Dead White, Eye Myths, Scriptures I Have Loathed, Robot Dick

Lowell Loft “E”

Success! Two nights ago (Aug 2), I hosted and performed in my first show, held at my neglected warehouse space.

My sloppy roommate had recently usurped the energy of our big room with his junk and video games, and I had spent a week cleaning, discarding, hiding his litter. I covered up the walls with tapestries and scraps of fabric I’ve been collecting from the street and from free piles over the past two years. My more artistic housemate was impressed and thinks this is a good impetus to host events more often. He even took out his camera and took shots of the performances, which made the event feel more legitimate (I'll post photos when I obtain them). Easing out of my strange tradition of no one ever showing up to things I announce, a small handful of my friends attended, and a somewhat larger handful (maybe 18 people?) arrived from invitations from the other bands. I had baked vegan zucchini bread (with dumpstered zucchinis!) the night previously and this was a supreme hit. My cohort, Fletch, and I tended three teapots all night, which is unusual for social gatherings (and shows!) but generally more well-received than I’d expected… We brewed a medium-low quality gunpowder green tea, my signature Mumtaz Arabic black tea with rose petals, and a spearmint/peppermint/licorice herbal mix. People also visited the liquor store across the street for their alcohol needs. I felt odd not providing any alcohol, but I remarked that I would like to get people to experience social settings when tea is excessively consumed, a much more interesting, subtle, and earnest high than alcohol drunkenness.

But the music! That’s why you’re reading this!! Fletch and I performed first. This is the first time I’ve ever performed (if you don’t count alterna-crapola I did in high school). I was very nervous about the performance aspect, despite that Fletch and I had two reasonably satisfying practices at his home. We didn’t have a good opportunity to soundcheck, and I knew there were a number of problems (a faulty cable, feedback, a different microphone than the one I’d practiced with). The nervousness inserted a desire to just get it over with so I could stop worrying and enjoy the other bands. Fletch was playing “laptop” types of gurgles and drones, and also has a new oscillator box, but I have yet to pay attention to what he is doing, since I am usually worrying about myself. I have a microphone going into an overdrive pedal going into a looper pedal, and that’s it. So the problem was that the looper pedal wasn’t doing what it was supposed to be doing (it was acting like a sampler, and not looping the phrases that I was sampling). Regardless of my attempts to figure out what was happening once the performance had begun (with people feeding my paranoia by hovering and observing what I was doing), I felt trapped. All I could do was sing, and I don’t like to sing. I’d rather make loops with voice and disguise it all so that it is no longer “singing”… But that’s all I could do. After about five minutes of this, I gave up and turned my shit off. Surprisingly, everyone clapped, which just stained my perception of anticlimax. I blathered and blushed, muttering “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing…” and apologizing to Fletch. Soon the next three bands went on and my friends left a bit disappointed.

Eye Myths was great. They essentially did what I’d like to be doing – disguised vocals looping, creating “new space drones” or should I call them pseudodrones? (I always hated the prefix pseudo-). But there were four of them (Mark, Parker, Paul, and Whitney), and some of them additionally played ethnic percussion (some gong-like overturned bowls, Tibetan bowls, some proper hand drums, etc. They cut out short after only about 6 minutes. Talking to them afterwards, I discovered that it was a bit out of confusion and lack of communication (when one person stops what they’re doing, the bottom falls out and then everyone turns off and then the audience claps. I feel like this is a splendid opportunity for people to start up again, playing a second “movement” if you will.)

Dead White is just a young scruffy fellow named Andy. He actually even has some records released. (The people in Eye Myths, also his friends, later told me that Andy records everything he does, even when he’s screwing around, and “releases” it all, which probably is not done through official label outfits but as DIY CDRs and tapes, although the name Jyrk came up in conversation). Dead White was great, a bit noisier, but great (fun!) loops, also heavy on vocal origin, but a bit of guitar origin too. I wasn’t watching what he was doing (I probably should so I might learn a bit, but it’s not my style to do that). Apparently, he usually does things even louder. It was just the right loudness for me. When he was done (he also played a brief 8-10 minute set), all five collaborated, under the spontaneous name “Robot Dick” This was great, and developed into a percussive electric jam session, rivaling Vibracathedral’s most toe-tappable strum-alongs. I could see this becoming very popular if they recorded it. (The use of ethnic non-rock drums was also very pleasing and textural and less testosterone-soaked than most other drumming. Fuck rock drums).

Finally, after nearly everyone had left, Fletch and I were sorting out what happened with my cord and my pedal. He fiddled around with the inside of the cord, applied some duct tape, and it seemed to work. I fixed the looper by unplugging the power, apparently resetting whatever had been preventing it from looping (I really ought to read the whole manual, eh?) Fletch and I then organically developed what was a “testing loop” (which I had originally left running for about ten minutes to everyone’s annoyance-developing-into-intrigue) into a real set performance. Now this was what I had been intending to elicit!! Making loops, I felt more freedom to hide among the layers, creating more “false drones”. (It also helped that Andy gave me a lesson in feedback-avoidance, and some pointers about looping). Surprisingly, about fiteen minutes into it, Mark from Eye Myths interrupts me, tapping me on the shoulder to ask “Can we all jam?” My face lit up in a grin, “yes!!! please!!!” I hadn’t realized that anyone was actually in the room listening. But being that it was only the other musicians that were left at that point, the pressure of audience vs. spectator was eliminated. What proceeded was my final fulfillment of the evening: the four Eye Myths people (Andy had left by that point) and Fletch and I all “jamming” for about an hour….

I remarked to Fletch, “we need to find more friends like these to play around with in the Bay Area” (because all the other musicians are from San Diego, many moving to other parts of the country, but not SF.

So, despite my disappointment at the official “Scriptures I Have Loathed” performance (loathed, indeed!) I still had a successful, satisfying, and encouraging “first performance”. It’s a pity that no one else got to hear it besides the participants, but that is likely why it reached a level that could satisfy me.