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Bubbles came over to my studio one early Monday morning right after returning from his Berlin trip because he had some stuff to get off his chest and wanted my help. He had made up his mind about leaving San Francisco to live in Berlin but before he could leave us, he needed to reminisce a little. So over the course of the next hour and a half, with him on the microphone and myself weaving a mix of original music stems and released tunes, we recorded. Here is the result of that Monday morning's off-the-cuff love letter of leaving from Bubbs. I miss ya, double bubble, you fucker.
post script (2 years later)...
Bubbles had wanted to "make a track" but showed-up with no music, lyrics, tune or direction - only anxious excitement about his Berlin adventure and decision to move there. Almost two hours later, my laptop overheated and died trying to keep up with Traktor's 3-decks+1 live input for FX, plus Live in the background, separate controllers for each app, and trusty Wavelab recording the blended stereo mix. I did a quick fade-edit of the recording, bounced it to a 192 bitrate mp3 and sent it to him on messenger just as he got back to his flat, all hot and pissed-off (mostly because he was ready to leave SF; and the sudden end to our session did not time well with the purr and clawing from his... cat). He promptly told me to trash it; he couldn't send "that" to @Solar (SF legendary DJ, founding member of Sunset, and good friend). I took it in stride and tossed the original recording file.. hell, it was just a hastily captured stereo master; one take - just another random weekday-morning visit from Bubbles, full of energy (and a box of whip-its)...We'd have time to get it right before he left the city. In less than two months, he would be gone, forever.
On a late, Friday night, just a couple blocks away, he pushed the wrong button of the wrong person with his over-the-top nature for In a blink of an eye, Bubbles was chased and then shot 3 times by a stranger, gunned-down in the street, murdered 2 blocks from home.
Those next few days were a blurred reality that nobody in San Francisco wanted to accept. It was almost a week later, as I was re-reading old messages and looking at pictures of days gone by, I came across that Facebook message from him - to trash that recording that both he and I had long ago forgotten. I read the message again, and again but I couldn't recall much of the actual content we laid down together that Monday morning from almost three months prior now. I searched my hard drives, usb keys, random burned DVDs and CDRs - I couldn't restore the original stereo recording file from Wavelab.. long-since overwritten...gone. And then I read the message again - there it was, a link to my Google Drive to that single 192 bit mp3 I had bounced to send him for a quick listen. Now, I listened, again, then again and again and still to this day, over 2 year's later, again and again. This lossy, un-mastered, compressed thing was all I had. It didn't matter. So what you have hear is the best I could manage, from that mp3. No, the vocals are not on separate tracks, no, I can't send you the project to do your own mix or master.. this is it, baby. And I am good with that - fuck, GREAT with that. I hope you understand and dig this just a bit more now. love
- Genre
- Storytelling