Memories of Tower Records in West Covina

Anyone remember Tower Records? This was a favorite record store of mine as a teenager. In the 80′s and early 90′s, the West Covina store always had really cool large format artwork of artists and album covers. I imagined when digital file sharing took over and sales dropped, they couldn’t afford to pay artists so the artwork was replaced by printouts of album covers. Eventually like most record shops, they folded too. A piece of my childhood was gone. In March 2008, I went and took photos of it’s last days. It broke my heart to see it like this. There were lot’s of good memories there. Go visit your local record store this Saturday. http://www.recordstoreday.com/

Shachah at HCF on NYE | December 31, 2011

We spent this past NYE at our church HCF. It was a big family affair with lots of food, games and entertainment. We were priviledged to have the band SHACHAH come out again. This video has footage of most of their set. Man, these guys know how to get down and really “gel” as a band.

Listen to more SHACHAH at: http://www.shachah.com

Tracking “Bridges”

This is a song called “Bridges” that I’ve been working on for my upcoming album. The guy playing drums is my friend Jeff who is no doubt losing time with my out of time recording! Ahh, the fun of songwriting. The funnest part of songwriting is this part, where we explore ideas until something sticks. When it does, we go back and rerecord a final version. I’m counting down the days till Jeff comes back from Hawaii where he is stationed. For the time being, I’m drummerless.

Thirsty?

Deep Thoughts and Movie Quotes | a Morales Brothers Short

10 Cents a Day, a Morales Brothers Short

This is some of my Canon 60d footage from my initial test. I’m a traditional video camera type of guy and am switching over to DSLR video production. This is my first short. It was shot with a Canon 60d and a Canon 50mm | f1.8 lense. Iz Real is my brother.

Back to The Future: The Queen Mary Revisited

30 Years ago my uncles from Mexico were visiting California. We took a family trip to the Queen Mary cruise liner which is permanently docked in Long Beach, Ca. How do I know this? We have albums full of old photos and I remember looking at the set of orange/brown tinted photos of that day. I was that little short kid with the sailor outfit and 80′s bowl haircut. Recently I found out that my mom had saved that outfit so immediately I knew that we had to go back to the Queen Mary and dress my son Noah in that same outfit since he’s about the same age as I was in those photos. This past Monday, we did!

My wife, son, and I boarded the Queen Mary for the 4th of July festivities and went searching for the same photo locations that my family stopped at. With enough time and patience, we found the spots and proceeded to try to frame the shots the same. These are the results. My wife did an awesome job of framing and taking the photos. Without further delay, here is my father & I and My son and I…….30 years of time separated…….same outfit.

A Recent Find While Antique Digging. Unabashed Americana.

Cinegear Expo 2011…with a little Kodachrome Treatment

I went to the Cinegear Expo for the first time this year. I heard about it through Pro8mm in Burbank. They were hosting an event called, “Do a shot with Pro8mm,” where you shoot a free roll of Super 8 film using their cameras. We though it was funny that everyone and their mom was talking about this script and that script. We heard a good many people name dropping or talking about their next big project. I guess that’s the industry for you. We had fun people watching and checking out the latest gear. I went through and gave these photos the Kodachrome treatment in Photoshop. Too bad I can’t use the real thing…nothing lasts forever. In related news, Kodak anounced this week that you can now purchase motion picture film stock (8mm, 16mm, and 35mm) online at their website: KODAK LINK

“Meet Me In The Fields” Gets New Life

Meet Me In The Fields is a song by a band called Millbrook. I believe they recorded it in 2006 and originally had the video shot in 2007. I had the privilege of filming this video for my friend Daniel Jacob Horine the lead singer of the band. We filmed it over a couple of days at Platt college in Alhambra, Ca. Using a very small green screen, the guys of Millbrook and Joellana Garcia did their stuff while I was worrying about lighting and other camera settings. When it was finished, Daniel took the tapes home and worked on piecing all the footage together for the debut music video for Meet Me In The Fields. I also took that footage home and began to work on my edit of the footage. Sadly though, my computer at the time sucked big time.

Now, a few years later, I finally have the processing power to edit to my hearts delight and I finally took this project on. It’s stylistically different than Daniel’s but I hope it does the song justice. The song speaks on themes of friendship and bonds that last beyond the here and now. I tried to reflect that over the span in the video by shifting the color and imagery toward the end. It’s really an amazing song as you dig into the lyrics. The more you hear it, the more powerful the message and imagery. It’s truly a masterpiece that has timeless qualities.

Check out Millbrook at http://Myspace.com/Millbrook
Buy their music on iTunes.

-Jacob