6-14-2023 We just posted fabulous footage from film maker & friend Bobby Heckman to YouTube. Hours of content include live shows as well as pre and post show antics. Of course, we don’t expect you to watch each of five segments from beginning to end, but we’re rolling out the highlights. Check our socials and the blog section of this website. Today’s pick is the forgotten song, Centerpiece. You can on YouTube, exact time stamp, here: https://youtu.be/DJVH_BpgaaI&t=19m46s and READ about this song that surprised us here:
To listen to Moxie Starpark visit our streaming page.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86389588606 Virtual album release Sat May 13. 1pm NY time (11am Mountain, 6pm Wales) Sorry you missed it. We will re-post clips soon!
Over 20 years after recording at Cloud 9 Recordings, Moxie Starpark finally released their sophomore album, Blinding Blaring Twinkle on May 5, 2023. You may have heard of them because their first album was featured on TV shows like Party Of Five & Dawson’s Creek. Get ready for 14 pop punk edgy NY songs. Woot! If you were a donor, or FYI, you can check up on detailed project updates here>>
In 1998, my band Moxie Starpark was featured as “up n comers” in Teen Beat Magazine ABOVE Brittany Spears! We were an all female pop band, on the side of punk and rock. Our first cd The Floor was met with rave reviews by the press, our songs were featured on TV shows like Dawson’s Creek, and we were voted Long Island Voice’s “Band Of The Year”.
Sadly, we broke up as we were finishing up our sophomore album. It was before twitter, facebook, instagram and moreover before music streaming services like Spotify. Reaching fans would have required a lot of money. Pressing cd’s, finding a distributor to put it in stores, hiring a publicist and going on tour were just a few costly necessities. Sadly at the time music label backing for nyc female bands was anemic. We were out of money. We ran out of steam.
Fast forward a couple of decades later. A fan in France encouraged me to stream our previously released first album on Spotify. Then other fans encouraged me to release the unreleased second LP, recorded around 2001 at Cloud 9 Recording. We ran a successful albeit nailbiting kickstarter and raised the money to transfer the 15 songs off the reel to reel tapes. They are in the final mixing stages by Jakob Leventhal.
This page chronicles the journey of those 15 Moxie Starpark songs from the analog tapes, so stay tuned and check back! This story is far from over!
I’m also writing and recording a new solo album, then have a full time and part time job. I once heard an old man say to his friend in a Bronx diner, “If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person.”
If you want to become part of what I believe will be music history, consider donating as a matreon or patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FalaLa Starting as little as $5 per month, the revenue stream will help maximize the reach of our all female punk pop album, as well as contribute to current solo music projects.
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8/15/2022 Though this project has taken much longer than anticipated, I want to reassure all the kickstarter backers that we are nearing the final stages. View latest blog post >>
2-10-2022 The Moxie Starpark tracks are getting mixed, and the final album can NOT be anything but great. Thank you, thank you for your patience and support. xo, Fala
This section of my website is dedicated to the Moxie Starpark project. A successful kickstarter raised $$$ to finally release the female pop punk band’s full length album recorded over 20 years ago!! It’s in progress, and updates will be posted here. Don’t forget to check out the other sections of this site, including where to stream Fala La songs, bands & collabs past, present & future!
1-14-2022 Update: Due to unforeseen circumstances, this project has been postponed until February. We apologize, but we must stay safe as this pandemic ravages NY, and probably your locale, too.
Please read an important letter from Joe Napoli of Cloud 9 Recording concerning the timeline to completion of this project >>
Check out this video. We recorded in this same studio 22 years ago. Same reel machine. Same white line!
8-30-21 I finished and posted my first “personal theme song”, what a cool, fun experience! If you’re waiting for your theme song, I appreciate your patience, I’m a little behind schedule, but I’ll be starting the next one this week. Unlike Moxie Starpark’s second album, I write, perform & product these myself in my home studio. With nobody to bounce ideas off of, it often takes a little more time to process it all. I often have to step away then listen with fresh ears a few days later. Not all A to Z productions go that way, but this first one did! You can check out Scotty Knows here >>
8/21 Hello! I’m psyched to announce that the first track Don’t Kiss Me Now is almost done getting mixed by engineer extraordinaire Rob Stroup. As sometimes happens, the transfer of tracks was not without little challenges. The format was inexplicably incompatible from one studio to the next, then the timestamp was off. Lol, the studios ironed it out quickly. I’ve come to learn that now matter how careful you are, these things come with the territory.
It’s like inventory! No matter how careful the people at a company count units of merchandise and no matter how advanced that company’s inventory tracking technology is, the virtual inventory vs. physical inventory always diverges over time. I have been to business conferences that dedicate no less than an hour talking about this strange phenomenon. Ok. I’m boring myself with this analogy.
In the meantime, I am so excited about my first of four theme songs that I’ve been commissioned to write as part of the Kickstarter reward. I “finished” writing it a few weeks ago. But then, in typical fashion, I recorded it and the words felt a little “off”. I mean, the lyrics looked good on paper, as a poem would. And they flowed when I sang them on my acoustic. But into a microphone….Not so much…so a tweak here, there, voila. I got that timing & word flow just right, and tried not to muddle the grammar too much. But at that point, I thought I’d have to add an entire extra verse, because one of the characters was splotchy, more like a sketch than a painting. It was clear that one guy from the high school days turned out to be a total loser, but it wasn’t clear that the other guy wound up doing really well. I thought about THAT for another few days. I thought I’d need a whole extra verse, detailing fancy cars and vacations and brand name clothes. I worried less about how to convey that in words, and more about how I would produce it. After all, I’d already RECORDED a great keeper take on the guitar. How would I insert another verse? Dub? Or cut and paste the track? But it dawned on me that I could fix the character problem with ONE word. Doctor. Third verse NOT necessary. Concise. Oh that makes me almost as happy as my first sip of coffee in the morning.
Now that the song foundation is done done done (guitar, melody, lyrics), things will go more quickly. (Will they???) Last night, I had limited time to work on it, so I focused on building the beats. It was like the opposite of a nightmare when I listened back, a dream mare? I was pumped! But then…listening to the mix on my way to work…Oh, right…No, wrong drum beat in the verse. Not boy band enough. There’s a lot of options that would work with the melody, but it’s got to match that guitar part. Not ADD an extra layer. Rather, EMPHASIZE the hits on the riff that’s already there. But they will, they really will go more quickly from here. Just fixing those beats is very technical, won’t take too much time, and it will leave less creative options for the bass (in this case, a good thing!) I can’t WAIT for you to hear it!!! And with the impending hurricane, I will not be going to the beach this weekend, so it will be my hurricane project, given I still have electric juice.
8-14. Hey I am here at Cloud 9 Recording live streaming the hell out of today’s transfer action on my i.g. and fb and tick tick, so click on my social links and check it out. Getting CHILLS hearing these tracks, some for the first time in TWENTY TWO years
Update 8/1/2021 I’m almost finished with my first of four theme songs, and I can’t wait to share it with y’all. This one was challenging for me because it was based on a previously song featured in the movie “Euro Trip”, a sequel song of sorts. More soon…….
Update 7-27-2021 I’ll be assistingJoe Napoli from Cloud 9 studios to start the process of transferring the tracks on the tapes over to digital files the second weekend in August! We were trying to get together sooner, on a weekday. However, a crashed server situation has reared its ugly head at my workplace and until it’s resolved, I won’t be able to take a day off. Joe not only runs a studio, but he owns Analog Alien, a guitar pedal company, so he’s too busy to work around my unpredictable weekday situation. A loonnnng time ago….about the time of Moxie’s early Bayville days actually…I was on my lunch break in a diner in the Bronx, sitting alone in a booth when I overheard an elderly man say to his friend “if you want to get something done, give it to someone who’s really busy”. One of those random words of wisdom that stuck with me for the rest of my life.
Update 7-24-2021: Hello! I’ve reached out to everyone for their address to deliver physical rewards, or questions concerning abstract awards such as podcast and theme songs. If i forgot anyone, please contact me! Also, Wendy posted separately on her facebook page on July 18th a reward for her book, but this was outside the kickstarter. If anyone is facebook friends with Wendy and saw her post and consequently donated the threshold she’d set, please contact her or me with your physical mailing address. Studio update: Joe from Cloud9 studios are in the process of arranging the first date(s) to transfer the analog tracks to digital. I hope this happens in the next two weeks!
Update 7/21/2021: we DID it! WE DID IT! I am in a daze since yesterday. I already called Joe at Cloud 9 studios and we’re going to schedule a date to transfer the analog tracks to digital, which is step one. The tracks that we recorded some 20 years ago. It’s surreal, to say the least! Bookmark this page, or better yet, sign up for the newsletter so you won’t miss any updates, video clips, etc. In the meantime, I’ll be in touch with all of our kickstarter backers this weekend (or sooner!) about fulfilling the various rewards that range from stickers to cd’s to your own personal theme songs!
Update 7-12 Halfway there! BUT $3k and only FIVE days to go, and it’s all or nothing. Please visit kickstarter and or share, share, share. Free these women’s voices and songs, it is a step to freeing ALL our voices. Take a quick listen to one of 10 or so pop songs that will STAY forever silent if we can’t do this:
Update 7-11 Only 9 days and $4500 to go. Donate $5 or $5,000.00 or please visit kickstarter and share, share, share.
update 6-22: Per my post on kickstarter, Suburbia was “shazammed” 277 times. You can listen to track here:
“The Greatest Band You Never Heard. DYI Band That wouldn’t die…. whose fans reached out to you 20 years after your last show to ask you to release the unreleased album….that the fans still know all the songs and have been trading the raw demos underground for 20 years… and are BEGGING to crowd source the album” ~Missy Donatuti
#freeMoxie 10+ songs are stuck on reel to reel tapes. Your donation, sharing a post, press & publicity will help digitize & release some of the best pop songs the world never heard. Don’t take my word for it! Have a listen to bit of Wendy’s “She’s Getting Old”:
Now you can be a part of music history! View Kickstarter, donate if you can, and SHARE share SHARE! We have a July 20 deadline, and if we don’t meet it, Moxie will forever remain silent.
In 1998, my band Moxie Starpark was featured as “up n comers” in Teen Beat Magazine ABOVE Brittany Spears! We were an all female pop band, on the side of punk and rock. Our first cd The Floor was met with rave reviews by the press, our songs were featured on TV shows like Dawson’s Creek, and we were voted Long Island Voice’s “Band Of The Year”.
Sadly, we broke up as we were finishing up our sophomore album. It was before twitter, facebook, instagram and moreover before music streaming services like Spotify. Reaching fans would have required a lot of money. Pressing cd’s, finding a distributor to put it in stores, hiring a publicist and going on tour were just a few costly necessities. Sadly at the time there weren’t many opportunities as far as record labels backing female bands. We were out of money. We ran out of steam.
Fast forward a couple of decades later. A fan in France led to streaming our previously released first album on Spotify. Then other fans encouraged me to work on the second one.
There are many reasons NOT to take this project on. For one, the time and expense of transferring the old tapes to digital then mixing the tracks. Other reasons for not finishing include insecurity, self sabotage, not wanting to live in the past. But then I am woken up in the middle of the night by the songs “Light Up”, “Don’t Kiss Me Now” and this one below, “She’s Getting Old” and I think OH MY GOSH the world has never heard these songs, they’ve been locked away since the turn of the century. I can’t NOT do this.
This is a song my friend Wendy wrote. It is the best song I ever heard. Or is Light Up? Or Don’t Kiss Me Now?