Starry Skemes live at Adobe 4/12/25
Thanks to all who came out to the Adobe to share and participate in this musical experience. Marina played a great set dueted with Kevin Van Yserloo on violin. Starry Skemes had a great heartfelt trance inducing and fun set. It was a pleasure. Thanks to Tom Scharff for stagehanding and recording and Jonnie Fellmen for hosting!
Just got this baby back from the shop and immediately wrote a new verb soaked shoegaze waterbed of a riff. I got it at Steve’s Music World in Santa Cruz back in the mid 90’s for $150 (without the original cabinet). This new cab has been outfitted with a pair of 8″ Celestions. This amp has seen a lot of action over the years live with Static Faction and was the sole amp used on the first Rabbles LP back in 2004 as well as the Farfisa/Leslie speaker amp. It may make it out to a Starry Skemes gig soon. Kind of a little delicate and has been in the shop many times over the years and behind the panel my repair guys tell me grave stories of a real rats nest of wires, tubes and electronic components.
Noise Star Live at Starcleaners 10/95 & the Guild Theater, Sacremento 12/95
Bob Bradley and I have a long musical history going back to our nascent trippy high school days then off to college in Virginia where we alienated all the hippies with our noise experiments. The experiment continued in San Francisco circa around 1995 when we were joined first by Jen Shagawat on drums and vocals and later Jen Haller on “mystery guitar” and Dawn Thomas on bass, guitar and vocals. We used to jam a lot and eventually wrote some songs. Here is one of each of the aforementioned styles. Dream Smiles, written by Bob, is probably my favorite Noise Star composition. Halo was one of our reoccurring psychedelic dreamscape improvisations. Again, thanks to Todd at Todd’s Tapes for all the work shooting, editing and posting all these vids.
Static Faction live at Bottom of the hill, 4/30/98
These old Static Faction vids were shot by Starclearners videographer Todd whose YT Channel is called Todd’s Tapes. I had not seen many of these vids before. I was too busy living the life at the time. When you’re in the middle of it sometimes you can’t see it. I think these two are my faves of the collection. Ritual Instance was our psych/noise dream experiment and New Years Day/She Gives Me were also noisey and loose, but reflecting back I guess I’d call them indie prog! The band was pretty eclectic combining searing noise, catchy riffs, melodies and frenetic punk trauma. This is the second incarnation of the band with Jen Shagawat, Dan Miskulin, Curt Hausamann and me.