Legends of Grift

Endless Grift - Lost in the Open / Lady Day (Live from Prenzlauer Berg)

In Fall of 2006, I got a DAAD stipendium to go to Berlin and study Jacob Taubes. Alex and Chris came with me, for grifting's sake. We found a three-bedroom apartment near Tempelhof airport, near a little park, in an area of Kreuzberg that hadn't been bombed during the war, so it looked vaguely Parisian. Alex and I already decided we were a band. We thought about a name for a long time and landed on 'Past Lives.' We invited Chris to join and play together, as it made all the sense in the world. Our practice space was in the back basement of some squatter's building just west of Rosenthaler Platz.  It was huge and cost 9 euros an hour.

Let's not speak any more of this. It was pretty much one of the greatest times in my life. 

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We renamed ourselves Endless Grift, because this is the only form that grift should take. I recorded all the sessions. There was one jam that was a particular epiphany, an improvised jewel, one that has remained stuck in our collective heads since then. I present it to you now, in edited form. I'm still quite proud of it. It's low-fi and the whole thing is entirely in the red. It's completely rowdy and fiery. It sounds awesomely distorted and explosive. 

Do you know when you're jamming sometime and everything goes in sync suddenly and you're like "we have lift-off...look out..." Alex is playing in a superbly rolling-thunder holy-shit barrel roll. Chris is spraying fantastic siren synths. I'm playing heavy John Cale organ. In the first part I'm singing "we could be lost in the open..and never learn our names." in the second, "why don't you come over and say goodnight? you know you look good to me." It's one of the best existent records of Endless Grift, and I want to share it with you, because duh. Get up with it.

For more please visit us at myspace.com/endlessgrift.