I had the opportunity to meet and work with Chris in 1996 during the opening of Pacific Bell Internet Services. We both ended up on the Graveyard shift working in downtown San Francisco. I had recently uprooted and moved to SF from LA for the job and knew nobody. Chris was one of the first people I became friends with outside of work.
We hit it off instantly when I asked him why there was a picture of a dead girl as his desktop screen. He informed me that it was Laura Palmer, from Twin Peaks. He asked if I knew of David Lynch... I had no clue. One of my fondest memories was seeing Lost Highway with Chris on the day it came out...we sat in the front row and I became a Lynch fan for life. But even better than that was having Chris to share this with. When he realized I had never seen Twin Peaks, strange envelopes of his personal VHS tapes appeared on my work chair. Thank you, Chris. Binging on Twin Peaks was my first series binge and it changed the game for me. It still is my fondest memory of living life in "the city" in my 20's. We would see Lynch films whenever possible and most recently got to enjoy Twin Peaks Returns. A highlight for me was getting to see Eraserhead (his favorite) with him in Berkely.
It turned out we both had music as a significant part of our past lives before getting into tech. It wasn't long after we figured this out that we secured a rehearsal studio in Daly City. We only used it once but kept it for several years. It became known as "the space", it came to represent our first inside joke (of many), it basically meant procrastination... the thing we keep meaning to get to. It would become the hallmark of many endeavors including a stop motion barbie satire, a membership in the SF film institute (so we could use their editing equipment), and most recently a full 10 song album under the name "Meanwhile in California" for which he wrote and recorded each song.
Chris, for me, was a soul-mate of strange and unusual. We were able to connect on so many specific interests. We loved weird German metal bands like "Die Krupps" and would always share music with each other. We would spontaneously suggest doing covers of obscure 80's songs. We got to see Gang-of-Four and the Descendants play in SF! I wouldn't have done that without him. He would make midi covers of crazy punk tunes and painstakingly program the drums to every nuance for which I could appreciate and reciprocate the effort.
We always stayed in touch throughout our different careers and life changes over 20 years. He was the friend I was always genuinely glad to reconnect with. Seeing Chris succeed, acquire a home, find and fall in love with his dog made my heart soar.
We made some memorable trips together. My first trip to Yosemite and a trip to Mono Lake and the ghost town Bodie were highlights. In 2018 we went to NAMM in LA (a thing we kept saying we wanted to do and finally did). Hanging out with Chris in LA, driving around Echo Park while he told me about "the Shield", quoting lines from Aliens!, hitting the Dresden, meeting up with his colleagues for dinner were definitely the highlights of the trip. I was stoked to learn of his writing accomplishments and world journeys with others here. I'm glad you all knew him and I'm honored to share that uniqueness with you.
In early 2019 Chris found a muse, he was producing 1 song per month! He would eagerly share them with me and I was blown away. I encouraged him to keep going...honor the muse..get the songs refined as we go. He ended up with 10 usable songs (including interludes) which I helped him get to demo quality and we even had professional drums recorded for two of them.
We were in contact daily regarding the album on Slack. Suddenly he went quiet, too quiet....
I still miss you, man, I'm glad you got those songs out there. I'm humbled and honored I could help bring them to the world.
The song demos are here:
https://soundcloud.com/meanwhileincaliforniaWhen I need a Chris connection I listen to this song and I highly recommend it:
https://soundcloud.com/meanwhileincalifornia/wholeChris, your wholeness leaves a massive hole in our hearts, but maybe someday, we're gonna be okay.
When I can get my head around it, I'm hoping to return to his music. The goal is to have a professional engineer I know (who works at a studio in Oakland) finalize a couple of the finished tracks. I will then press these to vinyl in his honor. He was stoked at the idea of doing a bonafide "record". I want to do that for him.