June 18th: Hit @ Bar Freda

Plus clips galore from some recent one-off performances

Sup everybody,

Long time no see— the next Hit show is three weeks from today, Wednesday, June 18th at Bar Freda in Ridgewood (801 Seneca Ave). Also on the bill are Zon Zwinger, Jules on Expo and Wes Ambien. 8 PM doors, $12 cover. It’ll be the first full band Hit show since March, and it’s the only show we’ve got on the books, so if you miss this one, you really screwed the pooch…

While this upcoming show promises to be a Canonical Hit affair, there were a couple fun one-offs recently. As you may remember from the last newsletter, I played a solo set at Bar Freda at the end of April. All things considered it went pretty well! Here’s a clip of a song called “Basal” (aka “Ride the Lightning II”), which I’ve posted before in full band form, and which you may even see again if you keep reading…

And here’s the uh, “bridge” of the very same song. One for them, one for me as they say:

And here’s one called “Pure Unreal,” the home demo of which I shared a while back. It’s the poppy outlier of our new material, so maybe look for it as a non-album single sometime in the nearish future:

My favorite of the bunch is probably this one, “Doomsdays.” I forget if there have been any live clips of it in the newsletter before, but there’s definitely been snippets on our Instagram so feel free to go snoopin’ there if you’re interested.

And here are some cool FX I was doin' at the end of it. We’re actually gonna record this one this weekend. Stay tuned…

When I was sound checking before the set, the sound guy rolled his eyes at the very sight of my vocal pedal. But after I played, he came up, demeanor softened, and said, “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen someone use one of those and it’s seemed necessary.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this line a’ biz, it’s that ya can’t ask for much more than the sound guy’s tacit respect.

Then a couple weeks ago Cameron, Charles and I did a trio set at NYU where Charles teaches, as part of the music technology program’s open house. I really loved the band who played before us, they did this great cover of “Numb” by Linkin Park. The John Carpenter-y piano riff on the chorus was a nice touch:

They also did “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen which I unfortunately didn’t record. We burned through four quick songs and called it a night. Here’s a clip of “Basal”:

Apparently during our set a kid in the crowd turned to their friend and said, “Are these guys grad students? They’re actually really good!” If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this line a’ biz, it’s that ya can’t ask for much more than the youth’s tacit respect.

Keep Poundin’,

Craig