Critical Mass San Diego

Pics from the July 27th Critical Mass.
Rough estimate of about 300-400 riders. Fixies, Multi-speeds, mountain bikes, a pretty awesome BMX crew, warriors and the usual assortment of scum and villainy (plus the drunk faction).

Flight of the Neon Birds…

At the end of 5th Street. Down Town was quite full, regular shiny shirt guys speaking ‘dood’ and females in short skirts speaking ‘like’ plus a host of San Diego Comic Con revelers, some dressed in storm trooper outfits. Every Friday night should be like this.

Corner of Park and Adams. Frame right, unseen, lurks a seriously pissed off grandma. I wonder what would happen if there was an emergency with a car, like someone had a heart attack or was squirting out a flesh turd and had to get to the hospital in a hurry during a CM ride?

Adams and 30th. Its interesting to see all the black clad goth types hanging outside Quidan and all the frat/skank types carousing outside of air conditioned on either side of the street while homeless drunks hang out in front of the liquor store and haggle for refried cigarettes…pint of whiskey was finally opened at this stop. delicious.

this one turned out to be the coolest. looks like a bunch of neon stick figures dancing on the heads of blurry bikers in the night. good visual metaphor for the evening. the route actually took me to the black box to watch the north atlantic play their last show.

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Studio Time

Sunday, June 10, 2007
Worked on Mongos drums for about 2.5 hours, since he is the primadonna of the band (not really). Dan Maier, engineer extradordinaire, got some great tones but Marks new yamaha kick sounded a little flubby so we switched it out for the studio (Audio Design) DW kick. Sounded way better and more punchy. Then we traded out his snare cause it was a little reverby, even though it’s a killer live snare it wasn’t attacking as well on tape. Oh yeah, Dan had a reel of 2 inch he graciously donated to the Cabrones for our 7 song EP. Man, I forgot how amazing tape sounds from studio monitor speakers, like a wool blanket in a Denver blizzard with a raging fire and a cup of Irish Cocoa. Running through the Otari MTR 90 Tape Machine and a API 2488 Board. Fast forward a few hours and we set up the vintage Ampeg V4B (1973), pushing through a 68-69′ 8×10 cab, with a Fulltone Bass Drive for extra grit, I used my slightly moded Fender Jazz Bass. It was super gritty at first but I scaled back the drive cause we didn’t want it to sound like another guitar, which was a good thing. Bob ran through his classic set-up; a musicman 2×12, a 100 watt 80’s Marshall JMP and a Morely signal splitter, using a Gibson Faded SG for rhythm and a G&L ASAT Classic for lead(s). We started with “Learn” and ended with “Silencio” and in between we ran about 3 takes per song, with the exception of “Silencio,” yeah we nailed that in one. I punched in twice and so did Bob. Late in the night after a few beers and winding down we decided to dump the tape to digital so we could do more in post. Today it seems to be working a lot better but with all that room for mistakes we’re taking too much time redoing vocals. Leo sounds rad though. Nailed all the songs so far. We’ll have to come up with a different title for the current song. Its kind of obnoxious and doesn’t really work with the actual lyrics of the song. Hope Leandros voice holds out. more later…

So Leo was fucking blasted while trying to lay down vox for “The Searchers,” and his chorus sounded like Kurt Cobain on the nod. A Mexican Kurt Cobain on the nod. He’s got a good style though, sort of sloppy and pissed but good tone. I dig it at least. I did my vox for “The Letdown” and pulled the cajones out and blew out my chords pretty quick. I drank a lot of honey though and it seemed to get me through the rough spots. I tried to channel my inner rage and push it into the song as much as possible. We did the triple threat, “The Searchers,” “The Letdown” and “My Dear Colleagues.” Here are the lyrics I wrote in full, as Leo changed some of them to fit the songs and I’ll have to repost my revision to “The Letdown” but is on my new home computer since The Man is taking his computer back once I leave this cold cube on Friday;

The Searchers
We are the searchers.
Architects of semantic infrastructure
Coded in concrete
Not paper that’ll tear easy.
Men of our word
We commit to the betterment
Of society as a whole
Our subordinates write copy
Boilerplate mission statements
Distributed to all the right folks
And conflict resolution
Is our diplomatic mantra

Memorizing tag lines stepping deftly over razor wire
We communicate, oh we communicate
a message of fire
Shaking hands and kissing babies

My Dear Colleagues
Have you ever worked
a 60-hour week,
At a job you despise,
with every fiber of your being?
Do you ever stop to think
that you’re not alone?
Yeah, you’re not alone
We’re all crumbling
toward the same ending,
Thankless and dying

But you’re not alone man
Sister we’re with you
In the factories and fields,
toiling away
Just to get a sense
of something real

Carve out an existence
To stand tall amidst the giants
One voice to rattle the tyrants

You’re not alone
We’ll be waiting at the end
When the credits role and curtain closes
And the last whistle blows
We’ll be there
You’re not alone.

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