Infrared Rabbit
When I moved home to Honolulu in 2012, I began to play out in the Hawaii music scene as A Bass And Its Boy, since that was the only band whose members all moved with me. At my first real non open mic gig, I met an acoustic duo called Infrared Rabbit—Michelle on vocals and Kayseph on guitar. I liked what they did, they liked what I did, we became friends and mutual fans. When they got to the point that they were ready to record, they decided that they wanted to do it with a full band and asked me to play on the CD. I agreed at once, and the experience was so good that they asked me to be in the band full time. We're out there in the clubs, so check the Facebook page out below and come see us play!
Infrared Rabbit
A Bass And Its Boy
After the demise of Mobia's Trip and the stasis of Autodialer (see below) I decided that I'd try out the singer-songwriter thing... but I'm just not a guitarist. Playing solo bass and voice performances has proven something a of a challenge, but it's been a rewarding one. With a nod to The Chronicles of Narnia and with a desire to not have people gloss over an unfamiliar and otherwise non-descript name like "Joshua Edelstein" in local music listings, I named the project "A Bass And Its Boy."
A Bass And Its Boy
Autodialer
Autodialer is a musical project that's on temporary permanent hiatus. My partner Vince and I both got busy with other projects which are all flourishing now, so Autodialer went on hold. We wrote a few good songs and only did a quick'n'dirty demo of one of them, but we do have a killer web site.
Mobia's Trip
At its inception in 1995, Mobia's Trip consisted of myself on bass and vocals, Evan Field on guitar and vocals, and Paul Hoffman on drums and backup vocals (replacing Yoni Sandler with whom Evan and I had been playing from '94 to '95). In 1999 we added C. Brian Crane on keyboards, acoustic guitar and vocals as well as Paul's brother Preston on congas, bongos and the saw. We also had a great road crew in Tim Devine on sound and Matt Hill on lights and fog. Our sound went through as many changes as our line up--in 1996 we were a progressive rock band, circa 1998 we were a funk rock band and by the time the music stopped, we were a jam band in the vein of Phish and others.
Fifteen years after the band broke up, our old web address has been resurrected as an archival record of the band's accomplishments. Visit Mobia's Trip to hear studio and live recordings and to see video and images of the band. If you were on the journey with us, it's a heck of a trip down memory lane--and you might even see a picture of yourself in there.
Guyana Koolaid
GK was my college band along with Joe O'Brien on vocals, Michael Wilder on lead guitar, Vince Martinez on rhythm guitar and Ramon Varela on drums. We played our first show at Georgetown University as "Who Stole My Skull," called ourselves "The Disconnectors" for a while and settled on the tasteless but catchy name that a friend suggested. Hey, it was a metal band. We found out later that the capital of Guyana is Georgetown and that we had a sister school there--who knew! We then found out that there was a Canadian band called "Jonestown Punch," so we weren't the only ones being irreverent . . . GK played from '91 to '94 with a one year hiatus in the middle, and did a reunion show in '96. Below are the rare surviving recordings.
Fountainhead
In 1990, I had just finished high school and agreed to play a summer gig with my friend Jon Jaffe's band, who--including Jon--had all just finished the 8th grade. Having started out on guitar, I wasn't even considering myself a bassist yet but I had one and figured I'd be at least as good a bassist as they were everything else. The show wound up being one of the reasons that I shifted full time to bass a year later. The following summer I hooked up with Carter Evans and Mahesh Cleveland (the drummer and lead guitarist, respectively) since Jon was away at camp, and we jammed in Carter's bedroom and came up with five songs. The summer after that, we got back together and wrote five more songs. We decided that in the time we had we could either perform a show or record an album, and we opted for the latter. The songs from that album, entitled So There, are below.
So There | Highway Bleeding | BFC | Anything At All | Satisfied | :30 Of Silence
Before all that, way back when I was a beginning guitar student in 1987 or 1988, my guitar teacher Kelly Villaverde laid down tracks for a song I wrote and had me sing on it. I was what, 16? The song is called the "Love Rejection Blues," and was inspired by 80s dance band Dead Or Alive. They had a song called "Cake And Eat It" on the album Youthquake, in which they sang the line "I got lots of things that you could use/So don't reject it or I'll get the love rejection blues." I figured if he was gonna get the love rejection blues, there should BE a love rejection blues. Wrote a song about it, like to hear it, here it goes: