dave fischoff

History

Member for

1 year 33 weeks

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Personal Information

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http://myspace.com/davefischoff

State

IL

Bio

Aside from my first six months of life in Denver, Colorado, I’ve always been a Midwesterner. I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, in a neighborhood full of modest houses, well-kept lawns and, despite being smack dab in the middle of the northern Indiana flatlands, a lot of really great sledding hills. With my teenage years came a love of skateboarding and, with it, the discovery of punk rock and its underground, independently-minded, do-it-yourself subculture. In 1991, I picked up a guitar, started writing songs and formed my first band in a friend’s basement. We were loud, we were awful, it was fantastic. After graduating from high school, I made my way down to Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University, where I studied psychology and English. Once there, I also got involved in the local underground music scene, which was undergoing a sort of mini-renaissance at the time. I helped set up and promote shows in basements and rental halls, DJed at the college radio station, and continued making my own music, which was now officially a solo project. Around this time, a few guys in the scene decided to start their own record label, called Secretly Canadian, and one of their first releases was a cassette of recordings I’d made, singing and playing electric guitar over a bunch of audio-collages I’d made at home on my 4-track. Shortly after that, I put out my first proper album on the label, Winston Park, and embarked on a series of tours along the nation’s indie-music circuit- through the musty clubs, decrepit warehouses, church basements, fluorescent-lit linoleum youth centers, punk rock pizza parlors, college coffee shops, bookstore back rooms, suburban living rooms and occasional backyard barbecues of America’s underground music scene. In 1998 I moved up to Chicago, where I currently live, working day jobs in various libraries around the city and continuing along my musical trajectory- touring across the US and Europe and recording and releasing albums. My most recent disc, called The Crawl, came out late last year.

What's your favorite public radio show?

A lot of my late mornings have been made a little better by Terry Gross and Fresh Air.

What's your secret talent?

I was at a cousin’s wedding reception last year, dancing with my mom to "Ice Ice Baby." She said I was "quite the dancer." Maybe it’s time to share those footwork skills with the rest of the world.

What song is stuck in your head right now, you know, a music wedgie?

It’s kind of a mash-up: the chorus from Of Montreal’s "Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider" with the bass line from "The Humpty Dance."

What sound is most characteristic of where you live?

Well, seeing how this is the Windy City I live in, I suppose it’d be the sound of wind. Though it’s a sound that seems to change with every season. Right now, in spring, the wind sounds a bit like a simmering pot, with all those things we haven’t heard for months rising up inside of it, returning to the surface- bird chirps, some drizzle, voices coming out of open windows. In summer the wind has a lower, thicker sound, especially at night when it rustles through the trees as I’m falling asleep. By autumn, the wind starts to sound brittle and scratchy, like an old 78 record. There’s a certain hiss to it, punctuated by all those brittle leaves scraping along the sidewalk. And by winter the wind just sounds hollow, empty, holding not much more than an occasional bottle or plastic bag tumbling down the street.

What's your favorite sound memory?

I was a little kid playing around with the record button on my boombox and I figured out that if I only pushed the button down halfway, it recorded extra fast. That way, when I played the tape back, whatever I’d recorded sounded extra slow. It was my first sonic manipulation.

Which station do you listen to most?

WBEZ 91.5 FM Chicago

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