Handsome Furs | La Blogothèque - We Love Filming Music.

San Francisco is like an island for most touring bands: A ten hour drive to Portland of the north, and six hours south to Los Angeles. This always keeps things interesting when trying to plan around band's schedules (never really sure if they'll recover from their hangover to make it). This time we had the Handsome Furs, coming from LA, we planned on meeting at the Rickshaw Stop at 4. Due to the awful traffic coming from LA and various little accidents on interstate 5, they were on the road for 8 hours plus and didn't roll into the venue until 6pm.

I was afraid we wouldn't have time to get anything done, I had this great plan of pushing the Furs onto Market street to play with some of our finest street performers. I should have known better, these Shows never ever turn out the way I envision them in my head. In fact, they usually come out far more complex and even better with the tension of constraining time, light, and little accidents on the way. When you look at it though, there's no reason to argue with tight schedules when perhaps the most important question I must ask is: Were we able to capture the moment truthfully?... If this is the case, it doesn't matter if the Handsome Furs had only one minute or nine hours, as long as the attempt is there. It will be raw, it will be beautiful, it will be different than anything we have seen... it will be a Take Away Show.

Also, without these little accidents, who knows if we would get to witness Dante DeCaro banging on a tin can, Alexei on the floor hammering the little piano, or trusty big Mike hitting the elevator's frame.

Perhaps we wouldn't get to see this intimate exchange at the dining table. Not with forks and knives of course, but with keys on a wooden platter and a giant six string spoon! Just look at the couple! Notice the subtle snickering and glow oozing out as their kinetic energy bounces around the room. I can not ask for more; a moment so moving, so sincere, so profound, it is impossible to make such things up. We are fortunate enough to be part of this delightful outing, Dan and Alexei are some of the more down to earth musicians you will ever meet. Their earnest desire to make something great while following their commitment, despite the circumstances, shows us more of their core character as human beings than simply touring puppets. As I remember walking back to the venue I asked Alexei how the whole Handsome Furs project came about. Paraphrasing, quite simply she wanted to travel to all these places she had only dreamed of going, and what could be better than traveling with the man that you love and creating beautiful music as a catalyst.