Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Jet Black




Hey, gang. This bike is a slight departure from the usual in that it 
was made for an imaginary person rather than someone with a name.


It was built for Ed Furbush's shop in Prescott, Arizona, 
Southwest Sounds and Cyclery. It's a bicycle shop and record store. My kind of place. 


 Ed and I came up with an imaginary rider of the bike and built it to his or her measurements.


We imagined that flat black was his or her favorite color.


 

Super stealthy dropouts.

  








Thanks, Ed.




"You're not punk and I'm tellin' everyone."
"Save your breath, I never was one."
When I first moved to the East Bay,
the punk scene was in the throes 
of a love affair with Jawbreaker.
The at-the-time-current record,
24 Hour Revenge Therapy,
was/is a perfect record.

With the next record, Dear You,
a hot shot producer was brought in
by the record company looking for
the next Green Day. Actually it was the same
guy that did Dookie. The record
was very different, in that it really focused
 on Blake's singing and guitar whereas the former
 records' mix were pretty balanced between
 the guitar and bass. The new formula
 didn't sit well with me or a lot of folks.
 Too bad. With 16-17 years of hindsight,
 it's got loads of good songs, but someone 
got obsessed with the "cult of Blake". 
The music and the band's internal relationships
 suffered and the band broke up acrimoniously.
Coulda, shoulda.

1,2,3,4. Who's punk? What's the score?


8 comments:

Unknown said...

Superchunk and Jawbreaker... 1995! Where does the time go?

Oh yeah... and the bike is nice too.

tgadd0 said...

Did you listen to the new Forgetters yet? I'm a big fan.

blackcatbicycles said...

kevin, no doubt...
there's a couple of the jawbreaker videos filmed at the dpc in tucson.
that spot was pretty formative in my younger life. looking at the crowd in those videos, they look so young. it occurred to me that i was more or less that age when they were shot. scary.
there's also a video somewheres on the tubes of you of jawbreaker playing at punks with presses in oakland, the same building i used to live in at the time, deep in west oakland. scary.

tgadd0,
yes, i do listen to them. saw them a year and a half (or so) ago. i like/d them a lot more than thorns of life, but not as much as jets to brazil. that orange rhyming dictionary is a great record.
it's lame to stand these bands up next to each other and compare side by side, but that's how i roll...

sorry the music's been such a blast from the past, but since music is my coworker i get bored of him quickly and go through phases. lately i've been seeing if the music i liked 10, 15, 20 years ago still stands up. sometimes it does not. full stop. sometimes i listen and it speaks just as clearly as the first time i listened.
that, and the fact that it's a lot easier to find videos of bands playing live from years ago than small bands with one or two records out.
if anyone's got a video of call me lighting playing soft skeletons with even somewhat reasonable sound you win a black cat t shirt!

Greg Oh said...

That thing turned out incredible. Ed is responsible for putting a half dozen or more flat black Spot Brand bikes on the trails in Prescott over the past several years, including mine. And I know this ain't a beauty pageant or even a competition, but still... you just did a flat black classic SS 29er better than it's ever been done before. That bike is bitchin. And the customer who bought it yesterday is the perfect guy for it.

Unknown said...

wow
you didn't happen to make another such imaginary rider frameset, didya?

onlyontwo said...

http://vimeo.com/11482117

Boom.

Todd, you've got my email. :)

Cheers,
Andy

blackcatbicycles said...

greg,
thanks, man.

joel,
no such luck. ed ordered this one for his bike shop. i'll have some road bikes headed out to japan this year, but that's it for "stock" sizes in the queue until i build the next one for ed.

andy,
i've seen that one with high hopes, but while the images sure are pretty, there is no guitar in the mix at all. the other one currently floating around the innerwebs is no better.
only the best for you, dear readers!

Unknown said...

That bicycle is so nice and the different one. Hope you made more of them for other customers as well.