Thursday July 10, 2008

BANDWIDTH: JOSH FIX
By Delfin Vigil

Music has always been this San Francisco songwriter's racket. "I started by playing tennis-racket air guitar to Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' and moved on to my own multitracking experiments as a child in South Africa," Josh Fix says of early his early musical days. "It wasn't too fabulously sophisticated: two cassette-playing boom boxes set up with their speakers facing each other. I could get up to about 10 voices going before it started sounding like Alvin and the Chipmunks." After spending some time in his first band - Instant Bro, an experimental, psychedelic soul-jam - Fix served up his own music, including the 2004 EP "Steinway the Hard Way," and his most recent release, "Free at Last." And for the record, Josh Fix is not a stage name. "I've only met one other Josh Fix in the world," he says. "We got drunk together once, and I theorize that we may have caused a small tear in the fabric of space-time in the process."

1. Josh Fix's music should be filed between:
"The Mikado" meets "Fight Club" as interpreted by Peter Sellers. That's the answer I'd like to give, but I guess the consensus is that it's a bit like a mashup of Queen and Ben Folds.

2. The soundtrack to what movie would your music best match?
"Love and Death," by Woody Allen.

3. If you could collaborate on a song with any person, living or dead, who would that be?
I would have an epic MC battle between Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan - freestyle rapping over my tune "When the Sun Explodes."

4. If a junior high school asked you to play a cover song at the next talent show, what song and school would you choose?
"The Number of the Beast," by Iron Maiden. Because it's the best song ever written. And it's junior high (well, in South Africa they call it primary school).

5. What is the meaning of life?
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women." - Conan the Barbarian.

Check him out: MYSPACE.COM/JOSHFIX

Next gig: 8 p.m. today, $5 advance; $8 at the door, 21+. With Boy in the Bubble, Leopold and His Fiction. Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk St., S.F. (415) 921-1695. www.reddevillounge.com. - Delfin Vigil, bandwidth@sfchronicle.com This article appeared on page G - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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