...be in our band...
...be in our $%#*ing band...
"Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician."
-Kurt Vonnegut-
BE IN OUR BAND. BE IN OUR FUCKING BAND.
That was the headline pissing out on me from the music page on Craigslist.
There are many ways to start and/or end up in a band. My first band started because my mom bought me a keyboard and for two years it sat and stared at me and my doofy friends alone and unplayed. Bored out of our gourd vaping video games where you drove missles like cars we asked ourselves, what can we do with that thing? Four hours and five neon surge sodas later we had our answer. Make terrible, noodling, out of tune cacophony.
Rock and #$%*ing roll.
The second band I ever played in was largely an excuse to wear a thong and bird mask in public. My third band was a weird first date. The fourth band was an accidental Sunday brunch gone bad. The fifth band was an excuse to wear a closet full of costumes. The sixth band was classic navel gazing self obsession (this band was a solo project). The seventh band was an attempt to make pop music while drinking cold PBR and forgetting about day jobs. The eighth band was supposed to be a TV show about magic. The ninth band was a band about being in bands. The tenth band broke up because we couldn’t agree on a band name (...the band might have been named DONDY…).
Holed up in a phone booth at an office that looked like software I was looking for band number eleven.
I was, depressed, anxious and wondering what the butt I was doing with myself. Depression is an odd duck. Orange billed and wet feathered alone on a lake thinking “quack quack quack”. What the duck I thought to myself. I was sad like most anyone in an office job might be, because my day to day had forgotten to press play. I felt like a chafed ass. I felt like strangled dick. My mind was a pounding pus of sparkling whine.
Alone in that phone booth, staring at a screen of daydreamed connections, I remembered my happy. A headline threw a broken beer bottle at my brain.
BE IN OUR BAND. BE IN OUR FUCKING BAND.
Rock and #%$^ing roll.
"Without music, life would be a mistake."
-Friedrich Nietzsche-
BE IN OUR BAND. BE IN OUR FUCKING BAND.
The Musicians Wanted section of Craigslist offers a fine variety of musical choices: drum in my semi-experimental salty krautrock project (must be available to practice six and a half nights a week, twice a week). Play bass in my Bangs & Bangles cover band (must walk like an Egyptian, cut hair). Sing in my Swedish Scottish Doom Death Metal group (must sound like a muppet meth elf, can sing herp-dee-durr).
I hadn’t played in a band in a year. My creativity got crusty from the disappointment of collaboration. I loved being in bands, but hated not being in them, and every band I was in kept breaking up. Thank god there isn’t a musician’s tinder or would I have been really fucked (and yes, that is a fucking joke). My soul tinkled.
But rock and roll had saved my soul before.
Years prior in a bout of deep sadness brought upon by staring at a lobster tank, I remembered that headbanging felt ridiculous and I was saved. Later on a bad mushroom trip spun out from a large painting of Bette Midler, I listened to WuTang Clan and I was saved. One summer, under a bridge near a dead pelican’s nest, I saw a one man band play a two dollar & 44 minute piccolo version of Dark Star. I was saved.
For every bad job, bad relationship, bad decision or bad day, rock and roll was there to save me. Whether it was making music, or being surrounded by it, life was radical as long as I was listening and participating in it.
Alone in the silent beige phone booth, a blinking white and blue screen flopping classified information into my eyes, I was ready to be saved again. And there it was, between an ad seeking a lead bassist for a Beatles comedy cover band called “Paul McFartney” and a post seeking keys for a Huey Lewis inspired 80’s tribute act called “The Fake News”.
BE IN OUR BAND. BE IN OUR FUCKING BAND.
The ad said nothing else. It didn’t need to. Be in our band. Be in our fucking band. The message was clear. They wanted me to be in their band. To be in their fucking band. I could do that. I could be in a band. I could be in a fucking band.
So I wrote the man-beasts on the other side of the screen, and said “hey I’m a hippy, a hipster, or maybe just a toaster. I can sing and play sax.” And like a sonic superman I emerged from the phone booth a simple Clark Kent again, ready to fill spreadsheets and make metadata (except superman does so reversely, no matter).
I was super, man. I could rock again. And like a great rockstar I colored the rows and columns of my QC report and waited for an email to come back to my purple yahoo inbox.
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
-Aldous Huxley-
So this is how I maybe kind of sort of ended up in band number eleven.
The band is called HRIF. Our first record is called HNEFATAFL.
Hear is the music.
Hear is a link to the lyrics and album art.
Only 99 copies of the record are available. If you want to see us live we are playing a record release show at Winters Tavern in Pacifica CA on May 15th 2024 at 8PM.
The band is three dudes. Mark plays drums. Tom plays bass. I sing (sometimes sax too). I’d like to tell you the story of how Tom met Mark, and Mark met Tom, but instead I had them do that down below (things are more honest this way — I might have accused them of meeting on Duolingo).
To patronize music is to become music. When you listen to this record we will be inside of you. And in that way you will be our band. So…
BE IN OUR BAND. BE IN OUR FUCKING BAND.
"The only truth is music."
-Jack Kerouac-
HOW MARK MET TOM || (written via text by drummer Mark from HRIF)
So I went to Coachella in 2011
And the hot shit announcement that year was that Death From Above 1979 (the band that did “Right On, Frankenstein!”) was reuniting
They did their first reunion show at SXSW and it turned into a literal riot
Coachella was the second
So I knew it would be really tough to get down front, so I showed up hella early for the act before them so I could rush down front as soon as they finished
And I ended up next to this motherfucker in a head-to-toe bunny suit
Since we were so early we had like an hour to kill
And started talking about music
And he was like my long-lost musical twin
We geeked out about everything— not just Death from Above, but Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, really obscure shit in that world
And I definitely wanted to keep in touch by my phone was almost dead so I gave him my business card (lol)
And during the show he crowd surfed and I never saw him again and he didn’t get in touch
So I was bummed because it was like finding your identical twin and then they disappear
Fast forward a year to the subsequent Coachella
I’m there under the most awkward possible circumstances— my soon-to-be ex-wife and I bought tickets together and then broke up but still wanted to go
So here I am sharing a bed with the woman I’d already broken up with
But we basically went our own separate ways all day
And I went to another show and way on the other side I see this dude in a head-to-toe unicorn costume, again in all white
And I’m like, that has to be the same fucking guy
So I go over and sure enough it is, and he remembers me too
So this time I get his number
And I just happen to end up with a job that sends me to SF every now and then for work
So I call him up, he takes me to Tommy’s Joynt and we jam
And it’s fucking great
The next time we jam and I had come straight from work and I’m sweating through my clothes, had smashed my knuckles and my jeans are all spattered in blood, and we go out drinking and chat up everyone in town
And I’m like, who the fuck IS this guy
Anyway that’s the story. I moved here in 2014 and we started jamming on the regs
"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence."
-Robert Fripp-
HOW TOM MET MARK || (aka Mark Marks the Spots as written via e-mail by Bassist Tom from HRIF)
Remember that fuzzy feeling that can encased your whole body and mind when you first met The Bearded Dude in the desert?
50% of that feeling was from the scuzzy, festival-caked homemade pink bunny suit, eating you from every one of your outsides as it morphed inward. The other 100% of that feeling was from the Thompson-esque lifestyle that allowed you spotted blots of clarity throughout each day, just enough to grant the ability to start talking to The Bearded Dude.
Maybe again?:
Mark probably initiated the conversation, both because it is his natural wont and because too many many many other people at the festival had done the same. My natural state is to reply candidly and happily - it was an instant hit.
No way we know will ever help me remember the actual X Y Z & T of this first meeting. Mark may have asked what drugs i had, but if he did, it's at least in part because he's the type of person who recognizes that everyone else already asked... and isn't it funny to ask The Pink Bunny in the hot sunny the same question, honey?
While we waited under the tent with thousands of others we bonded while Venn-diagramming about Music and the stories Music bequeathed upon us.
As the show started, at some point Mark gave me his business card so we could keep in touch. Rad.
360-some-odd days later:
Unicorn suit that was once white but gradually became camouflaged with the festival. Waiting somewhere for something for some reason. Out of the constant of a blurbling festival comes, "Hey. Hey, Unicorn. Were you The Pink Bunny last year? You never called!" It was Mark! Note, he was not the only person to state similar statements to Unicorn, formerly known as The Pink Bunny.
We chatted again about last year and realize i put his business card in the first place i found - the outside pockets of last year's suit. Then i moshed and crowdsurfed pretty aggressively at DFA1979's set in that suit.
This time, i threw his card INSIDE Unicorn.
"Time has passed."
-Huell Howser-
Steph and i kept in touch with Mark, leading to a hang and jam next time Mark made his way to The Bay (where Steph and i lived at rhe time). I forget if we all partied the same day that ended in Mark and myself jamming at my music space in the TL or if party night and jam night were separate, but we went there.
As we found our way to the Tenderloin and her ugly-beautiful, shit-jizz-piss-riddled sidewalks and doorknobs, meth-gunked air, and cranky constituents, Mark apologized that he hadn't played drums in years so this should be an event of no note, just funsies with no pretense.
The joy was too obvious after he was tired from slingin' heat on the skins. Kyuss is heavy and drums can hurt when you correctly play those songs.
Next time he was in town, same.
Eventually, Mark moved out to SF and we started routinely clanking and clunking our way toward the hits we have today. Mark is also the responsible party who put out the now-infamous CansaFis call to "...join our fucking band!"
Once there was an elusive Fis joining our crew, we could finally, properly start the process of recording demo tracks live and direct to the shoe phone.
The rest is another one of history's blistery mysteries. *dzzzzzt!*
Enjoyably,
-Tom-
Fis - feel free to edit the tenses. This happened, it isn't happening. I think.
PLEASE LISTEN TO OR BUY OUR MUSIC —{}||—>—> HRIF - HNEFATAFL
"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything."
-Plato-
…special thanks to , Mark on Drums, and Tom on Bass for your edit assistance on this article…kudos to Bart Thurber and House of Faith Studios for your stellar recording, producing, and mixing…gracias to JJ Golden and Golden Mastering for making us sound shiny and mastered…props to Gotta Groove Records for making the vinyl records…great eye to Patrick Perkins for all your perfect promo photos (and pictures of pie)…magic wands to Alex Theodoropulos the wizard who made our the killer album art (and whose music rules)…a crown tip to Jamie McCathie for the album cover concept work and splendid videography…and cold beers and cheers to Sam Lemons, Paul Middleton, and myself for the top-notch video edit on Dorodango…
…thank you for reading what i write…i would be wrong without you…i hope you enjoy listening to our rock and #$%*ing roll…let me know what you think about anything…
The "how mark met tom" and "how tom met mark" sequences make up what is probably the most unique origin story of any project or group I've ever heard of.
Love this CansaFis. And Michelle’s so right on the awesome origin story.
Congrats man (: