Video: Brooklyn Band Falcon Performing Songs Ostensibly from a Departed Classmate

photo by Rob Trucks

In the annals of concept records, Brooklyn band Falcon has quite a fantastical doozy in their self-titled EP, released this summer on No Office Records. According to an unusually memorable press release, the foursome was supposedly named after Jared Falcon, a former Petaluma Junior High school classmate of band members Shannon Ferguson and Neil Rosen. Jared was a multi-instrumental whiz kid who scribbled a total of "336 songs" until "he was institutionalized" in 1988 at the age of 14. Years later, guitarist Shannon Ferguson discovered Jared's years-old recordings on cassettes "while helping Mrs. Falcon, still a family friend, to clean out a storage space in Petaluma." What turned up were tunes about animals ("Birds and Mice"), mythological creatures ("Elves"), and teenage estrangement ("I load a gun/Say hello to my friends/There is no way to blend/Fire and ice" from "Q of T"). As the story goes, Ferguson and fellow PJHS alum Neil Rosen formed a band specifically to reinterpret these songs; this summer's EP was the project's culmination.

Creative malarkey or honorable tribute? Like it matters. What does: Falcon are performing tonight at Rehab, reason enough to post long-lost videos of them performing two acoustic tracks at St. George's Episcopal Church for our Possibly 4th Street feature.

Warning: "The Sandfighter" will give you a nasty case of repetuneitis.

Falcon, "The Sandfighter"

Falcon, "Elves"