Our tree for 2009

As 2009 winds down, we want to wish you and yours a very Happy Holidays and thank you for a great 2009. We look forward to 2010 and have a big plans throughout the coming year. We will be playing more shows and releasing our EP next year. Along with new songs, recording, and touring outside of the Bay Area, we’re very excited about the next 12 months.

Even though we weren’t able to put out a new song for Christmas this year, check out our song from Christmas past, Pictures of You and grab a free copy of it at the same time.

Thanks to everyone for all of your support in 2009 and we want to hear from you in 2010.

Socialized

Thanks to everyone who showed up and supported us at our last show. For our next trick, we will be playing on Wednesday, December 9th at The El Rio. We’re opening for The Real and Headslide that night and looking forward to a great evening.

Date: Wednesday, Dec. 09
Location: The El Rio. 3158 Mission St San Francisco, CA 94110-4560
Opening for Headlining with The Real & Headslide
Start Time: 9 10 PM

Date: Friday 11-20

Location: Rockit Room
406 Clement St San Francisco, CA 94118
With The American Professionals & Once They Were Human
Start Time: 9:00 PM

SF's own Frank Chu is excited about the band's new release.

October proved to be a very productive time for the band. Although we didn’t play any shows and have any new songs to promote, we did finish tracking and Dave started mixing our new single.

In October we also laid down basic tracks for 3 other songs and started writing 3 new songs as well. For a month that was supposed to be relaxing for us, it turned out to be one of the most productive months we’ve had in a while.

On top of all of the behind the scenes work there is the strong chance of a Socialized show this month as well. Please stay tuned to this station for more information and showtimes very soon.

Also this month, Sunday the 8th to be exact, André and Brian Tasker will start shooting the video for the new single Never Be The Same. It’s an ambitious project with a 5 day shooting schedule and around 160 scenes. We will post behind the scenes news from the set as the shoot progresses.

In the meantime, for all of our fans and friends who are not in San Francisco you might not recognize the gentleman in the picture. This is Frank Chu. He is San Francisco’s Emperor Norton for the 21st century.

Like the Wiki page states he is one of San Francisco’s “best-known eccentrics” and is beloved by all of us in San Francisco. You might come to San Francisco for the cable cars and the sourdough, but we strongly recommend spending a minute talking with Frank when you are downtown. He is friendly and kind and has a message for the ages that we all can learn from.

Screw the cable cars. Buy Frank a Budweiser and learn a thing or two.

Sign by ACME ChuMaker.

Title: Rockit Room
Location: 406 Clement St San Francisco, CA 94118-2318
Description: Downstairs, 9 PM
Start Time: 21:00
Date: 2009-09-26
End Time: 23:30

We hope that by releasing this information to the public that this will be the last time that we have to address this issue.

Read Part 2

Read Part 3

Eric's Old Alter Ego

After an hour my lip started coming off.

Dirt and latex don’t mix too well. Even worse is latex and sweat. The three of us had been put into makeup so that we would look like old men. The makeup process involved painting 3 to 6 layers of latex on our faces to give the effect of wrinkles. After about and hour and a half I had been talking and sweating and the latex on my upper lip started coming off.  Needless to say Amber the makeup girl wasn’t too thrilled with me.

While Amber was rearranging my face the kids had finished their day. André had an opportunity to thank the kids and some of the parents for their help that day. By the time my face was re-applied all of the parents and the kids had already left. I want to thank each and every one of them for their time and help that morning.  I enjoyed talking with the parents and the kids were a blast to work with. We hope the kids had a great time too.

It’s now about 1:30 PM and it’s all band in front of the camera.  We initially went into this video without the intention of seeing the band at all. However, Jared convinced us with his treatment that we should see the band in the video. All right. Here we go.

For the first shots of the band as old men, I had to come in to the set from behind a door, walk to the other band members who are already smoking cigars and playing poker and start singing. We did a couple of camera rehearsals and then got ready for the first take. While waiting for the first take one of my favorite memories of that day’s shoot took place.

As I am waiting on my mark on the other side of the door, a crew member is talking to a couple other of the crew outside the door and blurts out:

“I’m not going to be able to get this @#$%ing song out of my head all day.”

Setting up a shot

This crew person’s back was to me and I guess they weren’t aware that I was there. I thought it was hilarious.  We don’t take ourselves too seriously and at the same time realize that the song is not everybody’s cup of tea.  That’s fine with us. We had spent nearly a year working sporadically on the song so through good and bad we had heard it over and over and over ourselves. If anybody understood this crew member’s sentiment it was me.

The other crew people around looked at this individual with horror expecting me to loose my mind. Instead I turned around and simply said “I know what you mean.” and turned back to my mark.

The way I saw it was we had at least 8 more hours of work to do and I reasoned that I could at least let them know that I know that I’m not offended or that I hold a grudge because they don’t like my song. Liking our material is not a course requirement but it will make the day go by quicker.

However, this person gets no points for tact or timing and we had 8 more hours of listening to the song. Sometimes we create our own hell.

Once we finished shooting the old men scenes we went upstairs and peeled the latex off.  We were more than happy to get that stuff off of our faces after 3 or 4 hours.  I was happiest that I was finally able to get the dirt boogers out of my nose from working on that dirt floor for hours as well.  We were given a solvent to break down the latex on our faces, but we had more fun pulling it from our faces first. It was a cool and creepy feeling peeling what felt like whole sheets of skin from our faces. Dave and I enjoyed the process a lot more than André did.

Andre's makeup removal technique

The other interesting side effect about the latex is that even after you clean it all off your skin is still wrinked from being bunched together like that for hours.  It’s like waking up with pillow face.

Since I had peeled my makeup off first my skin recovered first so I was hauled in and leered for the camera until Jared stopped laughing at me. The whole band came in and we worked on the performance portion of the video until the dinner break.

Dave watches his head

The area that we were working in was only 5 and a half feet from the floor to the ceiling. I am the shortest person in the band at 6′ tall. Both Dave and André are 6’4″. André was mostly ok because he was sitting down behind the drums or on the couches for most of the shots. Dave however was getting miserable as his back and knees were killing him from having to crouch or crook his neck or rest a knee on an amp so that the camera could see his face. Every single person in the crew and in the band cracked their head on the cross-members and “ceiling” at least once.  I had managed to avoid doing it until towards the end of the night when I walked straight into a support beam. Hilliarious.

Band Performance

After the dinner break everyone’s energy started flagging. Jared and Nick the gaffer rallied the troops and they set up for the next two shots.

The second to the last shot was of the band in present day singing and playing poker together. After a couple of takes of that we set up for the final shots of the day us opening and turning the pages of a photo album. The photo album had green construction paper in it in place of pictures. Stills of the kids and band will be superimposed over the green rectangles so when the pages are turned the pictures will turn into the footage of the kids playing on the playground and stealing candy as the old men band members reminice about “good times”.

The final shot was finished around 10:30 PM. Including breakdown the crew had a fourteen hour work day. It was a long shoot that day, but we got everything done that was on the shot list.

The crew broke down the set and put away the lights, camera, sticks, etc. etc. and scattered as quick as they could. Some of those poor bastards still had that song in their head the next day, I’m sure.  I sat on the set with the electrician Dave Rexrode and our buddy Jim Hamilton of Scaramanga and wondered what in the hell do do with all of the band equipment. We were beat tired and all of the gear still had to be moved upstairs. Dust and dirt was still in the air hours after everyone left. I turned and looked at André’s drum kit and saw that it was now totally and completely covered in dirt from the day’s shoot. Each time we had a new shot to do I would see his kit had that much more dirt on it, but this was unreal. André walked in, looked at the kit, and turned right around in exhaustion.  There was no way he was going to break down the kit and clean it that night.

Hours later we hauled the bass and guitar equipment upstairs but André wouldn’t deal with the drum kit until the next morning, whenever that might be. We still have two more shots to do on Sunday and one of them will be a crime against nature and the City of San Francisco.

Preparing for a tricycle hate crime

Part 5 of the story concludes with napalm, unexpected gusts of wind, fire extinguishers, and bail money.

Tricycle Video Shoot Part 2

Dave's old man has a fine taste in shoes

We spent the morning at the playground shooting the kids running and sliding and the band with the kids swinging and climbing. While the rest of the production wraps up at the playground and then continues on to the next location, we go back to the house for a costume change and to get latex applied to our faces for our scenes as old men.

At this point my knee was bothering me from my bagel fall earlier so I figured limping around like an old man would be easy. A couple of Advil and I’d be back to normal.

I plopped into the makeup chair to be the first one to have latex applied to my face. For the latex to wrinkle up properly we have to stretch the skin on our faces out while the latex it painted on, dried and then powdered. It’s not a particularly hard process, but we do end up looking more ridiculous than normal as we feign surprise or mental illness while the makeup is being applied. The latex smells a bit, and a hair dryer is used to dry the latex on. When having latex applied to simulate crows feet you get used to having air blown directly in your eyes after a while. It also takes approximately 3 to 4 layers of latex to get the effect. Let’s just hope it shows up on camera.

For our costumes we went to four or five Goodwill/Salvation Army stores throughout the Bay Area looking for the most ridiculous clothes that we could.  Most of the clothes that were found were at the first Goodwill store we shopped at in Fremont.

By the way; the Palo Alto and Menlo Park Salvation Army/Goodwill stores have the nicest stuff, which was useless for our purposes but might be good for your bargain hunting in these tough times. Fremont must have a short population because the thrift stores had mens clothes mostly donated by people who were under 5′ 8″. Must be that dwarves are generous people when it comes to donating to the Goodwill or The Sally. Some people’s times are tougher than others.

The production came back from the last location and started setting up some of the last shots for the kids.  It was also the last location for the day.

Brian the D.P. breaks out the wheelchair dolly

The first shot here was on the sidewalk of the kids on their bicycles. Brian, the DP got to use his coveted wheelchair dolly, so we were all very happy for him. We also had an opportunity to use the tricycle because one of the kids hadn’t learned to ride a bike just yet. I don’t know how the Director felt about that, but the band was happy that the trike was getting used before it’s big finale.

The final set design was of a clubhouse or attic that the band used throughout our lives. In the video we will see the band as children, as ourselves today, and as old men in the clubhouse. The kids final shots would be of them playing our instruments in the clubhouse.

Tom studying the behavior of dust on the set

Dmitri

We brought down our instruments for the kids (André had set up his drums the night before) and the first thing that I noticed was that Dmitri was shorter than the bass guitar. I had to get a picture of that.

I gaff-taped the strap up on the bass so that it wouldn’t drag on the ground and let Dmitri have fun. Diego was behind the drum kit bashing away while his dad Effron helped coach him.  While we were working on the bass guitar strap, we discovered that Brandon, the kid playing Dave in the video, actually knew how to play guitar and he was playing it well. He was playing “Johnnie B. Goode” and “Sunshine of Your Love” and doing a great job of both of those songs as well.

We left as the kids jammed out their parts for the crew. It was getting crowded on the set with all of the people looking on so I split for another part of the house.

The Kids Are Alright

Once that shot was finished the kids were done for the day. They did a great job and we’re glad that they could join us and we hope that they and their parents had a good time.  Our thanks again to everyone!

In part 4 of our story we will bash our heads on the ceiling, take one for the team, listen to the same song over and over, and finally get out of this damn latex.