Two-thirds of Zen Fuse Box, Steve and Rich, spent Spring Break 2016 in Hilton Head, South Carolina! Before reporting on the activities of the week, we'd like to ponder whether Steve and Rich would be considered "Zen Fuse," "Zen Box" or "Fuse Box." We've never been able to agree on this, probably because no one is volunteering to be "Box." But we digress.
The façade that was put up to justify the trip to Hilton Head was "family vacation." In order to make the ruse believable, Steve and Rich brought along their wives, and two daughters a piece. In addition to bringing along their families, Rich and Steve also participated in various "family activities" in order to divert attention from the real reason for the trip, namely making new ZFB music. The family activities included biking on the beach, at both day and night; climbing the lighthouse at Sea Pines; picnicking and muck-walking at Fish Haul Beach; inexplicably picnicking in the center of a traffic roundabout; watching "Napoleon Dynamite"; and consuming good food and barley-hop beverages.
We set up a makeshift studio in the living room of the rental house, and the set up was almost as much fun (and as much trouble) as actually writing and recording the music. We had an extremely temperamental laptop, which was loaded with the freeware version of Audacity. We spent most of the sessions confused by the software and/or entertained by the seemingly random behavior of the computer. Also, a plug got stuck in Rich's unit. (His effects unit - keep your mind out of the gutter). It was promptly fixed by the guys at John's Music on Hilton Head, after Rich and Steve spent an hour trying to fix it with tweezers and a paper clip. But despite the obstacles, we managed to record what may become the framework for some future Zen Fuse Box songs. The working titles are "Ocean Breeze," named after the rental home community, and "Wrack," which was named for the contents of the muddy, mucky, wonderful sand at Fish Haul Beach. We also came up with a title, "I Am Not a Robot," but quickly abandoned it. Steve secretly hopes to revive that title someday.
As this is posted, Rich is back home, hard at work sifting through the audio to determine "what the heck this crap is."
As always, there seems to be a catch phrase for any ZFB get-together. This time, NOPE.