The End!!!

And so it ends.....until springtime and another fun filled semester of newpaper production class, and music interviews, and shows......
A short reflection to end on:
I learned about the dilapidating effects of procrastinating. I am not perfect. Finding errors in papers is waaaay more fun when you're on the reading end and not responsible for editing. Not only am I not a perfect writer, but I may not want to be a writer at all. Or maybe I do. I think the point was to figure out that I don't know what I want to do and that school is the only way to learn about who we are as learners and participators in lessons and life.
I'm totally looking forward to next semester. Hopefully our department doesn't get the ax.

Last issue done!

Well folks, semester's end nears and we are all done with newspaper production for now. Next spring looks promising after this trial run of production. I think most everyone really stepped up and got the job done. I am so looking forward to winter break and then spring semester!

Nearing Semester's End

I am working on my final article for the Voice's Fall semester. I am going to be writing about the Sm. Scale Metals division of VAPA. Because it is a program I have been involved with over the last year, it is much easier to get involved, photograph and write on topic.
I will definitely be enrolling in this class again for Spring semester because writing for the paper is so dang gratifying, challenging and exciting....all rolled into one!

Byron Space Circus To Rock Halloween

Although they are not locally born and bred, they couldn’t fit in better in Santa Cruz, a city that encourages artistic expression and nourishes eccentric ideals and unconditional acceptance. The original crew of Byron Space Circus is made up of Chris Lynch, Jason Felten and Micah Ofstedahl hailing from Mankato, Minnesota. After these Minnesotan boys’ brief experience living the Humboldt lifestyle, and then bouncing back to Minneapolis before the trio migrated southwest once again and linked up with their fourth member, Ventura born drummer, Chanda Cummings.
I was fortunate enough to catch them during a Thursday evening practice in their studio off of Harvey West Boulevard. Before this interview I had seen them perform twice, both times feeling utterly excited and enlightened. The party I was fortunate enough to see them at is by far the best Santa Cruz house party I have ever been to, due mainly to their musical contribution and the vibrant energy they spread.
This was my first recorded interview as a Cabrillo journalism student and aspiring music journalist and my feelings of nervousness and excitement joined hand in hand to dance in a circle, totally diffusing one another. The crew welcomed me in warmly, poured me a glass of red wine and we lounged and talked for an over an hour, before I left and let them return to practicing their magical music.
These guys are anxious to go on tour again, and they are taking applications for promoters and producers who can also make a really solid and trustworthy friend. If I had stayed much longer that night I would’ve volunteered to do all of the above, for free.

Q. How long have you all been playing together?
Micah: 2 1/2 years with everybody.
Jason: Mike and I have been playing since we were ten. A little bit, jammin’ around.
Chris: It wasn’t the Byron space circus at age 10, we were just noodlin’ around together. College started the formation of the band in Mankato, Minnesota.
Jason: So we've been a band for six years.
Chris: We've had about 5 different drummers. It really hadn’t blossomed until we got out here, to Santa Cruz.

Q. What brought you all to Santa Cruz?
Jason: We never got really serious until we got out here. With school and jobs and, you know, it was always just playing bars for beers.
Chris: We finally feel like we’re giving it a full shot. It’s a whole lot more fun when your putting your energy into it to see what kind of new music can come, we used to do a lot more improv and jams, and now there’s a lot more songwriting go on.

Q. Where does your name come from?
Jason: When we were in college we lived on Byron Street. Bachelor pad, kind of crazy, you know, kind of a circus. We were freshmen in college, buncha dudes. So we played an open mic night and they wanted us to come back and play a weekend show. We weren’t officially a band, we didn’t have a name. The music at the time was spacey and jammy, the one song we had written at the time was a kind of like a circus song. The house was three ring circus but no nets, and just a great time. The name was just billed for the show. We didn’t even pick it; it was one of a few.
Micah: Space in music, space in music, and part of it was outer space and just our interest in all sorts of things, different meanings in the word space, not to get all deep on it. (Laughter) Small coincidental things coming at us involving space in different ways.

Q. And Byron Street was in what city?
Chris: Mankato, Minnesota.
Jason: 5 bedroom house, 3 stories for 8 hundred bucks, can you imagine that? Amazing. You can’t get a studio for eight hundred bucks here.

Q. How would you describe your music in words for someone who has never heard it before?
Chanda: No one has an answer.
Chris: You tell us.
Chanda: There’s the acoustic thing, then there’s the electric thing.
Chris: In the big picture it’s rock I guess, in the huge picture. To focus in on it a little more it might be definitely elements of funk.
Jason: Electro, synthesizers, but funk for sure, electro-funk with psychedelic elements.
Chris: There’s a lot of very distorted, dirty very dark stuff intertwined too. We can definitely be not as uplifting dance music as it can be sometimes. Dark heavy stuff.
Micah: And dark mellow stuff. Like Floyd. Not dark dark. Doesn’t necessarily mean it is dark, not that the lyrics are dark and sad.
Jason: That’s life though, you have good days and bad days, sometimes you wanna dance and sometimes you wanna cry. It’s fun to go see a show and be dancin’ the whole time, if you stick one or two just downer tunes, then once you come back to another funk tune it’s gonna be that much more funkier or happy. There’s no pain without pleasure.
Chanda: Introspective.
Chris: It’s like the sun and the moon. The ancients said the moon is cool and changing and the sun is always hot and constant.
Jason: On Myspace it says psychedelic lounge funk
Chris: It’d be boring playing in a band that played the same sound all the time.
Chanda: Our sound is still developing as musicians.

Q. What instruments do you all play?
Chanda: Drums.
Chris: keyboards, mandolin and acoustic violin.
Jason: Bass, upright and little synthesizer sampling stuff.
Chanda: Micah plays banjo
(laughs)
Chris: he loves the banjo
Michael: I’ll play a little riff for you
(plays a few keys)
Michael: Uh, just guitar. I’ll repeat. Just guitar.
Chanda: Chris and I sing.
Chris: Someday these guys will sing too.

Q. In a few words, what inspires you to play music everyday?
Chanda: The ‘what’s gonna happen next’ factor. This project is always changing, that’s inspiring to me. Keeps it interesting. Everybody is trying really hard to make something happen and that frontier is just waiting to unfold.
Chris: For me it’s kind of in two ways it the deepest form of exploring your subconscious, as far as introverted side. And on the other side of it is the deepest way of communicating with others. It’s fun. I love it. It’s an addiction.
Jason: It keeps me kinda sane. I don’t know what else I’d do. I’d just sit here and my brain would explode. Its just life, especially in the past five years. It’s a challenge.
Michael: money.
(laughter, hoots)
Chris: Here’s a good story, Michael outside the Mucky Duck in Monterey after a show. They gave us something like 400 dollars. We’re a bit lubricated, having a good time and he takes the money and chews it up in his mouth and it’s raining out and he just spits the money into the gutter. It created a river of money ready to go down the drain.
Jason: We retrieved most of it.
Michael: No, uh. I didn’t think of a serious answer. Well one thing I was thinking of today is just being at work inspires me to continue doing what I love so that I don’t have to do that kind of thing. So in a way that is related to money. That’s not what drives me but the more time I can spend doing this the better. It’s one way you can abstractly communicate with anybody.

Q. Any inspiring words to send to Cabrillo students about following their dreams?
Chris: Drop out of school.
Jason: Drop out of school and join a rock band.
Chris: No, school’s done some good for me. For sure.
Jason: Whatever makes you feel good, that’s what you should do.
Chris: take what you want from all the teachers and the books and the class but know what you want to do with it ultimately.
Chanda: Cabrillo is an awesome music school. It’s pretty incredible. People that are there know that.
Chris: And it’s affordable. I actually sat in on some music classes at Cabrillo until they finally did attendance. (laughs) I sat in, did a mini little test to see where were at, took some notes and learned some stuff. And actually out of it, I wrote a song that in some ways is connected to the chords that we were talking about in the class, so that was cool.

Q. You all seem to like dressing up in costumes, what’s the deal?
Jason: I think it was even before the BSC was even name. Byron Street we’d just have crazy funk parties where funk is pretty broad so whatever you thinks funk like 70s vintage or just looking crazy
Micah: Or gorilla costumes
Chanda: That’s why I responded to the Craigslist ad
Jason: Yeah, I think that was our ad: drummer, serious and wants to pursue this but you know-
Chanda: But here’s what we look like when we play
Jason: Yeah, keeps you from taking it to serious
Chanda: It escalates the show, we throw the box of hats out and it makes our job a lot easier. Cuz people just go there, they put a hat on and they go there.

Q. I know your playing a Halloween show, any particular costumes in mind?
Everyone: Oh yeah. We have a full collective plan.

Q. What musicians inspire you?
Chanda: I’m a big Phish fan.
Jason: Talking Heads, Radiohead, especially live.
Micah: What they said and then Pink Floyd.
Jason: Herbie Hancock’s pretty funky.
Chris: Billie Preston. But it’s all over the board. The Doors are really one of the first that got me into music. Beck. Zappa.
Micah: I wanna give Bob Dylan some love
Jason: He’s from Minnesota so that obviously hits a soft spot.

Q. How does living here in Santa Cruz shape your music and influence your sound?
Chanda: You can do whatever you want here.
Jason: Yeah, no matter what it is here you can do it full on. Whether it’s music or hiking or biking or surfing or kayaking or being a freak on Pacific. You’re pretty much free to do whatever. It’s an inspiring place, just that alone. But it is a bubble, for sure. Kind of a vacuum.
Chris: You can be weird and it’s accepted. And other people dig it. And it would be hard to be weird in a place where people didn’t know how to be weird.
Chanda: The hats might not go over so well in other place. They usually do though.
Chris: It’s a huge influence being in the natural world. It’s nice to be in such a beautiful day on top of the whole community and social aspect. The oceans, the redwoods. You can go up hwy 9 and get lost for a day and get inspired and then come back and maybe write a song.
Jason: We’re getting some roots. This is the longest place we’ve stayed as a band since we started.
Micah: There’s a lot of music here. There’s a lot of other bands on and around our level so there’s things aspire for and bands from this area to look up to.

Q. What was the first album you ever bought?
Chris: Doors, self titled. Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced?
Chanda: Oingo Boingo. I have a few years on these guys.
Jason: There was three I got in sixth grade from my older sister. Tool: Enema. Greenday: Dookie and Bone Thugs & Harmony Eternal 1999 or whatever.
Micah: Huey Luis & the News. I think the first random free for a dollar tape bin was Michael’s brother Jerome Jackson.
(Collective laughter)

Q. Who’s the producer?
Chanda: We’re self-produced. We have a demo CD but we have two cd’s in the mix.

Q. Are you looking to get signed by a major label?
Jason: Maybe, kinda. I mean the record industry seems kinda shotty. And people don’t really buy cd’s anymore. It’s all downloads, it’s all burned. I mean yeah, I’m sure we would if we got some good deal.
Chanda: And what’s it about? Is it about getting your name out there more? I guess that’s the value in it.
Chris: You have to put a lot of trust in whomever, and they need to be connected.
Chanda: I think the more valuable other entity to the band as far as administration goes would be a manager.

Q. Your sound is psychedelic; do drugs ever play a part in your musical process?
Chris: You can think of us a drug orientated band, of course we’re not. You can trust us. That’s a Pink Floyd quote.
Jason: We don’t practice or play live on drugs. Maybe a little ganja once in while. Not even that so much anymore. Drugs can be good, mind expanding, but everything in moderation. You can do that and then recollect yourself and then take something from that or not.
Chris: It’s definitely helped us get where we’re at.
Micah: It’s influence on what music you listen to is huge. It opens your mind to other music.
Chris: For us, growing up we’ve done psychedelics together. We were young; we had these very deep timeless experiences together that you will always have with you. It’s not like you think about them a lot but there are part of us.
Chanda: I’ve certainly seen a lot of music on psychedelics. A lot more than I’ve played. I haven’t really done it period, played on drugs. The drums are a very physical thing.
Jason: Yeah, it’s tough when your guitar neck turns into a noodle.
Micah: Bill Hick’s said best, “if you don’t think drugs have done a good thing in this world take all your albums and burn ‘em, cuz all those musicians were real f@%&in’ high.”

Make sure to check out the BSC live on Halloween, Friday, October 31st at the Crepe Place. If you can’t make that show, they’ll be performing at the Crow’s Nest on Thursday, November 20th. You can also hear their music at www.myspace.com/byronspacecircus

Dinner Review- Pino Alto

Tonight I will have dinner at the Cabrillo restaurant and then write a review for this week's paper. I finally have full smell back in both nostrils and will be able to really appreciate the various flavors. I intend to bust out the review tonight and tomorrow and have it in for revision by Wednesday night. More on this later......

Saul Williams Plans To "Slam" Santa Cruz

Hip-hop is the music of our generation. It is a musical reflection of our times, our issues, our hopes and fears. Hip-hop culture is apparent in modern television commercials and magazine advertisements. It is a recurring theme in contemporary music, art, film and fashion.
Attention Cabrillo hip-hop heads, an extraordinary artist, Saul Williams, will be performing later this month in Santa Cruz. His delivery of fresh rhymes and beats is not worth missing. This performer actively redefines the hip-hop revolution, incorporating social activism and blending his personal experiences of trials and tribulations with progressive idealism.
Williams encourages college students to strive and succeed during his visits to U.S. campuses. He collaborates with musicians to establish exciting, contemporary sounds. He performs alongside his enthusiastic 12 year-old-daughter. His voice is clear and melodic when he speaks of pain or promise.
As a practicing poet or “spoken word” artist, Saul explains that: “Poetry has a much longer oral tradition than it does literary. Many poets of ancient lore, such as the Greek Homer, were not read in their time (reading and writing was reserved for the very rich. Most of Greece was illiterate), people gathered to hear them speak. Like the griots and storytellers of ancient Africa, or the wandering philosophers and Sufies of the East, if most were alive today they would be called ‘spoken word artists.”

He was born Saul Stacey Williams, on February 29th, 1972, in Newburgh, New York. He is a poet, writer, actor and musician and is well known for his distinctive blend of poetry and alternative hip-hop. His music has been classified from hip-hop, spoken word, and poetry, to industrial, electronic, and alternative. On his myspace page he describes his music as being a blend of “postpunk/breakbeat/ghettotech.” Williams asserts that, genre definitions aside, “a lot of people get caught up on my lyrics and poetry, but my writing is always founded on beats and polyrhythmic backdrops.”
Williams received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Morehouse College in Atlanta and later completed his master’s degree in acting at NYU. During his time spent in New York City he found himself at the epicenter of the café poetry scene where he began to gain standing as a performer.

In 1995 Saul first established national recognition as a talented open mic poet. A year later he won the title of Nuyorican Poets Café’s Grand Slam Champion. Shortly thereafter he appeared in a documentary film entitled “SlamNation” that documents the Nuyorican Poets Slam team at the 1996 National Poetry Slam, held in Portland, Ore.

Saul starred as the lead role in the 1998 feature film “Slam” which chronicles the life of a young African American man whose social background has negative effects on his exceptional poetic talent. Despite his attempts to escape the pressures of drugs and violence he is arrested during a drug deal and sentenced to prison. During his imprisonment he participates in writing classes where he is encouraged to develop his already strong talents. When he leaves prison he is able to convince his friends to quit drug dealing. He then performs at a poetry slam where he delivers an unforgettable performance.
“Slam” won the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Price for a Dramatic Film and the Cannes Camera D’Or (Golden Camera). The film gained international audiences and acclaim. Since then, Williams has continued to write and act in films.

Over the years he has performed with Nas, The Fugees, Christian Alvarez, Blackalicious, Erykah Badu, KRS-One, Zack De La Rocha, De La Soul, and DJ Krust. He has also performed with legendary poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez.
In 2001 he released “Amethyst Rock Star” with producer Rick Rubin. In 2004 he released his self-titled album. In summer 2005 he went on a European tour in support of Nine Inch Nails and Mars Volta. That same year he performed at the Lollapalooza festival.
He appeared on NIN’s album “Year Zero,” and continued supporting them in their 2006 North American tour. Soon after, Williams announced his plans to co-produce a new album with Trent Reznor of NIN. Speaking of his relationship, he said that Reznor “has become the big brother I never had, offering his insight, expertise, and shared desire to fuck up the system while believing fully in the power of music and the intelligence of the masses.”
This partnership produced Williams’ latest album, “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust,” a title which faced criticism for it’s racially infused ring. In response he said “I’ve also thought long and hard about all the discussion surrounding racial epithets etc. and chose this title as a means of furthering the dialogue while also showing how creativity will outlive and outshine hatred of any kind.”

Aside from being an exceptional poet and singer, his writings have been published in the New York Times, Esquire, Bomb Magazine and African Voices. He has released four collections of poetry including a book of poems entitled “Said The Shotgun To The Head.” As a poet and musician he has toured and lectured worldwide. He guest speaks at college and university campuses around the country. Williams is a vocal critic of the Bush administration, the War on Terrorism, and the Iraq War. He has written some anti-war anthems, among the more well known of which are “Not In My Name,” and “Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare).”

Saul’s career as a jack-of-all-trades is a mirror of the increasingly common trend of movie stars pursuing musical careers, and musician’s crossing over into the acting limelight. “It’s not that I balance [those arts] out, all the different arts balance me out. So, that there is a certain type of emotion that is more easily accessible through music than poetry…. Some things are meant to be written, some are meant to be sung, some things are meant to be hummed, some things are made to be yelled, and so that’s just how life works.”

Saul married Marcia Jones, an art professor at Clark Atlanta University and had a daughter, Saturn Williams, in 1996. They later divorced and in 1998 he remarried to Persia White, a member of the industrial alternative rock band, XEO3. Saul Williams lives in Los Angeles and is currently on tour. For more information and to hear Saul’s music check out www.saulwilliams.com, www.myspace.com/saulwilliams, www.niggytardust.com. If you’re interested in having Saul come speak at Cabrillo please call The American Program Bureau at 1-800-225-4575.

First Music Interview Tonight!!!

I have an interview this evening at 7pm with the Byron Space Circus, a local musical group. Very excited, nervous, etc. I am working on coming up with some good questions and this will be my first interview with a tape recorder. I need to buy myself a tape recorder.