Mic & Phattie
Mic and Phattie decided to attend college in sunny Santa Barbra, California. Santa Barbra is the home of one of the most amazing party spots I've ever beheld, encompassing the entirety of one street, straight as an arrow along the coast. Only here can you see thousands of mostly underage people in one place, purely for the sake of drinking lethal daily amounts of alcohol. Good times had by all.
This is a place where it's commonplace to see an old couch just minding its own business right in the middle of the street, shedding flames well into the night sky, burning until there is nothing left to burn. Cops walk by it. The drunken younguns inevitably get too close to it and create an everlasting memory of their stupidity on this night.
The street that I speak of is the great, the fabled, the legendary Del Playa, or as damn near anyone calls it, the D.P. of course it had to be that Mic and Phatty couldn't afford a place anywhere near D.P, and were forced to live in a house directly across town notably close to the zoo. Right near the Radisson, dude.
Mic and Phat lived in a shithole. I'm not going to sugar coat it because I don't think you'd be stupid enough to believe two college kids could afford anything else. And besides that, they were good at maximizing space. One day they got creative and decided just for a good time they were going to cut a hole in the closet floor. Actually it was really more like cutting out the whole closet floor. I assume that they had some sort of theory about what was under there, but I didn't, and it blew my mind. I had my doubts from the minute I realized they were serious, but fuck, it wasn't my security deposit.
The gaping open hole in the bedroom led quickly to a six-foot drop that put you conveniently in the rear end of a gigantic and fairly empty basement garage. I wasn't even aware that houses in California had basements until then. Of coarse the storage space became permanently inhabited by a futon couch and table lamp which both looked like they may have been found on the freeway. And what college home could be complete without a spool supporting an eight inch TV. Being the creative masters that Mic and Phattie were, they just kinda made a wall of shit halfway down the storage space and made it look completely unassuming.
Of course, I have been hiding the reason that Mic and Phat picked such a shithole. It was because it afforded them the opportunity to lease a small studio right in downtown. This is where, in my opinion, The Catalyst? Really became more than just a group of dudes. This is where the catalyst? amassed a studio that challenged most semi professional jam joints in the city. You know the scene; you've seen it before if you know anyone slightly musical. Analog audio on one side, digital on the other. To the left; sweeping needles and bulky cords, wood paneling and preplastic plastic; in classic faded gray. The right side housed compact, attractively enclosed electronic equipment. Slim and extremely powerful laptops and two stacks creating the skyline in the forefront, ejecting a gentle stream of nearly every cable you could conceivably insert into the back of a personal computer. And the whir of intake and exhaust air. The right side made, monitored, recorded and modified music without making a single fucking sound. The left side required a single instrument for each of the above tasks, but did it with enough soul and character that no music maker could live life without it. Nothing is the same as holding a guitar, touching the ivory keys of a grand piano or laying into the snare in a violent way. And it never will, hence the necessary hardware.
Directly in between the left and the right was... the middle. There was a couch there. And a wall literally covered by shirtless dead rock stars with their mouths wide fucking open. The explanation was simple enough for the posters. They were inspiring, lifelike and captured a moment hopefully close to the pinnacle of a career. Coincidentally, most of the time they also captured a man in the depths of innumerous types of intoxication. Party like a rock star never meant so much.
Mic and Phat utilized the studio at least as much in a day as their home. This was a time for just playing around. Not really creating any new material, but re education themselves with the old. Familiarizing yourself with something learned before the senior year shuffle, when grades finally count and life changing decisions are thrust upon you. Not too much time for pleasure in a time such as that. But they made it down here, and they got their groove back, as the saying goes. The duo practiced enough that they finally felt like a unit again, if only Rizzo could just be convinced to come down here from the North Bay.