D.F.L.

Last night I participated in my first alleycat in Stockholm. Don't know what an alleycat is? It's a bike race in an urban setting that is loosly based on what bike messengers do day in and out. You ride to different locations and either pick up something, do a dance, answer a question, shotgun a beer, etc... First one to hit all of the checkpoints and reach the goal is the winner.

I did NOT win last night. However, I walked away from the comp with 2 prizes; prizes reserved for the LAST place finisher! Alleycats are extremely location-specific events. If you're new to a city you're sorta screwed. I consider myself to have a pretty good sense of direction but if you simply don't know where a street is you're forced to stand on a sidewalk somewhere and browse your map while the others whiz from location to location.

Oh yeah, my 2 prizes: an extrmely comprehensive A to Z book/map of every street in Stockholm (it'll never leave my bag) and a tshirt that has a picture of a wrench with the letters D.F.L. reading down the wrench's handle. D.F.L. = Dead Fucking Last!

My pal Raffa and I worked as a team last night. He's not from Sweden either but however was a messenger in London and San Fran (bing! inside joke) and has a better sense of direction than I. He could've been counted as coming in last however he did officially roll up to the goal a wheel-length in front of me. Raffa and I had taken a half hour fruit-eating break at the last checkpoint before heading to the goal. Who knows, if we would've jetted to the goal we possibly wouldn't have been last. Who cares! I got prizes!

If you're interested in seeing what last night and the Stockholm bike scene are all about you can check these links:

Boe's Flickr page
Axel's Flickr page
Fixed.se
Happymtb.org forum with pics from last night


Photo: Luca Mara

***UPDATES***
I just saw the final postings of the race and 4 people didn't finish. So that means that even though I was still DFL, I did complete the thing and somehow did better than some others. Wheeled Vibe Warrior.

The guy that finished 4th, Lucas Brunelle, was from NYC and had only been riding in Stockholm for a grand total of 24 hours before the race. There goes my theory that you have to be a local to do well. You just have to know who to follow and be able to keep up. Note: Lucas rides with 2 cameras (one facing forwards and one backwards) mounted to his helmet and is well-known for his bike culture movies. I'll post video from last night here if I ever come across it.

Digging up all our fwends

Best Fwends: Alphabetically Arranged
Sometime last summer I got an email from a nice guy named Anthony from Austin (or was it Denton or was it Fort Worth?) Texas. I think he's a Texas nomad. Anyways, Anthony was asking about the availabilty of some old Wolfie lyrics. The reason he was asking was because his group, Best Fwends, was going to cover a Wolfie song called "Getting the Reach that I Need." Since I didn't write the lyrics for the song (Joe Ziemba did) and didn't have any of the lyrics handy, I wasn't of much help. However, Anthony sent me their instrumental version of the song sped up and bashed out on only keyboards. Anytime anyone takes the time to cover a song you've been a part of you tend to get just that much more interested in what they're doing musically! I kept my eyes on Best Fwends and became a quick fan of their immediate and thrashy bashed-up and broken pop songs. Btw, Best Fwends is a duo. The other is an equally positive dude named Dustin.

Shortly after our first contact Best Fwends explained that their debut album was in the works and that they had a song called "Comforter" that they'd recorded sans vocals and needed a little extra input. I happily accepted their offer, wrote and recorded lyrics to the song and some other peripheral sounds and shot it back to them. All involved parties were happy with the outcome. And now the complete album is available to you, the public!

Order Best Fwends' debut Alphabetically Arranged from the Moshi Moshi mailorder.

Go stream "Comforter (feat. Mike Downey)" on my Virb page.

Go get dizzy and bounce around on the Best Fwends Myspace page.

Spring

The first song from the Resplendent/Downey EP is now streaming on my myspace page.

The song is called Spring. I think it makes sense that it's getting released now. Michael Lenzi did the basic stuff and then I added/subracted and then added again. I hope you all enjoy it.

Well being well

The days have been productive. The new song collection is growing quickly as expected with my revived outlook on writing. I'm still on track for having a full length done by the end of the summer. A finished project that I'd like to briefly announce is a 3 song EP by myself and Michael Lenzi (aka Resplendent). The project has been simply named Resplendent/Downey. Songs are finished and the artwork will soon be underway. After that it's only a matter of a short time before we get the songs up online for you. This debut EP will be released via Michael Lenzi's Mixxtape label as a free downloadable release. After the first EP it's a real unknown if more material will follow, although I really hope it does. But at the bare minimum we've got a little collection of songs that I'm totally proud of. Keep your mice pointed in this direction over the coming week or so for more concrete info.

Beyond that the improved weather has helped in my cycling adventures. I've luckily got a solid little network of fixed-gear riders here in Stockholm at my disposal for mechanic chat, rides and positive vibes. Here's a sampling of pictures from the past 2 weekends.


Our fixed x 4, Hornstull, Stockholm


Raffa and his steed, Stora Essingen, Stockholm


Raffa, Erika and Hugo plotting our course, somewhere in Stockholm


Erik, me and Raffa at a fixed.se gathering, Södermalm, Stockholm


My ride, taking a breather, Lilla Essingen, Stockholm

Telescoping a city

Since moving to Sweden (and especially to Stockholm) I've had my camera with me nearly every time I've walked out the front door. I'm constantly attempting to capture in still frame the vibe of this city. It's not easy. Stockholm is beautiful and misplaced and disjunct and well-planned all at once. Islands sit close enough to one another where usually only a short bridge is needed for connection. It's a city of hops and skips. The city proper is concise without the slightest thought of the grid system while the suburbs fold out of the population, losing more charm with every traveled mile. On a map the main islands of Stockholm look big enough to be ranked up there with other major cities. But by bike you can cut across bodies of water and find yourself on the other side of the city in 20 minutes.

Although not yet attempted by me, panoramic photography seems like it would make the most sense in capturing Stockholm as the bodies of water and related landscapes are far wider than my lens and closer to what I see. But people meet people and other people have cameras and have the same motive of still frame capturing their city in mind and ultimately end up doing a better job. As I was thinking panoramic as my next step, my new acquaintance Axel took an opposite approach and stuck his camera in front of a telescope. While most Stockholm photography is colored by yellow and red buildings and blue water, these photographs found another charm. When I look at these I think of days well before I moved to this city. I think of a cat burglar tiptoeing over rooftops in search of silverware and private safes to crack in up-scale apartments. I think of chimney sweeps sitting on their balconies having a cigarette and a glass of wine after a long day of work.






These photos were taken by a guy I recently met named Axel and are taken from his Flickr page. If you are a Flickr user please add him as a friend and if you enjoy these photos shoot him a message or leave him a comment letting him know.

Like I Was Saying

unreleases are pieces

Hey! I just uploaded another podcast. I'm 5 for 5 as far as keeping this a monthly podcast, which is my goal for this project for 2007. I dug through the dusty archives again and put together another 12 previously unreleased (or rarely heard) songs. As it has been with the 2 previous Unreleases podcasts this one spans the full spectrum of time I've been recording music.

There's a little song called "See Saw" included from 1995 that was, from my memory, the first time I ever put an electronic beat behind anything I'd recorded. I got my Casio Sk-1 sometime in the later '80s as a Christmas present and finally got around to using it for real in '95. It wasn't the last time I plugged it in. It's scattered throughout my recordings and now hangs on my wall here in my apartment. It's a piece of electronic plastic I don't mind looking at every day.

The other really old song is the original version of "V.F.W." Wolfie went on to re-record the song a few times and it ended up appearing on our first 7". This version is how that song sounded in the first place: a boy and his guitar, strumming away out in the suburbs, second story of a raised ranch.

what made me happy then still does

Over the past couple of days I've been recording a lot. What else is new. Well, it's nothing new that I've been working on music, it's the way I'm doing it that has changed. Or better put, I've revisited a recording technique that I used to live and die by and it's seriously working like a champ once again.

I used to sit with my four track and write Mathlete songs without any prior ideas going into the session. The first "cool" thing that I came up with once I sat down worked as the basis for a new song. Once a quickly built foundation was set the rest of the writing would happen at the same pace. Songs were usually short. Immediate, but hopefully not always obvious, melodies and musical bits were recorded without a drawn out thought process. These songs were usually written in the time it took to drink a few beers. These songs were written with the purpose of being as much pure emotion (pure Mike) as they were disposable pop songs. It made sense to stack 15 to 20 songs on a release, never giving the listener enough time to get sick of or even latch onto a particular song.

How much time do you spend on a website or on a TV channel. About two, two and a half minutes? Perfect. Then we're on the same page.

This is how I've worked over the last couple of days, sans the beer, sans the four track. This is the way, I have finally realized, that I work best. Last week I was really close to getting serious about an instrumental project and new alias. I had rough outlines of some songs that were spanning into the 6, 7 minute mark. These songs are not bad. In fact I'm quite proud of myself that I even attempted such a thing, but with some rational thought I realized I was driving down the wrong street. I parked the car in a familiar lot and threw the keys down the sewer drain.

My plan is to release a batch of these songs by the end of the summer. If I still have no label support by then I'll release the songs as downloadable tracks and as limited cdrs with handmade/smart packaging for those of you who dig physical copies.

I haven't been this excited about making music in quite a while. Short bursts of guitar started to sound good again. Synth tones eroded by downsampling are making a lot of sense. The beats I'm constructing are simple and right. In a way it took me this many years and this many songs to realize how I should proceed. In another way I've made a decision to forget everything I've learned in order to make honest music again.