s h o w
t r i a l s
the red krayola/maher shalal hash baz/the curtains
11 september 2oo3
spaceland, los angeles, california
the curtains opened up with a trio set, chime-y gtr, drums & occasional wordsmithery vox & what looked to be a realistic analog synth... more than a little reminiscent of the 8o's red krayola/rough trade era... heavily post-punk flavored... mayo came out danced around, visibly into it...
maher shalal hash baz at first sounded very tentative, almost shaggs-y in their approaches to their instruments... they kept playing these short pieces, some a minute or two long, some only a very few seconds... as their set wore on, the room became involved in the group more & more... word started circulating around, "they're going to play 7o songs"... as they would complete one, gather themselves, then launch into another they won over the crowd, applause increased, it was as if most ppl were cheering their sheer persistence and encouraging them to make it thru the entire set, which was not always seemingly a given, as they sounded like they might fall apart any moment... ironically enuff, to me they sounded something like the "god bless the red krayola..." in their fragility and yet interesting approach...
the red krayola took the stage, mayo thompson, tom watson, george hurley, sandy yang and another asian female on violin (eliza randazzo?)... the violin was a new touch, to me... last two times i saw them they had david grubbs playing a lot of the precise guitar riffs, with mayo concentrating on vox and additional gtr & tom watson adding more colorful guitar textures... without him, and with (most likely) less rehearsal, they had a less full, more frayed kinda sound... a couple of numbers had to be restarted... this was the first time i had seen stephen prina singing and adding percussion live, and it allowed for more "hazel"-like variety in vocal tones... sandy yang's vocals also added the femme element present on record all the way back to "god bless", and her version of a song from "corky's debt" ("venus in the morning") was a nice variation... tom watson is an amazing guitar player, tho it would have been nice to see hime be able to cut loose with the more abstract gtr textures instead of having to hold down the structure so much... surfer george hurley is amazing, as always... i was thrilled, as always to be able to see & hear the krayola live, tho i did not detect any new material... (for more krayola-related chatter, see the red crayola yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redcrayola- currently running a "name this tune w/mp3s from this show)...
costes/white devil/prairiepusher/the electric bear
25 october 2oo3
detroit art space
the electric bear was davin from princess dragon mom, time stereo, etc plus movements by the piranhas jamie easter. seemed pretty identical to pdm except instead of the whale and icebergs wandering in the audience, we had the hair-painted & very dirty-looking mr. easter crawling around the cement floor of the art space, vomiting, delving under the stage, curling up into the fetal position. it was most interesting during the time it took me to decipher if easter was a part of the set or if one of the costes crew was doing an impromtu interpretive crawl-dance & vomit. things to ponder #1: vomiting as art.
i dunno, i think it was prairiepusher, he introduced himself as max, from st. louis. noisy improv... not much flow at the beginning of the set, lots of pedals and mangled elementary electronix scattered about the stage floor, best part was his playing of some cool & resonant metal objects.
white devil, i positively disliked. made me feel like goose-stepping, i am not familiar with this band, i did like the sounds made by the guy who came up after the first piece & left before the last piece, tapes distorted rhythmic fuggery. the shrieking sanger and his cartoon-y hopping and stomping left me cold. wanted to ask cruz about this, figured it was something you have to be in the know about, [p]ower [e]lectronics insider ha-ha stuff. like bloodyminded... mebbe yr supposed to laugh about it. liked the drummers outsize bass drum and setup tho.
costes was all that was promised. the swells in the crowd congregated in the corners, the better to elude the flinging of poo pudding and piss water and fowl flesh. the audio consisted of a pretaped backing track which also contained most of the vocals. other than a bell or two, the rest was the 2 male members & the femme chanting, incanting, dancing, and performing what seemed like an operatic kinda themed about sex, religion, sex, bodily functions, audience interaction... or sharing various psuedo & real body fluids with the audience. i was glad to avoid any staining substances, did get some sweat on me, also declined to spit in costes mouth, also passed on inserting fingers up the lovedolls vaginal orifice. ppl sitting on either side of me got humped by sweaty frenchmen, were smeared with what was sposed to be feces... worst part was some major b.o. best was watching the crowd progressively gather in gathering numbers in "safe" zones off to the sides. i can't really make any claim to insight about the thrust (heh heh) of the presentation, but i think there is certainly room to ponder a few more things: oral sex (altho flaccid) onstage, simulated (or real? u make the call) golden showers, anal penetration... all in the name of for-want-of-a-better-word art... maybe i do have a better word: "entertainment" ??? it certainly was the most unusual show i have ever seen outside of porno theater. pretty tame compared to that donkey show in tijuana, but for the detroit & the art space it was extreme... i sure hope ben shampoos that carpet before i play there again...
burning star core/mike shiflet/hive mind/aaron dilloway
15 november 2oo3
the paris hilton, ann arbor
kudos to aaron for making this show happen despite the confusion with the detroit art space. aaron's set was a good start, less of the chattering electronics i've seen him use often on other solo shows, more drones, some extreme frequencies. best part was when he started doing what looked like he was sticking his fingers in one of the tape machines... yeah, that, and whacking the reverb unit upside to get that good spring reverb against mettalic sound...
hive mind appeared next, playing his blacksanddesert miked-metal with his foot and cranking out squirrely synth sounds... if he bled, i didn't see it, tho i did see more of his boxers + than i needed to... good set, moving in an interesting direction...
an impromptu set by sweepers was next... olson dancing with a broom, channeling riverdance, fred asstaire, kevin bacon's footloose meets j.beal's flashdanz, some canadien curling, lotsa audience participation... and beyond... keep an eye out for the dronedisco.org video of the proceedings... including the audience begging for it to stop...
mike shiflet had to follow that up and the gameboy blue laptop was left behind for some basement noisician mic humping a damage-speakerconed amp... there were very little of the obnoxious high-end frequencies he has been clearing sinuses with around the midwest on this tour... nothing obvious in this set, he plays with some subtle variations of sound that are easily overlooked in a beer-soaked basement setting... will be interesting to see how it sounds on the recording...
burning star core's spencer definitely pleased the crowd, beginning with some accomplished violin sawings thru some effects that skirted around inserting musicality into this noise setting... after that he went to the two microphone speaking in tongues glossalia head-twisting indigenous ohio river sounds... powerful, spence has the 'risma... encores were demanded until he was totally spent... the inclusion of shiflet's laptop was a nice touch... and the totally acoustic solo & duo performances answered some really dumb questions i saw recently posted on microsound.org about "why noise?"... the answer: possibilities abound... everyone who played tonight did not merely assail the earbuds... they toyed with the brainstems... overall, an evening that did me a world of good... what more can you ask?...
chromatics/tamion 12"/viki/via employee
2 march 2oo4
detroit art space, detroit
arrived too late to see via employee, was told they were great, they sure had some weird equipment with wire structures hanging offa them... viki was the 1st performer i actually saw & heard... it was her i came to see... still bewildered why the show was billed as "last ever"... hard to believe she will actually stop performing (and she did that cage thing in ann arbor under the "vixen hott" moniker, so maybe the viki name is being retired? dunno...) vintage viki, beat-driven distorted electronics, no voice, except for some asides here & there... she played a long time compared to what i've seen before, so maybe she wanted to make the last one a good long one... i was able to see more of her setup than i remembered before, looked like a laptop was maybe sequencing several of her circuit-bent drum machines... some nteresting interfaces, one had little pins in a rectangular board that she kept pulling & replacing to affect the sounds... she also had some barewire connectors that plugged into a keyboard... some beats worked better than others, but plenty to dig yr teeth into here... nice show, sorry to see you go...
tamion 12" was next, there was some e-listed discalimer about laptop incidents and barely-rehearsed songs... despite the disclaimer, the post-punk early 8os rough trade sound was in full evidence... not a bad riff on the lora logic shtick... the first 3 or so songs featured some killer no-wavey gtr skronk, and some lo-fied drummer tapeage... but as the set wore on, the fresh vibrancy of the first group of tunes was replaced by persisting self-taunting and repetitious non-grooves... shoulda quit about the 4th song, imhofwiw...
the crowd significantly had cleared out by the time the chormatics took the stage... so apparently it wasnt them the ample crowd came to see (still wondering about that, cars up & down the block on a tuesday? erzatz audio associations? viki fanz? tamion groupies? feel free to fill me in on the secret of pulling that good of a crowd on a weekday... good job, whoever is responsible for that)... i wasn't particularly interested, tho we nearly crossed paths out in oakland last month... they were credited with a rep as a "draw"... i didn't see it here... they used some pretty chintzy drum machine, and the tunage just weren't happening, and when the falsetto vocals hit on the 3rd song, i made tracks... outta there...
neil young & crazy horse
9 march 2oo4
fox theater, detroit
when youse were learning to play guitar along with yr ramones records, i was jamming along w/like a hurricane & other crudo gtr epics from the rust era crazy horse. also factor in that the tonight's the night lp is primarily responsible for me thinking i might could try to sing or something, and you have an idea how unlikely i am to be remotely objective about this show... my first-ever chance to see neil & the horse... i had seen other ny shows w/international harvesters, shocking pinks, the bluenotes, w/booket t & the mgs' etc... but clean clear missed the horse... so chalk this one up as a total indulgence for the foundations of my rockist/sanger/songwriter inclinations...
at fifty-odd years, neil is definitely into the senior division of rocknroll icons, but it suits him pretty well, cuz... well, he always was too difficult to buttonhole into a caricature of himself... currently, he is touring a second-go-round for the greendale(s) record... pluralized, cuz it's come out in 2 editions so far, with bonus dvds of either an acoustic version of the album or a making-of the greendale movie... which adds yet another version of this project... that all being said...
show started within 15 minutes of 8 o'clock, 3 hours or so later, i was still on my way up woodward towards ferndale well before bedtime... relevant because this is an inclusive show, family-oriented, with neil bringing the whole clan, wife, kids, friends, longtime associates performing as part of the community theater that mimes the storyline of greendale while crazy horse bashes it up stage front... nice thing is, the live version cut the fuck out of the tamer recording on the official cd... lotsa extended gtr parts, more frank poncho sampedro rhythm gtr.. a much beefier sound, well-rehearsed, it all clicked well... whereas on the cd it sounded... thin... like an outline for this live stuff... which is understandable, cuz since it takes about 2 hours non-stop to do the whole show, it hadda be pruned (substract extended gtr parts) to fit as a single cd... it didn't hurt that the words were more immmersed in the overall sound
a week or so later, i went to ann arbor to witness the greendale movie, and with the words up front (the soundtrack was the greendale cd performances version) and the bernard shakey home movie gone bigscreen visuals, it was... lesser... the sentiments seemed thin & simplistic, the images stretched past breaking... etc... anyways, not so with the live show... it was impressive, the visuals as background to crazy horse worked, plenty to look at, the themes were less obvious and the ambiguity that i find so necessary in songs was working better...
pardon the rambling review, but there are so many things going on that have something to do with the is concert, i gotta mention 'em... one of which being the overall theme of eco-activism working more as an easier to swallow (for some) alternative to what this whole shebang might truly be about... which is neil/shakey, and his contradictory urges to put himself out there and also to advocate for "freedom of silence"... that is, the right not to be consumed, or to be hard to digest... dragging family & friends and everyone on the neil young corporate payroll around the country (again is an indulgence on one level, but an intriguing affirmation of some values that conflict with the loner-sufferer-die young caricature that so subsumes touring artists all-too often... anyways, i loved the show, had great seats that i paid up thw waz for, had good company, saw some interesting ppl stumbling about... was glad i wasn't one of them... i just went for a nice trip with a familiar presence who was working on a project that was different but seemed like a fulmination of so many aborted projects that had been tried before...
~ r e b e l g r i s w o l d
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