greetings from San Francisco. took the usual drive up the I-5 from Los Angeles to San Francisco last night. saw the usual panorama of redneck towns and slaughterhouses. smelled the usual fragrance of cow manure. a starving musician’s salary affords me not airfare.

the bay area music scene has matured vastly since i’ve last lived here (union city, born and raised). when i lived here last,  electronic music was the name of the game here, as it had been for a good decade. bad house and acid jazz seemed to be the only music coming out of san Francisco. things have changed. the number of good rock bands are ol’ plenty, as bands like Rogue Wave, Two Gallants, Birdmonster, BRMC, and Film School (there are many more) carry the banner for bay area rock and roll. there are also many solid Asian-American fronted bands like The Morning Benders, Scrabel, From Monument to Masses, and Mike Park who continue to produce good work.

Monolidic is looking to rock the bay soon. stay tuned.

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The Bay Bridged blog provides a fantastic survey of music in the Bay Area.

you may have heard that we have a show at Mr T’s next Wednesday. you have no excuses not to show your face, even if it does lie on a mean street. the Gold Line takes you right there. the show is free. you can bowl afterwards (i think?). cheap drinks. i’ll even offer a free hand job to the first person that can explain the mathematical proof of Fermat’s last theorem in less than three minutes. don’t let the ghetto birds scare you. ignore that massive spotlight from the sky aimed at your car. and there’s always a chance that that constant stream of “bullets” you hear are just some neighborhood rascals playing with firecrackers from the adjacent Chinatown. don’t let The Avenues scare you, even if Jackson Browne was right about these streets. and if our confused brand of post-punk meets freak-folk indie rock isn’t enough to entice you, there’s a California Burrito joint just down the street.

here's an interesting New York Times take on the neighborhood in which mr. t's finds its home. don't believe the hype. i live here. the car in front of my window was recently tagged with bullet spray. duck and cover.

no paparazzi, no fanfare, no crowd control. welcome to the soft opening of the new Monolidic website. we're still cleaning up pieces of code as we fill out the rest of the site. right now im looking for a place i can slap this baby up:

im also still looking for the classic rotating skull and/or the animated fire GIFs. so world wide web, circa mid-1990s CE.

in any case, we have an upcoming gig at Mr T's Bowl in Highland Park next week. our third show of the year. and it's FREE.

pic was taken in some lonely little town outside of Cairo last December. i dont think i ever got the name. the driver just stopped the van and walked into a rundown restaurant to eat kushari by himself while everyone just sat around and waited for him to finish.