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lucio menegon | music•noise•art

Martha Colburn & Ramona the Pest

Today I found several very cool items in my pile of old show posters. This being a prime example:

Ramona and the Pest by Martha Colburn

Ramona and the Pest by Martha Colburn

Back story: Ramona The Pest was a band I played in/produced with my longtime friend and collaborator Val Esway in the late 90s and early 00’s. Martha Colburn, then an underground artist based in Baltimore, was pals with our film friend Keith Arnold (who now programs the Castro Theater in SF). They wanted to get a show together when she came out to CA, I think in late 1997 or 98. RTP played and Martha screened some of her films at the Starry Plough, our local watering hole on the Berkeley/Oakland border (which was a tad dodgier back then) to a small but rowdy audience. I definitely remember an early version of possibly Skellavision – lots of skeleton bodies and flames shooting out of porn star heads.

Martha made up this cool poster for the show. She either heard it wrong or was playing with the name of the band – not the first or last time that happened. Ramona and the Pest is probably a better name. Awesome stuff.

Murder Ballads

The 8th annual Starry Plough Murder Ballads Bash this past Halloween eve was really great. I was there with the Bodice Rippers performing, Tigerero our tale of death in the jungle and Options, a klezmer inspired song that muses upon all of one’s post mortem options. Great sets by Dylan Champagne, Penelope Houston, John Shiurba, Loretta Lynch, Suki O’Kane, Luther Monday, Happy Clams, Maurice Tani, Blunderbusst and Whore. ‘Twas was just the beginning of an epic Bodice Rippers evening that went until dawn by the waterfront of the 5th Avenue Marina in Oakland…

micheal zelner’ s photos:
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and a cool short iPhone movie made by Francine and starring Ms Anna Gramme and the Curve: