S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

This past Saturday I finally got my studio back in action, after being out of commission for over a year, due to flood damage. The NYC-band, Blueberry High Heels came in to record tracks for a demo. The band is fronted by Didi Delicious on lead vocals and bass guitar, with Dylan Mitchell (my band mate in Scratcher) on guitar and Greg Jacob (of the Rubber Room Rats and trip with the Teacher) on drums. The band describes themselves as, “a post-punk, powerpop trio of rockers cut from the old school NYC rock and roll cloth.” After spending several hours with them, I’d say that’s a fair assessment. Didi has long been a part of the New York City punk rock scene, seen regularly at CBGBs, Coney Island High, the Continental, Scrap Bar and more, either writing for NYRock.com and the NY Waste or playing with any of her different bands. So, for this session, we really wanted to capture the raw, punk-rockness of the band, so with Dylan taking the lead as producer, we decided to record the band old-school - all together in the same space, playing live, bleed and all, going back later and re-cut vocals.  You can hear the song “Dice,” recorded and engineered by me, and mixed by Dylan, on the band’s MySpace page. 

Pretty much everyone is reporting today that founder of CBGB, Hilly Crystal died on Tuesday due to complications from lung cancer. He is survived by his daughter and son.

If you have never been to CBGB, you missed a chance to meet the famed gentleman club owner. Most nights you could pretty much find Hilly keeping to himself behind the bar, occasionally slinging beers with Althea and the other bartenders. No matter what style of music was going-rock, metal, punk, folk- on that night he was there to support the bands. He had a pretty good poker face, and you could never really tell if he didn’t like a band. You just assumed he liked everyone that came through the place. As a host, he was always courteous, respectful and fair to all the bands that played, and pretty much everyone reciprocated. It was always nice to go to CBGB and see Hilly hanging around, and I was looking forward to seeing him again, and performing at one his new venues.

A private memorial service is planned. A public memorial will be held at a later date. Contributions in Hilly’s honor may be made in his name to the American Cancer Society or to the Hilly Kristal Foundation for Musicians and Artists (168 Second Avenue, PMB 207, New York, NY 10003).