#getitgotitgoodseries

 Get It? Got It? Good. | Episode 4 | The Harp with Tomoko

If you ever decide to hire Tomoko Sato to play the harp at your wedding, I couldn’t imagine there being one dry eye as she would play. If you ever decide to Yelp “Harpist Tomoko Sato” and read her reviews, you’ll understand why. As I was luckily invited to her home, I noticed that the main attraction was her grand harp, sitting in the middle of the living room, adjacent to her piano. 

Tomoko has a soft voice with a modest tone. Her interview was both educational and personal, as are the others that I’ve done but my most favorite moment of her interview was when she played her harp for me. The echoes in the great room bounced every note from wall to wall. The melody was soft but technical and I felt like I was in some kind of fairytale. Her hands and her feet were both moving at the same time similar to playing the piano as she remained focused and confident with every pluck and strum. The concentration in Tomoko’s face beamed a sense of ownership with her instrument as if it was the only one she had ever played on and that love for the harp was pouring out of her. I felt so lucky to be there in that moment, witnessing her personal relationship and how important the human touch of playing her instrument was, that would never be perfectly replicated using any form of technology.

Get it? Got It? Good. | Episode 2 | Pinstriping with Tom Kelly

I remember being nervous to give Tom Kelly a call that day because I was about to ask the last of the first seven American pinstripers (Kenny Howard, aka Von Dutch being one of them) to possibly take time out of his day to meet with me. It turned out that Tom lives right around the corner from my parent’s home, I went to grade school with his grandson and his daughter was my 3rd grade teacher. What are the odds?

Since his studio in Bellflower is currently being used by one of his sons, he mostly works out of his detached garage, surrounded by airbrushed and hand painted work, buckets of 1-Shot Sign Paint and an old boom box that’s used as background noise. We went through older and newer work, as I had to stop my eyes from getting bigger and bigger because of the focus I had on the level of detail in each of his pieces. I noticed a new thing every time I looked away and came back to it.

Tom is one of the most humble individuals I’ve ever met. Here I was, sitting in front of the grandson and prodigy of The Baron of Baron and Roth (Ed “Big Daddy” Roth), while he kept saying to me, “this isn’t a big deal. I’m just a regular guy”. As I watched his steady hands glide across the plastic board, the smile on my face showed the level of gratitude I had for this “regular guy” who continues to carry the torch for the art of pinstriping and Kustom Kulture. He told me stories about his old hot rods in the 50’s, his memorable trips to Europe and we even talked about the current election. All the while, Tom was painting perfect thin and thick symmetrical lines and offered to teach me as long as I was serious. I now do my best to walk around the block and visit him every other week when I’m home and I value every minute of it.

Get It? Got it? Good. | Episode 1 | Disk Jockey with DJ Skitz

On the second floor of a corner building in Koreatown, I met up with DJ Skitz, a seasoned Disk Jockey who was born and raised in Los Angeles. His love for music and the physicality of collecting and scratching with vinyl is abundant in his space, his sanctuary, his own personal house of music.

In the first room of his studio, there was an entire wall tiled with nostalgic album covers; everything from Jurassic 5, to DJ Kool, to Lauryn Hill, to Wu-Tang, to Mos Def and even the soundtrack to Training Day (a classic Denzel film).

Immediately, the vibe was clear as he talked with me about his first time on the turntables and how the progression of technology continues to maintain a borderless history for the legacy of deejaying. He values Serato just as much as the next rising DJ on Soundcloud today but it’s important to understand that you can’t have one without the other. Without crate digging, vinyl collecting and turntablism, where would the heart and soul of the best house parties dating all the way back to the 1930’s be today? How could seamless medleys of our favorite tracks be mixed and therefore unified without the original version of matching beats, relying on over-sized headphones and the excitement to cue the next track to play?