The Music Factory

So I go to the weekly beer hour at work and end up meeting this guy, James. A typical story, scientist seeking fame and glory wakes up one day to realize that he has no life other than his precious Farscape. And so, seeing life drifting by, he resolves to pick up a bass, join a band, play music, and wash that science right out of his hair. That was a couple of years ago.

Two or three bands later, James is in San Francisco. New job, new city, new apartment and in desperate need of a new band. After a timid posting to www.craigslist.org, James hooks up with a couple of soulful real-estate agents and before you know it, they are jamming and doing gigs, occasionally. Along with thousands of bands in the Bay Area. If there is one thing that defines San Francisco entertainment, it is the music scene. So far, I've seen punk bands (one of which was from Boston) retro 80's, girl punk, diy garage, english screamers, electronica and countless bland dj's. I live with a room-mate who played drums but now runs a tiny music label, my other room-mate is a graphic designer who makes snazzy band posters bands (http://www.urbaninks.com/). It turns out that all their friends are musicians. Venues here are plentiful with many triple acts (and as Meatloaf says, "2 out of 3 ain't bad"), and when me and my roomies go see some local band, I find that the bass guitarist/keyboard/drummer was once the room-mate/girlfriend/bassists/sex-slave for another band that they were in. I guess it's some kind of travelling singing salesmen problem. Or at least real-estate agents in James' case.

So I get talking with James, and feel itchy to play. (Disclosure: I was in a crappy high-school band, spending way too much time searching for that killer guitar pose, and strumming stairway to heaven in front of an imaginary pre-pubesent teenage female crowd). James' band, it turns out, is a cover band, and they're serious - i.e. practicising the same songs until they get it perfect. Well, I just wanted to play/improvise and so before you can say, are-you-a-try-hard-musician, we've organised a jam at James' rehearsal studio.

I arrive at warehouse in an industrial. It is a large box building, a no-frills warehouse. We go inside and the inside has been converted into about 30 or 40 cubicles, soundproofed. Each one, a little enclosure, an egg, an embryo. Some kind of cosmic music chicken has layed little square white eggs where future bands of America are incubating. Incubating is the right word because it's hot in that little studio, sound-proofed and black, it is a perfect heat trap.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've mucked around with music equipment - there's a whole drum-set, mikes, stands, amplifiers. Unfortunately, I'm still stuck with my cheap-ass folk guitar that I brought in Brussels. We try to mike this up but it makes such a weak sound, that it is all but inaudible when someone bangs on the drum. But I am back, making music and dreaming once again of adulating audiences.

Walking around the inside of building, one can hear dulled leakage of sounds from all the other cubicles, leaking like distilled dreams, the desires of the musicians barely contained.