Saturday, January 30, 2010

1.30.2010, ftw

spent a lazy day at home before the HIO show. met terry for dinner at benito's, where we saw the magical ash and his high school art teacher john moore. i don't usually like to eat a big meal before a gig, but i figured we'd be freezing our asses off at 1919 and needed the extra calories.

it wound up being warmer up there than i reckoned. they had a new space heater with a blower that kept things a lot toastier than i remembered 'em being the last time (although with temps dipping down into the 20s it was still cold enough to leave your coat on the whole time we were there).

before and between bands, christopher blay screened some anime vids and old 8mm movies while spinning some vinyl in his "dj low-rez" persona. no eddie dunlap this time, so for this performance, HIO consisted of me, terry, hickey, marcus, ramsey sprague on clarinet and F/X, and nevada hill (briefly) on violin and my guitar. marcus and charlsye's car started smoking on the way to the gig, so she wound up having to get it towed home.

harry has a head like a ping pong ball played a couple of older tunes of theirs with a lot of intensity and more filth than last time i heard 'em (travis laminack was using my marshall bluesbreaker, since his rat pedal went south on the gig).

mark growden wrapped up his four-day sojourn in the fort with an abbreviated set, since he's leaving at 7am to begin the drive home to the left coast. he had jamie turn off the heater for his performance, since he was working without amplification, and the set felt even more intimate than the one at the stockyards on thursday night. the small crowd (maybe 20 people) seemed to connect with his songs and stories. he'll be back in march; have to put out a couple of feelers to help him secure some different bookings then.

HIO reached a high level of intensity pretty early and stayed there. briggs was using a patch of the loudest noises he could find at every frequency level, and ramsey used a battery of effects to alter the sound of his clarinet. big marcus was a mainstay as always and i struggled to control a guitar sound that was pretty toppy for some reason.

couldn't hear terry or hickey very well, but that's a familiar problem. nevada hill (of zanzibar snails/drug mountain, who coincidentally used to play in harry has a head etc. several years ago) sat in with us on un-mic'ed violin, which i could hear but no one else could, so i invited him to take my guitar for a spell. hopefully he'll join us another time under better circumstances.

my sweetie took pics which, in the fullness of time, she'll post to her photo blog.

tomorrow i don't go to work until 5pm, so i plan to spend another lazy day at home, working my way through a stack of review cd's and reading john "drumbo" french's book about captain beefheart, all of which arrived this week. will cook some more cod for early dinner before i head in.

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