joined virtually by those wacky Offbeats: Kelly Ralson on Drums and Tim Boomer on Bass. Mr. Kadis was asked by this reporter about the deeper meaning of his song recently and Mr. Kadis answered “I’ll tell ya what this country needs, and it ain’t a five cent cigar…”
Presented for your approval: Quick highlights from our last set at the Bistro. A distillation of 10 minutes of dancing into a single 2 minute video blast of boogie mania. Whew! I need a nap after just reading the description. But wait! We’ll fix that. Read on!
I think way back on 9/22/18 the Grateful Dead were back in town with a Disney animatronics version of Jerry, or maybe you had to work at TJ’s that night, or the dog’s hair needed a pink wash (Pink Dog!) We get it! We would have been watching Netflix or old Phish concerts ourselves but we were onstage. Thank Dog we had something to do!
Now, no one has time for everything (wow, that is deep) and some folks want to call it a disease: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) hoping they can make a lot of money “curing” you of this dreaded entertainment-virus. They do not get this. FOMO is not actually a problem. Do not fear FOMO. It is so cool that there is a lot of fun stuff out there.
I remember running into my friend Bob, back in the 60’s one night while I walking home from having seen a great show with Frank Zappa and the Mothers (I think) at the original Fillmore. When I told Bob about my show he said he was over at the Matrix (ballroom) and the Dead had played with two drummers for the first time and did Alligator for hours! Ya know, you have to pick. Who knows what might happen at a show, and seeing the Mothers of Invention doing Absolutely Free with Frank in a white tux was a pretty fine way to spend an evening.
Clone me Now!
And speaking of the Matrix, anyone see the Matrix movie again recently? Remember the concept of people as fuel? Our present economic/political tyrants plan to keep depositing our futures into their personal IRS tax exempt trust funds to insure their futures, requiring us to work every minute of our lives to try and catch up and making us too exhausted for fun. Full Stop. Please do not continue this. Resist. Have more fun!
A big part of the resistance is living your life well. Open a “time account” devoted to FUN and spend that time enjoying being alive, rather than fixating on some abstract like FOMO. We need present-day fun as much as we need to get our future back! There is no FOMO. Only more fun than you can handle when you aren’t busy working your job and protesting their destructive agenda. So do what you can. That’s why recreation feels so good. Seriously – It is as important to re-create, as it is to secure our collective futures.
But, I digress. So, as a public service to thank our audience and the Bistro for getting us all out of the house AND to reduce some of your anxiety and therapy bills at the same time we offer a short mashup video, especially as there might actually be a mistake or two in the full live videos while the audience was singing along with us.
Thank you everyone who made it to our show including the Bistro staff. We had such a good time.
See you at our next show!
If you really want to go deep into your therapy, links to our full videos follow. No charge.
Ever wondered what bands do before a show? This footage is from a rehearsal 9/20/2018 (last night) as well as a 1hr 15min setup of our Bistro show magically reduced to about 2 minutes from May, 2004. Wish it was that easy!
See us recreate this magic feat tomorrow night at our return to the Bistro. The beer is great, so’s the music and the show is FREE.
(Catch us before we become inexpensive!)
The Bistro – 1001 B Street. Hayward California.
Saturday September 22nd 9pm to 12am.
With Added Rocks and Skas for Fiber!
A new round of angel funding has just concluded subsidizing the upcoming Offbeats’ Free Show at the Bistro. Our media team and product analysis experts felt that a new cereal with zero sugar, zero fiber, zero gluten, zero meat, zero fat, and zero contents would really rock the fans. Included in each box is one of the two action figures from the 90’s era band, left over from some other corporate endorsement gone bad, featuring Darrell Preece, our drummer who played on our 2nd CD and Tim Boomer on bass who hasn’t been seen in years. Other action figures (or pending legal action) will soon follow, as soon as we can get the other musicians out of bed (or out of the studio) to have their entire bodies scanned for accuracy.
Come see and hear us LIVE and tell us what you think!
The Bistro – 1001 B Street. Hayward California. September 22nd 9pm to 12am. FREE.
Offbeats – A brand you can trust. Fine Earplugs since 2015.
This morning the new Supreme Leaders Court (which acted in advance of the new justice being anointed to power) insisted via Twitter Post Edict (TPE) that Offbeats need to provide FREE Earplugs in order to play their FREE upcoming show in Hayward at the Bistro and to avoid further fines, penalties, and emotional damage. Now that mobile phone ear buds have taken over the noxious job of creating ear damage, Offbeats no longer need to lead the way in destroying ear drums on such a large scale basis. Tim Boomer, deaf bassist for Offbeats and former bassist for Who Too, who held the record in the Guiness Draft Ale Book of Records for destroying more ears in Northern California and Nevada in 2014 than any other bassist for a Who tribute band was quoted as saying “Huh? What did you say?”
The NEA (Nathional Earplug Association) spokesmodel who will not be named said “You can pry my earplugs out of my dead ears but you will never get me to put my rock and ska down!” An unnamed Offbeats fan countered by saying “Whaaaat? Did you say something?”
To claim your right to pick up YOUR earplugs and defend yourself …..
Come see and hear us LIVE and tell us what you think!
The Bistro – 1001 B Street. Hayward California. September 22nd 9pm to 12am. FREE.
Secret meeting at the Offbeats Lab
Just to show how long we have been planning this show, we have proof! A fictional serious band discussion that never ensued with our past drummer Andy Scott did not happen back in 1987 about what songs we might or might not play in 2018 at the gig you will soon see at
The Bistro – 1001 B Street. Hayward California. Saturday September 22nd 9pm to 12am. FREE.
Are you confused yet? Good. Just the way we want you to be. Just show up and all your questions will be answered.
Offbeats New Lineup at the BistroThe Bistro in Hayward will be hosting a special show, our first with our new band members. We will play 3 sets of our familiar original tunes as well as some new songs and well known covers. This show is our first public performance in years. Catch us while we are still Free and before we become Inexpensive.
We have been in rehearsal and playing private shows, and in our cloning lab conjuring up new tunes, and videos but this is our first chance to try this on stage at our old home away from home in Hayward. Along with our original material we have well known covers from the 60’s reaching to the present, from Aretha to Pharrell Williams.
Come see and hear us LIVE and tell us what you think!
The Bistro – 1001 B Street. Hayward California. September 22nd 9pm to 12am. FREE.
It is amazing how much the world ebbs and flows with human cultural change and how each time we think we have evolved past all that “bad stuff” it comes back. Offbeats continue to write original songs that seem relevant decade after decade. Take “Can’t save the World”, by our resident cynic and guitarist Jay Kadis.
A “new” song gracing our live sets, the first lines sound quite familiar though this tune was first out on Jay’s “NumbSkulls” solo cassette released in 1990. Consider, if you will:
“The planet’s gone crazy, don’t know what to do. The people in charge simply don’t have a clue. But that doesn’t stop ’em. It’s full speed ahead. At this rate, some morning , we’ll all wind up dead.”
A good example of Jay’s normal cheery sentimental outlook, sure to uplift the cold, barely alive hearts of Conservatives everywhere while they kick the can down the pothole filled road.
We love this tune. Not only is it a fun and uplifting peek at our lovely post-humanitarian world it provides the band with a killer groove we can improvise with and a framework that leads to jamming. We hope to see you get out of your houses, away from your TV and the ‘Net, and into the streets (or clubs) to see us play this live in the near future.
This is what 30 years of playing in a band with the same folks looks like. Does that make us a middle-aged band – being 30 and all? Rumor has it that Offbeats have recently been sighted, moving out of the studio and back to the stages. This video is a mix of two performances, from 1992 at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz and a recent performance at CCRMA’s Ballroom in Stanford. If you appreciate us – you know what to do – please go to our FB page @EastBayBeats and like us, subscribe to our Youtube channel: Offbeats, and join our mailing list on our website: www.offbeats.com so we can connect with you. We’ll be posting more video like this and hopefully see you soon on a stage near you.
Our process to get a short name on Facebook was pretty interesting. At first it seemed that we did not have some number of “likes” or “followers” or perhaps that the name “Offbeats” was taken. Time and again we tried things like “Offbeats Band”, “Offbeats”, “Offbeats NoThe” and kept getting errors. Finally I noticed an error message saying we had “illegal characters” that could not be used. Whaaaaaat? Was someone confused here? Isn’t this English? Illegal? Should I have chosen Latin? After contacting their development techs, searching again and again through help pages and blogs I FOUND IT. You cannot use the letters F and B together in a Facebook Short name. As in OF FB EATS. HMMM. FB – Facebook. I wonder why? Gee. Golly. Someone might confuse the FB in offbeats with Facebook and go to the Offbeats Page instead thinking they were on Facebook. Whaaat?
SO – we are @EASTBAYBEATS.
So all you folks out there who are trying to get a Facebook Short name – if you have these two characters – you are illegal and should actually change the name of your band, product, book or whatever so you can get a short name… or just adapt. Hey, Facebook is a free service right. Like I should complain. Thank you Facebook!
