Phasmatodea will be playing Friday, Oct 21, at Caffe Driade as part of the Friday night opening of the three-night Wandering Star Project show “Mixing Memory and Desire”.
No cover. Show is 8-11pm. Outdoor show. I believe we are slated to go on last of three.
Checked out z_kungfu’s bar space. Went for a ride with z_kungfu and mrs_esterhaus.
Soccer Sunday. Again, proving I should exercise. Managed to twist my ankle a bit. Went for a another ride up around the Falls Lake area.
Then off to see Rasputina with badger. Opening band was called Tarantula AD, and was pretty cool. At various points reminded me a bit of Wetton era King Crimson, Fantomas, or Krakatoa. Picked up a cd.
Rasputina was pretty good. I wasn’t really familiar with them at all, so wasn’t sure what to expect. The primary vocalist has a very cool voice, at times reminding me of Laurie Anderson (particular on a song that I think was “Signs of the Zodiac”?) and Cyndi Lauper (a pretty strong accent…). Pretty entertaining. Spotted leslieerin and a few other folks.
Spent most of the weekend down at the Raleigh Rumble, had fun, and did plenty of motorcycle geeking. Even got in some bowling Friday night. I keep meaning to go bowling more often, I enjoy it. Anyone want to start a bowling team?
Got some pics up here and here.
Sunday went on a group ride over to Michaels for breakfast. Apparently Michaels is the cool place to go on a Sunday morning with your motorcycle.
Then headed over to Progday to catch Glen Philips and Mike Keneally. Two very guitarcentric sets. Pretty cool. Talked to a a guy named steve that plays weird music with a theremin for a bit. Er, make that two guys named steve that play weird music with a theremin. You would think that would be a small list…
Monday did a bunch of nothing, then headed over to Chapel Hill area to do some riding. Jones Ferry Road is a great motorcycle road. So is Damascus Church Road. And half a dozen other over that way. It’s doesn’t take long out of Chapel Hill before it gets pretty rural.
I want to build a mbira using a 3-4 inch diamater pipe, maybe 3 foot long. Have the keys running along the top, but mounted perpendicular to the length. With a shoulder mount. And a sight. I’ll call it a mbirazooka.
I want to make a new brake pedal for the bonneville. With the rear sets and the current brake pedal, the ergos of the pedal aren’t ideal, especially if I’m wearing boots. I want a pedal thats a little bit lower, and/or a little further right. Only concern would be getting the pedal much lower than the foot peg. Scraping a foot peg is mostly harmless. Bashing the brake level into the ground could be bad. Shouldn’t be hard to make.
I want to build an intrument of some sort you control with random remote controls. Using something like irman/lirc and
hacking it to generate MIDI would be enough. Plug that into something like Reaktor. Call the hole thing “Potatoe”. Or maybe
convert the ir signals sound input. Or maybe both.
I rode up to Philadelphia, PA over the long weekend (took Friday and Monday off). Went up to see a free concert featuring Adrian Belew and They Might be Giants. And of course, an excuse for a road trip.
I stopped in Fredericksburg, VA to visit relatives. I went up US-1 most of the way, with a couple blasts along
I-95. The best way to describe it was Very Very Warm. Managed to empty out the 2liter Camelback on the way up, along with more than a few bottles of water. US-1 is pretty boring.
Left at 7am to head up to PA. Took mostly 95, since I had a schedule to keep. Though bits of the way on 1/301/3.
Got there in plenty of time, checked in the hotel, and started wandering around Old Town Philly. Wandered around the area a bit. Put off waiting in the multi block long security line to see the Liberty Bell and such.
Show was right beside the river (Penns Landing). The Adrian Belew show was as a power trio and seemed to work pretty well. A couple of new songs, and three or four King Crimson songs. Very cool.
Headliners were They Might Be Giants. I’m not actually all that familiar with They Might Be Giants despite having seen them live once or twice. But they put on a very enjoyable show.
On the way home, stopped at Fort Meade as the last post shows. Also wandered around D.C for no particular reason.
Again, it was Very Very Warm. 99F according to one of the bank signs I passed.
The bad thing is I seem to have picked up some sort of stomach virus.
Overall, the trip was about 850 miles.
If I count correctly, since about May of last year, as of last night, I’ve played 14 public performances. Not bad for someone that hasn’t a clue what they are doing.
And thanks to Badger, since I think he set up most (all?) of the shows ;->
Played last night at the Death Jazz night at Bickett. A little different, since it’s the first time I’ve played while I’ve been in the audience at most of the shows there.
Small crowd, as to be expected. Almost all musicians in the audience, I suppose also to be expected. A little odd to see people who you know are actually real musicians watching you play.
Took stick and guitars (parker and the fretless) and the usual bag of pedals. Setup kind of a medium size setup. I initially planned on a smaller more “rock” setup since we would be playing with a kit drummer, but then the drummer mentioned they were bringing assorted synths/pedals/loopers, etc, so went for sort of a hybrid noise/ambient and “rock” setup. Seemed to work okay.
First piece was a bit odd, mostly just supporting the sax. Decided to switch to the fretless as it wound down, but it didn’t want to generate any sound despite it working fine in sound check. So switched to the other guitar, just in time to play about one note before the piece ending. I at least, found that kind of humorous.
Second piece I stuck with guitar, and Bob switched to guitar as well. A nice bit of interplay between the two guitars making growling/grumbling/trembling off kilter riffs.
Third piece I stuck with guitar. Brian started up with a more straight ahead drum beat and some loops, so I started building up a bit of a math rock loop. Brian built up more loops, kind of cycling against the now loud math rock loop. I thought it sounded cool.
Folks seemed to enjoy it. Or at least, they said nice things. But then, people always do, whether or not they mean it.
A pic of Phasmatodea at 434NoiseFest and a video of the same.
The video is from the begining of the set, so things are just getting rolling, but you get the idea. The
video is shot by John Ingram (Controlled Dissonance).
