant and active local plaças at all hours.

Some of those experiences were captured on my Nikon and posted here, other moments were recorded through the lens of an iPhone (and posted to Instagram), and even more of it was committed to memory with no photographic record. Because sometimes I prefer to not have a screen or a lens between me and the people, places, and things around me. If I took nothing else away from this trip, it’s that the Spanish — and specifically the Catalan people of Barcelona — have quality-of-life as locked as I’ve ever experienced it. And that’s not always something I can show, or want to experience, solely through a lens.

[Warning: Nerd Stuff | Photo Gear]

I shot daily with the Nikon D7200, mostly through a Nikkor AF-S DX 10-24mm wide angle zoom lens. One day was spent with a prime Nikkor DX 35mm, and another day I spent shooting with the Nikkor AF-S DX 18-140mm kit lens, but I find that the 10-24mm usually covers my needs the best. I generally prefer to approach shooting cityscapes, architecture, and street scenes with a wide field of view, and that lens totally delivers. At it’s widest (10mm, a true 15mm due to the cropped sensor on the D7200), the lens is more than capable of capturing entire buildings and broad scenes, and its tightest (24mm, a true 36mm) it's perfect for images that required a narrower field of view — closeups, people, interiors, narrow passages — without getting too close.

Guggenheim, Bilbao

Guggenheim, Bilbao

I do kind of prefer prime lenses (ones with fixed focal lengths) to zoom lenses (for various reasons, not the least of which is edge image distortion at wide angles, but also sheer physical size), and I did find myself occasionally wishing that I had a small array of various prime lenses with me instead. But 1) I pretty much never like carrying around a bag full of camera gear, and 2) frankly, I’ve always felt that creativity ultimately flourishes within the confines of limits, and with specific regard to my own photography, those limits force me to see and think about subjects in different ways — especially if I only have one lens on me, and I have to move forward, backwards, up, down or sideways to get the shot I see in my mind’s eye, or to see something better. The 10-24mm lens is a nice balance between options and limits.

Four Days in Los Angeles [a photo set]

I went to LA for a few days in July on a sort of mini vacation, to catch up with friends, eat, drink, wander around... pretty much find the sweet spot between vacation levels of lazy, and still doing cool stuff.

That weekend was really hot, like 100 degrees, in absolutely dead air, where I was staying — with friends in Echo Park for a couple of nights, and then in Downtown LA, where I spent a couple nights at The Ace. 

I jumped on a train and went out to Santa Monica and Venice to spend a day in the coastal breeze (what little of it there was), then spent a few more days eating, drinking, and making photos around DTLA, and soaking up the air conditioning at various museums — LACMA, MOCA (& MOCA Geffen), and The Petersen.

It was a good way to spend a long weekend...

Two Houses on Carmel Point

I spent a few days down the coast a couple weekends back, during that time I did some morning hiking through the streets and around the perimeter of Carmel Point. At the outermost edge of the Point, on Scenic Drive right in the middle of Carmel Bay, these two houses face out to the Pacific, sitting perched on low cliffs at opposite ends of a curved stretch of rocky beach.

Both houses have been here since I was a kid, at least 40+ years ― and I always knew they were baller status residences ― but I'd never really seen them in this light. 

Lightroom for iPhone & "RAW" Camera Photos

I started learning and using Adobe Lightroom in earnest recently, and part of the deal with it is included apps for mobile devices. I was discussing some of the finer points of LR with a buddy who works at Adobe, and he told me that, on newer iPhone models, the native LR camera shoots in a "RAW" mode with quality that surpasses that of the phone's basic camera software, so I've been playing around with it a bit.

I've been pretty impressed with the results — both the camera and the editing software — so I've set up an iPhoners gallery. It's sparse yet, but I suspect I'll be adding to it at a faster clip than some of the other galleries I've got going here so far (this whole site is a work in progress, anyway). 

Here are a few of my favorite early experiments with LR on an iPhone 6s...

Black and white shot, converted from color, with fairly high contrast, pretty smooth, and has some nice detail.

Downtown Oakland, view from the east side of Lake Merritt just after sunrise on a clear morning. The light at that time, under those conditions, often casts a golden glow on the cityscape that's pretty bold, with a similar reflection on the lake. I think the LR camera captured the scene nicely, and I was able to make it pop a little more in LR while retaining a natural look. 

My favorite buskers at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market in Oakland. Shot in color, converted to black and white. Nice contrast, clean details.

Thoughts on Saraceno & Sultan at the SF MoMA

One of my favorite perks of working in the City is the SF MoMA. I have a membership (totally worth the cost if you go with a guest just twice in a year), and enjoy the benefits of it as often as I can. Just strolling the collection early on a weekend morning before the crowds swell, or a Thursday evening is pretty great. Which is exactly what I did this past Thursday — grabbed some dinner nearby after work, then hit the MoMA with no plan, just wandered, and ended up seeing two really good exhibits.

Tomás Saraceno's Stillness in Motion — Cloud Cities is an installation of geometrical shapes constructed of wire frames, and in some cases mirrors and even helium balloons, suspended by tethers attached to the floor, walls and ceiling of the gallery space. The pieces themselves are architectural in nature, and represent, according to the museum's statement, "[Saraceno's] visionary proposals for airborne cities build upon the artistic and architectural experimentation, forward-thinking radicalism, and progressive social change of the 1960s and 70s." 

The overall effect of taking in the scene can be a little disorienting, because the installation pieces aren't constrained to the walls like traditional museum works of art, they're floating. The webs created by the tether lines that suspend most of the pieces contribute to the ethereal perspective of the experience.

I checked the the MoMA site that afternoon and saw that the new Larry Sultan photography exhibit, Here and Home, wasn't scheduled to open until 4/15 (Thursday was the 13th), but I was happy to find it open early as I wandered the museum after seeing the Saraceno show. Sultan's photography has always been a bit paradoxical to me — I find it equally kind of off putting, at the same time also very compelling and fascinating. There's a raw nerve element to his work, a naked realism that often feels uncomfortable but is beautifully devoid of pomp or pretense.

This show contains a couple hundred photos from throughout his career (Sultan died in 2009), including his famous The Valley series — photos of homes in the San Fernando Valley that were used as sets for porno films — as well as his Pictures from Home series, which features Sultan's parents and their Southern California home in the 1980s. The heaviness in much of Sultan's work is sheathed in the mundane, every day middle class trappings of suburban scenery, which belies the depth of artistic exploration that becomes apparent upon closer inspection.

I snapped a few iPhone shots as I hurried through the show (the museum closes at 9pm on Thursdays and it was about that time), but these photos — aside from not doing any justice to the originals — don't begin to scratch the surface of what this exhibit has to offer. I'll definitely be seeing it again before it closes in late July.

The Loyalists, "The Momo"

The Loyalists played a show at Winter's Tavern in Pacifica, CA a couple weeks ago (with our friends and rad bands The Tunnel & Color TV), and to celebrate we released another song off our forthcoming second album, Ride the Trashheap of Sound. This one's a lot less stoner-y than the last song we leaked from this record ("Shamfrancisco"), but it's just as ugly and noisy...maybe more so.

Also, we've got a little tour mostly booked in May, starting in Chico, CA on Thursday 5/11 and running up to Portland, Bellingham, and Seattle. I'll post dates and venues here as they're confirmed (a couple are all set, just waiting on final confirmation of the others).

Finally, we should be getting 7" records for a couple of these new songs in the next month or so. As soon as we have those, we'll release the full album on BandCamp. Stay tuned...good times for bummer jams.

Black & White Film

Several months ago, I dusted off and got back to shooting with a mid 1970s Minolta XE-7, loaded with Kodak T-Max 400 black and white film, through a 50mm lens. I think the recipe works well, I've always liked the results. I'm a sucker for this camera — I've had one since I was 19, and I've currently got three bodies (including the first one bought used in '91), two of which are in good working order, and a handful of lenses, though I rarely use any but the standard Minolta Rokkor 50mm.

Anyway, I set up a new gallery for black & white film photos, and I'll post the best results of my b&w film adventures there. 

The photographs in the set I'm starting with were made in Los Angeles, Big Sur, Monterey/Carmel, and Oakland, CA, shot between early December 2016 and early March 2017. The rolls of film that these photos came from were developed and scanned to digital by Photoworks SF, and have been posted here without any editing or touching up.

Edward Weston Early Works at Monterey Art

I snapped this photo with my iPhone, and it doesn't do a shred of justice to the real things.

I snapped this photo with my iPhone, and it doesn't do a shred of justice to the real things.

I was in Monterey, CA last weekend and took some time to hit up the Monterey Museum of Art to see this show — Edward Weston: Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist.

As an amateur photographer, a fan of Weston’s work, and a native of California’s Central Coast, I am well aware of Weston’s landscape photography from that region — some of my favorite Weston photographs were made at Point Lobos, where I spent a lot of time as a young man — and this show contains a good sampling of that work and the later era that produced it (between the late 1930s and mid ‘40s).

However, this show focuses largely on Weston's earlier work, photos he made in the early 1900s through early ‘30s, much of which I’m not very familiar with, which is why I was so excited to see it.

This period was obviously highly developmental, revealing the beginnings of themes and techniques that Weston pursued throughout his career, showcasing some of his earliest landscape and structure studies, but more notably his approach to using singular subjects as studies of light and form — objects like bell peppers and nautilus shells, as well as nude figures. What struck me with a lot of these photos is the way he was able to convey the similarity with which he viewed and captured these subjects, and the museum did a particularly good job of showcasing that relationship.

This show is up though April 10, and it's well worth a day trip from the Bay Area to Monterey to check out.

The Loyalists, "Shamfrancisco"

I play the electric bass in The Loyalists, a noise rock band from Oakland, CA. We're a four-piece — bass, guitar, drums and cello (the cello player also plays guitar on some songs) — and we pride ourselves on making a pretty foul racket.

We've got a new album, our second — Ride The Trashheap of Sound — coming out in a couple months, and we've been playing the songs out at shows for a while, but this is the first recording from the album that we've let out of the box: "Shamfrancisco."

We're pretty excited to put this record out. We've been working on some of these songs since we recorded our first album, First of the Mohicans, back in 2013, so they've had some good time to marinate and mature. 

Our buddy Scott Evans (Antisleep Audio / Kowloon Walled City) engineered, recorded and mixed for us (again) because we love the guy, and we love his work.

I'll be crowing more about this when the album comes out (we're pressing up some 7" vinyl pieces too). In the meantime, this is just a taste.

Old Jams: Bustin' on Bullitt

Here's a quick & dirty jam with a crappy mix. I started by sampling the bass line from Lalo Shiffrin's Bullitt theme, and went from there. The drums are canned / programmed (not sampled), and the strange, funky chorus part was made with a Dave Smith Instruments MoPho — an analog, monophonic synth.

I'm going through some old music now for two reasons: simple blog fodder to flesh out this section; and a refresher / motivator on where to go from here.

A New Beginning

I'm trying this web site thing again.

It's been a long time since I had a place on the internet that didn't use a free social media service as a platform. I'm pretty regular on Instagram, Twitter, and Flickr, and I've been using Tumblr as a "blog" platform, but I've never been satisfied with the format or interface or sponsored content placement.

There are also elements of social media that are becoming increasingly difficult to stomach ― a saturation, an increasing yet seeming endless cacophony of users, and the fever pitch of insanity and depression given the state of the world ― contributing to my interest in returning to a more sovereign web presence. (I'll keep on with those other social things to varying degrees, but I'm going to try to focus more on this; I consider it self-care of the creative variety.)

With regard to content... I would never call myself an artist, but I have a creative drive, so I take pictures and make music and write. I feel like I have to. Thankfully, it feels like the work is never done, and I reflect on it and explore it ― my own work and the music, photography and writing of others ― as often as I can in an effort to grow and fine tune.

I've never had an art show. The music performances I'm a part of are not solo, they're loud, obnoxious band shows with a group, and very much things of the moment. I've been published, but it's been a long time since an audience of significant size has read anything I've written (day job efforts notwithstanding). But none of that really matters. I do these things for me, and I share them because it feels like the right thing to do.

So let's just do this. And see what happens...