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The Beginning for Count Basehead
Back in New York City, during the late 90′s I spent a lot of time in a rehearsal studio, named The Studio of all things, somewhere up in a building at 251 West 30th street, between 7th and 8th (see maps how to get there). This is where we would rehearse with Primitive Reason, and where Jorge would take drum lessons with John Macaluso. It turned out that the mac was looking for a new Bass player to feature in a new far-out idea of his, and the Bass player would have to be just as whack as him, so naturally Jorge Felizardo suggested that I was the right man for the job. Macaluso gave me a try, we clicked, and Count Basehead was born.
The Studio: Count Basehead ‘s Home
Satellite view for The Studio
We would meet for the craziest jam and beer sessions, usually with a 2nd drummer, although we had declared that we would be recording as a 2-piece band. Somehow we figured that going in the opposite direction of the norm would be a lot more fun to do, and IT WAS! 2 drummers, playing parallel and opposing beats, at times counter-pointing and at others doubling or performing poly-rhythms that filled the room with a torrent of sound. As for myself I was tucked in so comfortably into the role of a Bass Player as I idealized it for Count Basehead: to BE the bass-drum and the snare, breathing melody into the pulse and creating the time-line amidst that flood of beautiful intricacy. Far from being a cacophony made for advanced musicians, we were creating a new kind of urban symphony. So we took it upstairs…
Recording Count Basehead ‘s Free Bassing EP
<p>Subway Map close to The Studio </p>
So mac and I put some songs together, borrowed some mic’s and a couple of machines and got to recording. After a few hours we had enough material for our first EP, the basic tracks for the Free Bassing Ep that is, so we put away our gear and headed to the flat I was staying at in Manhattan to lay some samples and sounds over it and make the whole thing more spacey and far-out. We wanted to make the overall effect dreamy in tribute to the first attempt at a band name before Count Basehead, which was the oh so similar: Spacehead. I mean it was 1999 and every time we got together we would really party like it’s 1999 (pardon the pun 
), which made our whole experience a real daze. Maybe that is why we could not keep it together once we each went on tours with our separate gigging bands. so, so sad…
But that is another story…Upstairs from The Studio lies Ultra Sound, and after dallying with our sampler and drum-machines we took our 1814 over there and mixed the beast down. The result is Free Bassing by Count Basehead as you can hear in the following player.
