Oregon
The gig in Eugene was at the Jazz Station, a small publicly-funded art space on the main pedestrian drag. Our good friend Jeff Kaiser helped set up the show and he and local artist Sabrina Siegel opened the evening with a wild set, Sabrina using her voice and controlled-feedback-guitar-played -with-rocks (yes rocks) effectively against Jeff’s trumpet/voice and Max MSP sonic manipulations.
Our set was a crazy one, the first long piece going to some very interesting places and contained a entertaining David dialog – complete with a french accent – about ‘the stinky man’ (you take him home, you put him in your bed, you sleep with him). Our second, short piece took things further and came completely off the hook when one of the audience members hurled himself onto the floor and writhed around screaming with his t-shirt wrapped around his head. Seriously – audio evidence coming soon…
July 17 Portland, OR
After a sweaty, hot van stop and go traffic van ride from Seattle, we barely had time for the required Powell’s Books stop before heading over to our gig at a Portland New Music Society fundraiser. The venue was an upstairs room in an old brick artist loft warehouse. Which like many spaces like this excelled at retaining the days heat well into the evening.
We performed first and played a very good set with the usual longer first piece, but followed up with several shorter pieces as well for a forty minute set. Each of us had a great time performing and there were some very cool moments, but the vibe when we finished up felt really strange. Sort of like we played at a funeral. A couple of the musicians in the next act stopped by and complemented us, but for the most part the remainder of the 25 people there were rather stone-faced. Dunno, maybe the chaos we delivered wasn’t what they were expecting or up their alley. And the chaos: it included a water gargling bit by David and Valerie, an intense second piece with valerie singing out of a dictionary and of course, David’s spoken theater moment which revolved around the idea and statement that “I could have been a Rabbi’ It was very cool. Afterwards we headed down to Backspace to catch the last few songs by our Oakland friends in Pink Mountain – which was some crazy rocknroll mayhem for sure…