Special thanks to the AC Lounge, Lady X and Triple M Designz for the incredible work.

This night’s gig at the 710 Beach Club had a very funky set up. To make a long story short, we were originally booked to be on a bill with two other bands, but due to circumstances out of the venue’s control, the night’s theme was a battle of the bands contest. Not that we have anything against a battle of the bands contest. We’ve been in plenty ourselves…and lost all of them. I wouldn’t say we lost. I’d say we got obliterated many, many times by reggae bands who did nothing but Bob Marley cover songs or rock bands who did Dave Matthews cover songs. And each time we lost, I always wondered how the heck the judges would pick a cover band over an original band. I’d understand if it were a “battle of the bands that can play other musicians music better” contest. Not that these brothers and sisters weren’t talented - they were very talented. However, you would think originality would reign supreme in they eyes of a judge. You see, “think” is the main keyword there. What we should be doing is stop thinking and get to crackin’ on learning these Paula Abdul cover songs. Then we will win ourselves a battle of the bands contest that has a grand prize of 3 hours in a dank, dungeness studio and all the Squire guitar strings we can fit into our board shorts. Eh, I’d rather we just not battle of the bands no more and gracefully bow out with a spectacular record of 0 wins, 79 losses. But seriously, cover bands winning a battle of the bands contest is like me winning a battle of the coolest cars contest with a motorcycle. Does that comparison make sense? Of course not…because I’m on cocaine. Mountains!

So, Tory and the band open up with our new song that we just dialed in a few days ago. I don’t have a verse ready for this song so I’m just chillin’ backstage doing some adlibs from behind the curtains. Tory sings the intro the song and I hear the crowd go whoooooooo. In my head I’m like, “That was a good whooooooo. This is gonna be a GREAT crowd”. When Tory’s song ends and Future Box 1 starts that is my queue to come from behind the cloth and hop on stage with him. Remember that whoooooooo thing I said earlier? That was a false whooooo. Cause when I got on the stage there was a nice little empty space in the middle of the dance floor. A light bulb popped in my head as soon as I seen this void in the audience. “Ohhhhhhh the crowd thinks we are part of the battle of the bands contest so they feel the need to shun us”, I said to myself. Honestly, their lack of whoooooooo was totally warranted. If I attended a battle of the bands contest to cheer on my buddies I wouldn’t rock to another band no matter how good they were. So we finish Future Box 1 and the crowd gives us the smallest violin clap. We transition straight into Future Box 2 - high energy and all. Finish that song and, again, smallest violin clap. Next song was Jen’s solo song Soul. Tory and I go backstage while Jen and the band were doing their thing. Tory says that he’s worried that his new intro song killed our whole set. I tell him that his song was fine, it’s just a tough crowd and we should just go out there, have fun with our bandmates and put out a high energy set no matter if the crowd likes it or not. LET’S GIVE ‘EM SOME OF THAT GOOD ‘OL PUNK ROCK ATTITUDE. After Jen’s song the crowd still isn’t receptive. Eh, no biggie. This is what we live for. We’re like Montana in the Super Bowl, 4th and 7, 3 seconds left on the clock. What are we going to do? Shiiiiiiiit blood, we gonna do what our white asses came here to do. Throw touchdowns and kick ass….and we’re almost running out of ass…I mean beer. I mean touchdowns. I’m confused now.

Bladow, we high energy the ham bone out of our set and within 4 songs the crowd starts to come alive. We see one hand up, we see two hands up, we see a dude break dancing on the dance floor. I join him for a session and he totally annihilates me. I go back on stage defeated from my dance floor adventures, but it was well worth it cause the audience is now diggin’ our set. Maybe they forgot that they shouldn’t cheer for us. Shoot, whatever works. Cody is beating the pork grinds out of his drums, Jen is hitting those ivory tusks, Ed is bassing his bass and SB1 is strumming his guitar like he was playing for the antidote. We were in the zone. Once we get to our last song, Generation Y, we are almost at full blown orgasm. I hop into the crowd during the last portion of Generation Y and I turn around towards the stage to flag Tory to come and join me. He’s doing this thing with his hands kinda like a Hawaiian hula dancer. Like waving me off. Oh, I get it. He wants me to move cause he’s about to jump over the stage monitor, drop 5 feet off the stage and land onto the dance floor. BOOOOOOOOOM Tory is Shawn Kemp in the flesh. He goes from sky high to Spiderman landing in a matter of seconds. While he is in mid air I’m looking at him in slow motion and thinking in my head, “I hope that mic cord is long enough”. It was….so….BOOOOOOOOM he lands and we rock out the last part of Generation Y half on the dance floor and then half on the stage. Song ends, we bow and thank the crowd and they give us a great reception. Awwwwww they like us, they really like us.

We hang out after our set and meet some great guys and gals. The cherry on top was that our favorite door guy Eric was workin’ so we got to bullshit with him for the small free moments he had. Also, our other most favorite door gentleman Adam from 710 Club made a surprise appearance after us not seeing him for like 6 months. Let’s not forget that we hung out with Matt Albrecht - Mr. Longboards 2011. The night was so dope and the people were so cool that we closed the bar down. I go home, make some hard boiled eggs, inhale some Vicks steam to cure my sinus infection and go right into a fabulous REM cycle…just like all rappers do, right?

GOOD TIMES.

We realize that we have fans in many areas of this little ‘ol planet and it saddens us a whole lot that we can’t book a show to the many corners of the world. So we decided that we’ll play a special acoustic set for you folks who we can’t see in the flesh. Please tune in at 9pm Pacific Time for a special acoustic set live via USTREAM @ http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-concrete-project

Tory, Jen and I had a pleasant opportunity to sit in With Lady X and Melissa Myers on their The Break Talk Show. Eddie was busy with school finals, Cody went to the Casbah to support the Tuesday Hip Hop night and network amongst our genre and SB1 had a prior engagement so could not attend. It felt weird not having the whole squad there to tell our adventurous band tales, but us three were honored to rep for the whole band. The Break Talk Show was held in the sunken living room area of the AC Lounge and shot by the good people from Triple M Designz and will be broadcasted by our friends at DagoSD.com. I don’t want to be a party pooper and spoil the interview before it goes public, so I’ll just say that the interview was conducted very professionally on Lady X and Melissa’s part which allowed us to give our insightful, detailed answers to their questions. Of course, because we’re fun loving people, we had to get our goofy mcdoofy on during the interview by clowning on each other and getting clowned on. Eh, we like to keep our humility intact this way.

TCP’s Jen blessed the crowd with her soul hitting solo song Eye of the Storm and I did a spoken word piece and two solo songs while standing in the middle of a clapping cipher. It was quite the experience to say the least. Kinda felt like I was at church getting baptized because I was surrounded by people and by the sounds of clapping while the bright lights of a camera was all up in my grill. I was pleased to meet Majesty from DagoSD.com who told me that he rarely gets up and dances during performances, but had to get to moving while I was on the mic. I was very humbled by that fact and could say nothing more, but “thank you”. I was also very pleased to meet  Mitch from Triple M Designz (amongst the many other hats he wears). After the show Mitch and I had a great conversation about organized religion. Usually I try not to speak about religion with people I just met, but I could tell that Mitch was a very respectful, open minded person so our discussion was very intriguing. One thing that he said that stuck in my mind was that he loves Jesus, but wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Judah, etc. was the same being – we all just see God from a different angle. He gave me a simple example of what he meant. He said that he is Dad to his daughter, Uncle to his nephews, Friend to others, Supervisor to his employees, Rap Artist to his fans, Asshole to some, Great Guy to others. Different people view him as a different light, but even though he’s interpritated under multiple titles, he is still just one person – Mitch. Same thing could be possible with God. Christians call him Jesus, Jews call him Judah, Buddhists call him Buddah, but maybe we’re all looking at the same God just at a different angle. I thought it was a very interesting theory. I was also pleased to meet Panthong and the camera man (I’m so sorry I forgot his name) from Triple M Designz. They were genuinely nice people to be around and I felt comfortable straight off the bat being amongst their presence.

Overall, a wonderful show ran by wonderful folks. I’m so humbled that a crew of people would spend their time and energy for the sole purpose of helping the TCP saga move into the light. THANK Y’ALL SO MUCH!

Young Caleb the Du-Raggamuffin Terror circa 1999.

Besides the music I create with TCP, I also like to dabble into the world of solo artistry. Being a solo artist allows me to release the type of music I want to poison the world with without the barriers of band politics or other people’s opinions. It’s also an ode to my younger years when I was nothing but a lonely solo artist trying break into the industry. Oh young Caleb, I have so much to warn you about. First off, please take off that silly du rag. Actin’ like you can get waves….pshhhhhhhh!!!

Anyhow, this night I was blessed with having the opportunity of rocking a solo set at DJ Tramlife’s and DJL’s Spinn Cycle night at The Ruby Room. Audiocrack, Parker and The Numberman and Day-Go Produce were also on the bill so I was amongst great, talented company. Day-Go Produce started the night with a high energy set that kept the crowd well satisfied. I was up after Day-Go Produce and was just coming off a 30 day no drinking cleanse so I had a nice little buzz going courtesy of my main doo doo stain bartender Ziggy. I started my set with a brand new spoken word piece about how I should have went to school instead of pursuing music. This piece was only a few days old so it started out rough with patches of forgetful lines, but all in all, it went schwang. I then performed In This Love and HOME and ended my set with another spoken word piece about how the SD Hip Hop scene should be more united. In true TCP fashion, my set was a mix of energy, goofiness, stupidness and a little rap talent in between. The always impressive Parker and The Numberman took the stage next. Once again I was impressed by these two gentlemen (and DJ) as they busted out their skin to give the crowd an ear and eye pleasing show.

DJ Tramlife and DJL then hit the 1’s, 2’s and 3’s and provided the crowd with a great mix of Dubstep and Hip Hop. I met a cool cat named Ezekiel who just moved to San Diego from North Carolina and who was also a MC. He spit a couple of freestyles for me that was quite impressive. He then told me that he’s going to freestyle on stage later. In all sincerity, I was like, “Cool, you should do it”. I also met a Mohawk Chamorro dude named Chris who runs a collective called the Infusion Project. He was the man responsible for bringing in the artists that were painting in The Ruby Room on this night. Very chill, down to Earth cat. With Chris, was Jason, a girl named Bones and another girl that I regretfully forgot her name. Jason, Bones and the unknown named girl were all from The Bay Area (like me) so we had a great convo outside the venue reminiscing on old school Bay Area artists. Again, very chill, down to Earth cats. Also in the place to be was the band As The Sun Sets who we previously performed with at the Soda Bar a year prior. Again, again, very chill, down to Earth cats. I remember having a nice conversation with Pat from A.T.S.S. about how dope his mustache was. He had one of those old school baseball pitcher mustaches that was hella intense. Ya know, the kind that had the rollercoaster loop at the ends. Fuckin’ BOSS! I had to admit to him that I was very jealous because I couldn’t grow one of those and I felt that my manhood was being tested everytime I looked at his mustache. Very sad moment for me.

We all headed back into the venue and was surprisingly treated to Audiocrack already performing on stage. This was my first time seeing this guy perform and I must say that this dude has skills. He was spittin’ over some high energy, part Electro, part Dubstep, part Hip Hop beats and his delivery was super duper clean. Their wasn’t very many people in the crowd at this point in the night (mainly because it was Wednesday at midnight), but I have to give it up to Audiocrack. He was rockin’ the stage like he had a stadium full of people in front of him. He was very much lost (in a good way) in the performance and music and I dug it. That’s a sign of an artist that is passionate about his/her craft.

After Audiocrack’s performance, I stuck around for a little to hang with my new friends Ezekiel, Jason, Chris, Bones, Unknown Named Girl, As The Sun Sets and also with my already buddies Tramlife and DJL. At this point the conversation was a drunk grab bag of various topics that were quite entertaining. One topic I remember was how Tramlife picked up a pair of RUN DMC glasses at the swapmeet for $6. I was buggin’ out cause I bought my nerd glasses at a Brooklyn flea market for $50. Man, I gotta get to that SD swapmeet pronto. After a few conversations outside, I headed back into the venue to close my tab and who do I see? My main man Ezekiel on stage freestyling like he said he was going to do a few hours ago. That man sticks to his guns. BLADOW!!

All in all, it was a great night meeting new people and getting to know my current friends that much more.