A BRIEF HISTORY OF NIK FRIETAS

By his next door neighbor

Last February, the problem neighbors finally moved away.

After a few days, their replacement stopped by to introduce himself. This was Nik, and he was a musician.

You could tell he wasn’t a hyphenate. Not a waiter-guitarist-painter, web designer-sommelier-racecar driver, lifeguard-director-pilates instructor, or one of the countless other combinations you meet on a normal day in Los Angeles. Nik was just a musician-musician, who hung TVs for entitled meanies on the West Side when the rent demanded immediate action.

Nik was putting together a studio in the back shed. Now, when a neighbor tells you this, this news can either be very good or very bad. In my experience, there’s not really a lot of middle ground. Would I “mind the noise?” Of course, you always say “of course not,” but you’re grinding your teeth on the inside.

To prepare/protect myself, I immediately ran over to iTunes. Nik’s first three records were available. I secretly bought myself a few tracks, as my version of a housewarming present.

Bit by bit, I ended up buying all of Here’s Laughing at You, Heavy Mellow and Voicing the Hammers. They produced a lot of echoes that I liked. Emmit Rhodes (who made better Paul McCartney records than Paul McCartney) was my first thought. Something Else by the Kinks, Summerteeth, Hunky Dory, Plastic Ono Band, Bookends, Something/Anything? all arrived soon afterwards.

I also heard no evidence of frills or pretensions to greatness. No going for the gold. Just immaculately produced and performed pieces that informed you exactly how their composer was feeling at that particular time.

Other details soon filled in the gaps. Nik was from Visalia, CA. It’s in central California. Kind of the same area as Pavement and Grandaddy. Nik had toured with Jason Lytle the previous summer. I like Jason Lytle a great deal, so this was immediately impressive to me.

You talk to Nik, and you can also tell he cut his teeth around a lot of skaters. Nik grew up skating. He took pictures of other people skating and, for a period, was a staff photographer for Thrasher magazine. While at Thrasher, Nik bought an antique piano from one of the higher-ups and taught himself how to play.

This would probably be a good time to bring up Nik mostly plays everything on his own. He plays a lot of instruments, but it’s probably easier to say he simply plays, what…the studio? Somewhat overstated, but true all the same.

So, Nik had made three progressively good to great records that no one really got to hear, then moved to our street.