While living in Oakland, California, I enjoyed playing live music with my friends, Aaron and Luis, in an arrangement so informal that we never had a name. In honor of a conversation where we casually suggested names and never agreed to anything, I have chosen one of the suggested names: FTC.

Many of these songs were played in an apartment in Berkeley, with the volume literally as loud as it could be such that it could be heard for a city block around. Some songs were played in Oakland, in a storage shed that had been outfitted for music. Most of the winter, it was so cold and rainy that we wore jackets indoors. The rest of these songs were recorded at a friend’s studio in Oakland.