Transporté sans bouger. My name is Paolo. I play records and other instruments. Some know me as P-Love. You may have seen me on stage with the one they call Kid Koala. I use an Olympus E-P1, old-ass iPhone, or Blackberry Curve 9300 to capture the goings on around me. Recently became a father so that's mostly what's going on around me at the moment.

Although the majority of my life presently consists of a day job, a loving wife, and an apartment in Washington Heights, I’ve been fortunate enough to have made a living as a touring/recording musician for a while. Most of these tours have been with Eric San, professionally known to the world as Kid Koala.

I met Eric in 1997 at some Ninja Tune show in Montreal, stepping out of my normally introverted anti-social self temporarily to tell him how awesome his DJ set was. I had known about him since high school; when I told my sister I was getting into DJing, she mentioned that one of the guys in her dorm played records in a funk band. It turned out that we lived a block away from each other, and as I came up in the closely-knit Montreal DJ scene, people often mistook me for him, despite me being Filipino, him being Chinese, and us not really looking anything alike except we were about the same height. We ran into each other at DJ battles, on the street, and late night Chinese restaurants, and occasionally jammed together. He introduced me to a fellow DJ named Graham, who became a close friend of mine during my time in Montreal and went on to become half of Thunderheist.

January 2000. I was packing up my parents’ Subaru Outback, getting ready to move back to New York following my final semester at McGill, when the phone rang. Eric asked if I had time to meet up. I drove to his apartment with the car half packed, and over tea and desserts he asked if I wanted to spend the next eight months on the road with him and Bullfrog. I said yes before he finished his sentence. My favourite part of the conversation was when I asked if I would be back in time for the DMC battle season, to which he replied, “Man, fuck battling. You’re done with that.”

And so I was.

I’ve spent the last couple days in Montreal, practicing with Kid Koala for the Short Attention Span Audio Theatre show, 2010 Olympic edition. We were on the same plane with the Dutch bobsled team. They all have orange suitcases.

Flew into Vancouver last night. Every time I’m here I can only think of two things: 1) How much sushi can I eat while I’m here; and 2) I really want to move here. Not right now, but eventually. If only it didn’t rain so much.

The title of this Tumblr page is from one of my favourite Stereolab songs. Just in case you were wondering.

This video is of another favourite, and actually the song that turned me on to Stereolab. It was on a CMJ sampler CD that I got in 1993 at Lollapalooza (Dinosaur Jr, Rage Against the Machine, Front 242 et al). The CD also contained tracks by Uncle Tupelo, post-Blake-Babies Juliana Hatfield, Jamiroquai, and Bo$$ (whatever happened to her?). A year later Mars Audiac Quintet dropped, and that and Biggie are pretty much all I remember listening to my senior year in high school.

This is a real Quebec road sign. There’s one on Autoroute 15 south en route to the US border and I crack a smile every time I pass it. Today I found this site where you can download Illustrator files of all the signs. T-shirts coming soon.

This is a real Quebec road sign. There’s one on Autoroute 15 south en route to the US border and I crack a smile every time I pass it. Today I found this site where you can download Illustrator files of all the signs. T-shirts coming soon.

I met Terence Bernardo in the fall of 2000 when I was in town playing a show with Kid Koala. Turns out he and my sister had a lot of friends in common at McGill, where both my sister and I (as well as Terence and Eric) studied. We were even both living in Montreal for at least two years and managed to not meet once, which was even harder to believe when we found out 5 years later that we are actually related through marriage on both our mothers’ sides. This was confirmed on another Koala tour, this time in Australia. I spent a day off in the Gold Coast with my cousins; when I met my aunt at the airport after not seeing her for 15 years, i felt like i was staring at Terence’s sister. Last night Terence played a solo show in Williamsburg. Halfway through the set, Bug and Bru from the Defibulators joined him on three-part-harmony duties.

I met Terence Bernardo in the fall of 2000 when I was in town playing a show with Kid Koala. Turns out he and my sister had a lot of friends in common at McGill, where both my sister and I (as well as Terence and Eric) studied. We were even both living in Montreal for at least two years and managed to not meet once, which was even harder to believe when we found out 5 years later that we are actually related through marriage on both our mothers’ sides. This was confirmed on another Koala tour, this time in Australia. I spent a day off in the Gold Coast with my cousins; when I met my aunt at the airport after not seeing her for 15 years, i felt like i was staring at Terence’s sister.

Last night Terence played a solo show in Williamsburg. Halfway through the set, Bug and Bru from the Defibulators joined him on three-part-harmony duties.

Last night in Brooklyn.Starburst/bokeh > being in focus.

Last night in Brooklyn.
Starburst/bokeh > being in focus.

“Never put me in your box if the shit eats tapes.” There were always at least 10 to 20 cassettes in each of the family cars. One of the last ones I remember buying was Kid Koala’s “Scratchcratchratchatch” in 1996. Seven years later, I’m traveling through Europe with Koala’s Short Attention Span Audio Theatre tour. Something I ate in Dusseldorf (after the excitement of buying a pair of deadstock Airwalk Vics had worn off) led to me projectile vomiting in a bathroom stall in Amsterdam, simultaneously wishing I was dead and wondering how the purchase of a 20-minute tape eventually brought me to a toilet in the Netherlands. (G. Michael Pendon’s kitchen, Jan 2010)

“Never put me in your box if the shit eats tapes.”

There were always at least 10 to 20 cassettes in each of the family cars. One of the last ones I remember buying was Kid Koala’s “Scratchcratchratchatch” in 1996. Seven years later, I’m traveling through Europe with Koala’s Short Attention Span Audio Theatre tour. Something I ate in Dusseldorf (after the excitement of buying a pair of deadstock Airwalk Vics had worn off) led to me projectile vomiting in a bathroom stall in Amsterdam, simultaneously wishing I was dead and wondering how the purchase of a 20-minute tape eventually brought me to a toilet in the Netherlands.

(G. Michael Pendon’s kitchen, Jan 2010)

One of the songs on my first album is called “Isabella Frances”. It was the song I was working on when I got a 2am phone call from my mother announcing the birth of my sister’s first born.

One of the songs on my first album is called “Isabella Frances”. It was the song I was working on when I got a 2am phone call from my mother announcing the birth of my sister’s first born.

  1. Gayle: You know what I used to eat for breakfast? Cocaine.
  2. You know what I used to eat for lunch? Cocaine!
  3. Wheeler: What did you eat for dinner?
  4. Danny: Was it cocaine?
@preplove