Craig Wedren is the former lead singer of Shudder to Think and now the lead for the newer pop-mash project, "BABY". He's also written the theme to Comedy Central's Reno 911! and wrote the incidental music for the film, School of Rock. Read below as Craig shares with us how music connects him and his best buds together:I was recently in a taxi on the way to the airport, headed home to LA from Washington DC, where I was visiting my dad who’d just had a hip-replacement.
The driver asked me if I wanted to take the highway (faster) or the scenic route through Georgetown. I chose the scenic route, and we drove down Wisconsin Ave, past a stellar graveyard, and a sea of ghosts in the form of memories both musical and friend-related. Here are a couple of highlights:
Sidwell Friends, where a Junior High crush of mine went to school. One evening I took her to see Breathless (the Richard Gere remake), and freaked out at the end credits, which featured my favorite band, X, covering Jerry Lee Lewis’ classic song of the same name. I’ve seen –and forgotten- hundreds of teenage movie-dates, but will never forget the humid, frustrated groping and thwarted kiss-attempts during that otherwise forgettable remake, all because of the end-credits song, which in my dream-memory has become the soundtrack to a perfect (albeit unrequited) teen-crush. Thank you, X, and thank you girl-who-shall-remain-nameless (we’re still friends, and she probably doesn’t remember this unforgettable night).
Further down the street is the former location of my one entrepreneurial endeavor –running an ice cream stand which stood on the corner of Wisconsin and N streets. For better and for worse (but mostly for better) I employed only friends –Chris Matthews, then guitarist for my band Shudder To Think; Nathan Larson, future guitarist for Shudder To Think; and Zoe Rosenfeld, best-friend/muse/erstwhile high school-thru-college love. It only lasted for one Summer, and the business lost scads of money, but we all found our literary voices in the form of a chain-notebook which was supposed to be used for keeping track of earnings, but wound up being a trippy collage of lyrics, show-fliers, notes to one another, and run-on story-poems that would be passed off from one shift to another (we didn’t see each other all that often as we each took different shifts, but were in constant contact through the notebook). There was a boom box at the stand which played the first Motely Crue record, Bad Brains, XTC, and whatever else was fueling our Summer (probably band practice cassettes of Shudder and Nathan’s then-band, Swiz). This music served as a pirate flag for our punk-ass operation, and kept customers at bay (except for Joey Ramone, who bought a frozen fruit bar) so that we could hang out, rock out, dream away, and write strange notes to one another.
Hope you all have been enjoying so far! Part 2 of Craig's awesome story will be shared with you guys tomorrow!
For more info on Craig, visit: CraigWedren.com and DavidWain.com.
& don't forget, another episode of BFF will be live on @: MySpace.com/BFF.
;)
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