I just finished recording a new song. For now I’m calling it "One Two Three", but I might change the title later. It’s sort of based on an old demo from back in the Noise Tank (lovesyou) days, but it’s definitely a Numbers Game track now. I’ll post the old demo cause its fun and I like it a lot. I sort of think of it as the early beginnings of Numbers Game. I’m not going to post the finished version just yet cause I still want to mix and tweak a bit. Right now I’m taking a break, then I’ll come back to it. It might be a few weeks.

I’m also shooting a new music video this week for a new song called "The Song Song". I’m also working on episode two of You Should Be Throwing Parties which will highlight the ins and outs of throwing an art party at your house. This episode will be really cool because I get to show how I premiered the video for "Love Dreams Love". I don’t want to give anything away, but it involves a toilet and a lot of flashing lights.

The weather in San Francisco still feels alien to me. The sky here often turns purple and pink. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in one of those films Disney made in the 60s that depicted how man might live if he colonized another planet. The other day there was a rainbow outside for like 4 hours. It was weird and incredible.

Hey also for the next two weeks, the local Bay Area community arts TV show Watch This! will be playing the Love Dreams Love video. It will air Mondays @ 10pm on Ch 27, Thursdays @ 11pm on Ch 27, and Saturdays at 12midnight on Ch 75 for the next two weeks on the Comcsat and Astuond. I’m pretty pumped about it. The local programming here in the Bay Area is easily the best television I have ever seen in my life. I’d like say thanks to Jody and everyone else who makes it happen.

I would like to proudly present “Cold Cold Cold”, the latest song from Numbers Game. It is by far the most delicate and elaborate song I have so far released. I wrote, performed, and recorded the whole thing by myself in my bedroom. The final mix has a several hundred different simultaneous tracks. I have posted more accurate production notes on the music page. It’s definitely a new direction for me, but after finishing it, I realized that I have been heading this way the whole time. I hope you have as much fun listening to it as I had making it.

BTW If you really like high quality sound, be sure to grab that FLAC. I saved it directly from my master file at 32bit with a 48KHz sample rate. That means the audio is not only way better quality than MP3, its even way better quality than CD or DVD. Be sure to listen on a good player like VLC. The file is around 50megs, so it might take a few minutes to download.

This is a new video project of mine. Essentially I’d just like to see more parties. I think people waste too much time on passive entertainment. There is over 6.5 billion people alive right now, and I think that nobody should ever be bored, lonley, or in search of "something to do". The host of episode 1 is my friend Brooke Candy who does a monthly party called "free candy". Basically she is going to show people how they too can throw a really good show. Every episode will feature a different person who throws a different party. I’m trying to get episodes 1-3 done by sometime this summer. I’ll definitely be posting updates on this as they happen. Until then, if you live in the the San Francisco bay area, have an HD camera, and like to party, lol, please get a hold of me. I think this is going to be one of those projects that’s going to be too big for me to take on by myself, and I definitely would like to do some stuff in HD.

For more info on Brooke, Free Candy, and other stuff, you should also see Brooke Candy’s Tumblr

I’m showing some work tonight in a film screening put on by Spencer Keeton Cunningham at the San Francisco Art Institute. Lots of cool stuff will be shown. Come if ya can. For more info see the Indigenous Arts Coalition site.

My friends Tucker Bennett and Zach Shipko made a feature length movie that chronicles the trials and tribulations of an art school student making his way through the world. The first thing you notice about “Why Are You Weird” is the outstandingly radical LoFi visual aesthetic. They went out of their way to bring audiences the best, most premium quality fuzz. Much of it was shot on VHS and edited using vintage equipment. It’s interesting that although everything in the movie is modern (cell phones, internet humor), is has this dreamy warm glow of timelessness. I give “Why Are You Weird” two thumbs way up plus extra bonus points for the original score by composer Van Diesel. The score includes MIDI renditions of early 2000s radio hits like “Thong Song” and “Crossroads” (also be sure to check out the song in the closing credits, which is one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in a while).

What’s cool about it for me personally is that I go to the same school, parks, and places that this movie was shot, and I think Tucker and Zach really captured this moment in time. Unless you’re in SFAI, or the Mission, or whatever, you might not appreciate how perfectly they captured life here and now, but they nailed it. I don’t know how relevant that would be to you if you’re not in San Francisco, or don’t plan to be, but if you’re curious, everything right here right now seems to have this brooding silliness about it that you can’t quite put your finger on, but comes across really well in this movie. I should also mention that you might also recognize some of the same people that helped me with my Love Dreams Love video. Actually I think almost everybody in my video is in this movie including the film makers (That’s Tucker in the wizard hat and moon mask, and Zach who smashes that adding machine after the solo).

It also got a really nice write up in Interview Magazine. The whole movie is spliced into 10 parts and is available on YouTube.

This is a video made by some buds of mine Erlin Geffrard and Spencer Cunningham, they both wrote & recorded the song, then shot the video all in one week. They both totally nailed the warm LoFi vibe. Also in this video in the pink wig is friend Kelli Ryan who you might recognize from her smashing performance (get it… smashing) in my Love Dreams Love video. This is guaranteed to make you feel good. Try watching 5 times, it makes you feel 5 times as good.

Also check out some of Spencer’s other films. He’s done everything from documentaries to skate videos, all of which have that really warm dreamy LoFi aesthetic to them.

Meet Mouth Sounds. They were friends of mine back in Detroit. I thought I’d post it cause it’s one of my favorite records, and it’s been heard by all of maybe 150 people. I’m not sure how to describe it. I guess if you think Lydia Lunch is cool, this is going to annihilate you. I really wanted the singer Renee to be the new singer in Noise Tank (lovesyou), and although we even got around to practicing a bit, I had committed to moving to San Francisco.

"This is not a demonstration" was self-released in 2006 I think. It was recorded at this DIY venue/space/studio/flop house for punx called the A.C. Rich Building located in Pontiac Michigan. They only played a few shows in Pontiac and Flint, I don’t even think they made it down to play in Detroit. Mouth Sounds broke up shortly after they recorded the EP. This is one of those records that risks being lost to the sands of time, so if you like it, I’m sure they won’t mind if you share it with your friends.

Click here to download the full Mouth Sounds album "This is not a demonstration"

It’s the Noise Tank (lovesyou) EP. It’s short. It’s fast. It’s for sale at iTunes but I’m giving it away for free. Maybe you’re wondering… why the iconoclastic business decision Doc? Well its simple, I released it to be heard and I think giving it away will increase the number of people who hear it. Feel free to share, post, or whatever.

Money is great, but hey, I didn’t do it for the money. As much as I’d love to have your four bucks, I’d rather not let that stand in the way of anybody hearing it. Although it’s literally costing me money, I consider giving it away for free to be a worthwhile personal investment. Maybe you’ll really enjoy it. Maybe you’ll get up out of your seat and dance to it. Maybe you’re at work, and when that first songs picks up tempo, you’ll start slam dancing right there at the office… who knows… go nuts! That’s why I’m giving it away.

You can find info on it here at it’s page on Focus Media,
the Noise Tank (lovesyou) myspace,
and the crazy band personal site for it.

Basically it was be and a bunch of my friends on different instruments. I released it myself as I always do… I mean I literally released out of my bedroom. I didn’t really expect it to go anywhere, but it got all these write ups in these big magazines, and it got all this radio play and stuff. For a super tiny little indie release, I’d say that was pretty successful. But that was way back in 2005, and to be honest, I’m sick of talking about it. The actual physical CD’s are sold out, and I’m doing Numbers Game now, and the whole thing feels over.
So…. enjoy Noise Tank (lovesyou)…. For free!!!

As always – If you like it – share it with friends!
Even a convenient Zip file. Oh my.

George Kuchar, an amazing film maker and a former teacher of mine just got a nice article in Vice. Cccccheck it out

The debut Numbers Game video for “Love Dreams Love” on Vimeo.

Written and Directed by Doc.
Produced by Doc.
Photography Doc.
Editing & Post-Production Doc.
Music by Numbers Game.

The Dreamers: Tucker Bennett, Chris Corrente, Ray Lordi, Naomi Larrick, Kelli Ryan, Zach Shipko, Taeer Maymon, Eric Wilson, Jeff Lee, Orion Ananda, & Doc.

Numbers Game is: Doc (vocals, all instruments & production)

Extra special thanks to Tucker Bennett, Katie Sell, Erlin Geffrard, Joseph Michael, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Urban Ore Berkley for providing me with truck loads of junk on the cheap.

Production notes: Shot entirely with a Canon GL1. The lo-fi effects were achieved by re-recording and re-shooting footage off of an old circuit bent VCR. It was shot entirely at the San Francisco Art Institute’s Studio 8 and in the Focus Media tree house.

I wanted to come up with a video that complements the lyrics and feel of the song. I didn’t want to act the song out in any way, but provide a sort of visual accompaniment. I think my lyrics in Love Dreams Love are pretty simple and to the point, so I also thought the video should be simple and to the point. I started by writing down the most obvious way to approach the project: "everybody feels alone and we’re neck deep in junk". I had a lot of ideas about the best way to visually express that. All of them were pretty complex, most of them were too complex for me to pull off, and none of them felt right. After a few days it literally came to me in a dream, "smashing stuff!". Although it’s ridiculously simple, I think it’s the best way to get the idea across. I find that in life you have to remove a lot of debris before you get to anything good, but since digging for something good is all anyone can do to occupy themselves, you might as well try.

The only other thing I wanted to say about this project is that making a song and a video can seem like a daunting task. Conventional wisdom will tell you that you need money, film experts, a record label, a recording studio, and industry people for moral support. You don’t! I would like to say to anyone out there who’s like me, this is just one more example of someone who did it for themselves, and you can too.

Apart from the smashing you see my friends doing, I did everything else on my own. I shot it, I directed it, edited it, I moved junk around, I cleaned up, and I even circuit bent a VCR for those lo-fi special effects. I did the music too. I sang, played guitar, bass, piano, drums, and all the synth stuff. The best part is that I didn’t have to wait for other band members to show up. I work usually late at night in a small apartment on my own time. I’m free to do what I want, how I want, and I’ve never been restricted or micromanaged by a record label. In case anybody has had any doubts, you really can do it yourself, and it’s easier than you think. Until just 10 years ago, you used to have to buy expensive equipment to do this stuff, but now all you need to be an autonomous one person media mogul is a pile of cheap computer components, maybe a guitar, and an idea. Go for it.

Let me start right after I released the Noise Tank (lovesyou) ep. I was living in Detroit’s Boydell building. It’s basically the first Dodge motor plant, and these skeezy people opened a pizza restaurant and a strip club on the ground floor, and rented out the other floors as cheap loft space. So I had basically half a story of a 110 year old former car plant to myself and my roommates and I fucking loved this place. We dubbed it "the Bunker". I threw a lot of great parties, recorded a lot of music, and had a lot of fun here. Check out these pictures.

But everything sort of fell apart towards the end. I decided to move to San Francisco cause the school I was going to began sucking real bad and a lot of my friends had already moved away. During the last 12 months or so in Detroit, like everything unraveled and barely got anything done other than just staying afloat. One of the major catastrophes was with the plumbing at the bunker. There were I think 5 stories above where we were, and all except for one were uninhabited and all locked up. What began happening is that somehow somewhere the sewage began backing up into the drains above us. So basically the bathtubs above us began filling up with raw untreated Detroit sewage and then began spilling over. Now of course with the age of this building, everything but the outside walls were wood, so where sewage fell, is exactly where it began dripping down from floor to floor. So me and my roommates were running around trying to cover records and my equipment and everything with plastic as its literally raining sewage everywhere. I know what you’re thinking “well shit happens lol”. Kind of sort of, but this wasn’t the first time. This would happen every few months with increasing severity. The slumlords refused to do anything about it. They wouldn’t hire a plumber, they wouldn’t clean it up, nothing. To illustrate how bad it was, we had all these ceiling fans, and when you turned them on, the shit that has dribbled down to the top of the blades would fly everywhere. The shit literally hit the fan. Like this is not the most ideal environment to write music and run a label and make art.

For two years this place was perfect. It was big at over 2,000 sq ft and it was in the central downtown hub of Detroit right in Bricktown at the edge of Greektown. You could do what you want, when you want, as loud as you want. Detroit remember is a city built for I think 5 million which is presently inhabited by under 900,000. The police force there is so understaffed that its basically an anarchy state. You can do basically anything you want, there aren’t many rules. If you wanted to go on a major crime spree or something, the police will definitely show up and be pretty hardcore about it. But anything short of that is fair game, run red lights all day everyday, rob little old ladies leaving church, or in my case, throw large parties right out of your home. Whatever no problem. I had my studio area was sectioned off with chain link fencing which created a cage in one corner of the bunker bigger than most Manhattan apartments. Should someone’s party on the other side of town get broken up or something, my place could go into insta-rave mode as easily as hitting the button for the sound system and moving the good couch into the cage.

But that’s the least of the reasons I miss the Bunker and downtown Detroit. I felt like I had won in that place. I felt like this was my Bunker and from here I can machine gun my thoughts at the world. I remember my best friend and roommate Denis had slowly acquired a pile of old TVs for a project he was working on. I remember one day he called me and said that he’s giving the project up and he doesn’t even want to see those TVs anymore and asked me if I could get rid of them. So since the alley with the dumpster was right below our window, it made a lot more sense to just chuck them out the window that it did to carefully carry each one down the stairs. So me and my two other roommates Jim and Kara began throwing these TVs out the window. When they hit the pavement a story below, they made the sound of a shotgun because of the imploding ray tube. So we throw a TV out and BOOM it implodes, and another TV and BOOM it implodes. After 10 or 15 TV’s eventually one of the casino cops stationed at the Greektown casino runs over like “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?!” we were like “oh we’re just throwing these TVs out the window” he was like “so those sounds were TV’s and not shotguns!?!”, “yes officer”, “oh well I guess that’s alright, I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a lunatic over here with a shotgun”. So as the cop stood there sort of laughing we threw another TV out the window. BOOM! And another. BOOM And another. BOOM! It was great! I think he got a real kick out of it too. There was just a giant pile of glass and toxic shit in the alley. It was beautiful.

Needless to say, my days then were blessed with a lot of little dystopian adventures like that. I had a pretty good lifestyle. I would go to work or school for a bit, come home and make music and art, and if I needed a little break from it for an hour or two, something like that always seemed to happen. Then I would go back to making music. This chaos seemed sustainable. I mean, that’s exactly how things were for two years straight.

Even the weather was nice. The summers in Greektown were muggy and smelly, but the winters were really cozy cause most of downtown Detroit is still on the 100 year old shard steam heating. So when the steam kicks on for downtown, it kicks on for a group of buildings at a time. All the old buildings would inhale and exhale like a large gentle mammal. Everything had a healthy hiss, pop and clunk when it came on. Some parts of a room would remain cold yet mysteriously as humid as a sauna, while others would be dry as a bone and like 80 degrees. It sort of created a separation between who lived downtown in the steam heat section and who didn’t. Cause you would go over to a friends place and you would be like “oh, you live in a magical breathing building too”, while others were dammed with these blasphemous gas contraptions that radiated heat with no heart. It was like me and my friends has all formed a little residential community were we all lived in the belly of living sperm whales for the winter.

You could tell which was which cause the heat of the steam pipes that ran in the sewer lines would heat the swears above 100 degrees, so all of downtown Detroit’s swears powerfully blow steam all winter. You would think that the steam would smell bad, which it sort of did, but it was a very subtle comfortable smell. They were dangerous to walk over though as some of the sewers blew up steam with the force and heat to cause 1st degree burns. It was easy to develop a disdain for anybody who could live like that, but simply choose not to. Remember that the city of Detroit sometimes doesn’t plow or shovel snow, so when you would get in from walking in snow up to your knee, and you’ve lost feeling up to your thigh, and all you know is that your hips are really tired, and you needed to feel something safe and know that you’re being cared for, it was like the building itself would sort of mother you right as you walked in the door by greeting you with a sauna.

Anyhow after the plumbing catastrophe, I had to get out of there. It was filthy and it was making me sick. Besides I was moving to SF soon anyhow. I mean it was almost totally sustainable. But the thing that ultimately ruined my little lifestyle were the fundamental problems with the infrastructure. Even if the power fails, even if there’s no heat, even if there are crazy men running around attacking people with yard rakes, you can still get by. But you cannot, under any circumstance, have sewage come up where it’s supposed to go down. That’s when things fall apart.

This is a pretty cool little documentary XLR8R did on Detroit Ghettotech (or booty). I was basically born and raised on this stuff. It’s pretty much the coolest music in the world. Every Friday and Saturday night in Detroit this is THE sound of the city, and its been like that since I can remember. Like almost every big cultural thing from Detroit, its a way of life there, but almost nobody anywhere else knows anything about it. …except I heard its getting popular in France now or something. Hey also happy 4th of July.