melancholy and schizoid affairs

Mary Beth and I went to Gonerfest for its first day. We got there pretty early just as the first act was starting. We saw some people we know like Mark and Betsy and Sharon and Charlie (who we mostly just run into at Gonerfest!). The first stretch of bands were mostly not my thing, tending more on the straight-ahead rock and roll style. But I was impressed by how the singer for The Darts played the organ with her arm flung out and never looking anywhere near the keys and with her body seeming to constantly run away from it (unless she was climbing on top of it at the moment or something). I do like Ibex Clone. Then it was Pylon Reenactment Society! Up til this point I'd been mostly hanging out with Mary Beth on a little deck in the back (raised where she can see bands better), but I got down to be closer for Pylon. They were really good. (Last year when they played The Lamplighter they played a longer set and it's just crazy the energy to see them in that small room, but they still brought it to this big outdoors stage.) Oh yeah, I should mention that it was at Wiseacre on Broad this year. So all outside and still by train tracks like it was last year. I think the area in front of the stage is better as it goes back more instead of wide and shallow like Railgarten's stage area was. Also the weather just turned beautiful and nice again. Saw quite a few people and was able to talk a little to some. When I got up to see Pylon I heard my name shouted and it was Will and his wife (I'm bad 'cuz I think I remember her name but not positive) so I went over there and talked with them before they started. It was a real good show. And I wasn't planning on getting right up front, but after they ended people started walking away and a spot opened up right at the stage so I got there for Lightning Bolt. Then another Will (singer of Pressed who I got my shirts from) and his wife Zoe came up next to me. Anyway, then Lightning Bolt sets up and they like playing forward on the stage. I was almost right between them (but kind of right in front of the bass amps...there were a lot of bass amps for the bassist! when I saw how much amp was being set up I just knew it was going to be loud as fuck). So yeah, they played and holy shit! I could feel the bass when he hit the distortion and the suboctave. As they were bringing the pedal board out I was like, there's going to be an octave pedal on there and probably a digitech whammy (yes there were both). But I mean, tons of energy and you can just feel the music when you're that close. Mary Beth was saying how loud it was even from way in the back (I say "way in the back" and it's a largeish outdoors area but not that large, it's not like some arena or something). I know I only caught like the tail end of their set years ago at Day for Night so it was nice to catch a full set of their and be right in the fucking middle of it. They did not disappoint! They were very Lightning Bolt and it ruled. Brian (drummer Brian, bassist Brian did not speak in a microphone) at one point pointed out how surreal the industrial silos on Wiseacre's lot looked, with the round logo hung up on one, he said it was like some ancient creature with one eye or something. Then later he was talking about how swampy it is and he had to put stuff on his hands to keep his drumsticks from flying off. Saying we were like lizard people living in this swamp and he respected that (and it's funny 'cuz from my perspective it was a beautiful and cool night...but I also recognize that he was putting out a LOT more energy than I was), and he said that where they're from they sit around sipping tea by a lake. That's the memorable banter for me. Awesome show! Earlier I had picked up a Pylon t-shirt ("schematic" design) and I went looking for Lightning Bolt's merch but didn't see it but masks were mentioned by Lucy (the mc) before they came on so I made sure to check after it was over and picked up a Lightning Bolt t-shirt! When we got home Peanut greeted us so we were hanging out with her for a little bit and Gabriel and Lexi showed up (also from Gonerfest, I saw them from a distance while there and we waved at each other but didn't get the chance to talk) so then we hung out and talked for a little bit in the nice night.

Now today...today is our anniversary! I got up and had breakfast in bed planned. I had to run to the store though so it was a little bit of a later start and since I had to go out I had to shower first so by then Mary Beth had gotten up. And then we hung out and talked for a bit before I left and came back and made it. I made cinnamon toast and bacon (the cinnamon toast a harking back to when I attempted to make that back towards the beginning of our relationship and I was just going by my memory which was literally worse than it should have been because I'd made the stuff as a kid but at the point could literally only remember the words "cinnamon" and "toast" and literally just put cinnamon on bread and that's it...no sugar and no butter...pretty sure that was inedible...this time it was much better). So the cinnamon toast came out pretty good though I overcooked it a little bit. It was done and I thought just needed a wee bit longer so I turned the oven off to let it set shortly while I was doing something else and then it slipped in my mind and stayed in a little bit longer than it should have. It wasn't burned or ruined but it was just on the good side of that line. Anyway, I brought it to her on a tray in bed (going back to bed after being up for a little bit) and sat next to her and we had our little breakfast or brunch or whatever and it was nice! Now on to more anniversary!

I did a little bit of work on the sounds of my upcoming out-of-town show. Finally plugging in the power and the headphones and listening to the sounds it's all making. Discovered that my Quadra isn't working correctly so juggled some things around to use the envelopes on the Maths instead. It's all very rough and I still have a good bit more work to do on it! At night Mary Beth and I went up to Crosstown to see Leander Star (he's the [french] horn player in The City of Tomorrow). The U of M horn group opened up with a couple of pieces. One was a variation on Bach that was very nice and brought in some atonality. Then Leander did a bunch of works for solo horn while doing a tarot reading for the audience. It was as good show. Later at night we watched a little more Treehouse of Horror.

I finished reading Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991 by Minnie Bruce Pratt. It was the second part of my Spousal Book Club reading and I enjoyed the essays. I also got some cds in the mail. In one package: Les Rallizes Dénudés: Jittoku '76 and in another package: Dead Voices on Air: From Labrador to Madagascar, Iannis Xenakis: Electronic Music, and Asmus Tietchens: Notturno. In the afternoon Mary Beth and I went way out to this hot air balloon festival in Rossville (which is past Piperton, which is past Collierville, which is past Germantown). So we get there way out in the country and first we miss the entrance to the festival because it's all just in this field and though we passed tons of signs letting us know we were approaching the balloon festival while driving up the highway, the actual entrance had a small sign we missed (though Mary Beth saw the vendor entrance, which was right next to the main entrance but we didn't see that one at first). We were early anyway, not knowing what to expect we got there well in time before it even opened. No balloon activity was happening that early. It was otherwise like a little county fair out in the big field. The first thing we did (and something we came back to several times) was look at the goats. A goat therapy organization had a pen set up with a bunch of goats and they just ate the fuck out of some hay. They were all small, I guess they were pygmy goats. Some had little hats. And people could come in the pen and pet them and they really didn't give a fuck what anyone did as they just pretty much did not stop eating hay. They were very cute! The first thing we got from wandering around the fair food stuff was some popsicles from Mem Pops. That was very called-for as it was pretty hot. We were lucky in that it wasn't as hot as it's been, there was a bit of cloud coverage that dampened the sun and kept it from just outright blazing down on us, but it was still pretty humid and the world had a little bit of a baked-in feeling. There was a little carnival ride section and Mary Beth and I hit up the Ferris Wheel. We thought it'd be a little bit of a preparation for the tethered balloon ride we were planning on taking. Hadn't been on one in a while and it was a little nerve wracking, but nice going on up there and getting a view and stuff. Afterwards Mary Beth was having second thoughts about the balloon ride. But we kept up around the fair. We tried this one truck that had aguas frescas que no estuvieron frescas. More wandering around. At some point balloons started going up. I had a meal of a Tops cheeseburger from their foodtruck and it was delicious. Going to get a seat, they really didn't have nearly enough tables and I was zoning in on the last available spaces and right when I get there someone else gets in the seat before me (so had to find a another table under an awning in a different area that didn't have chairs but I could stand and set my food down and be in some shade, okay). We killed some more time and by the time a line was starting to form for the balloon rides, Mary Beth had come around again and wanted to do it. So we were up close to the beginning of the line. We finally got onto a balloon (they had like three or four for the rides) and ended up in one with a big smiley face on it (oh, I forgot to mention that one balloon that was just free flying had giant flip-flops, or floppers as I like to call them, hanging on the side of the balloon). Okay, so we end up in the first ride on our balloon, maybe even the first balloon to go up and there was one other couple in the basket with us. Those baskets are tiny and just the four of us and the pilot felt like we were really crammed in there. The most trouble part of it was the heat! When he'd blast the hot air into the balloon, I could really feel that heat when I stood up so I was kinda crouching down a bit most of the time. The ride was very short and did not go very high at all. I'm not even sure if it went half as high as the Ferris Wheel did. Didn't get a whole much of a view but it was fun. The couple in the basket with us took our picture. We were only up a few minutes (like what, two minutes up at the pinnacle?). It went so fast I didn't give myself time to get over my nervousness and fully enjoy it! Getting in and out of the basket is awkward. What else. After the balloon ride we hit up another foodtruck, one with Indian street food called Something Desi. I was still full from the burger but Mary Beth hadn't really eaten so she got some stuff and I at least had a bite and it was really delicious. Super into this food truck now. I think it's a new one. Anyway, we grabbed that food and came back home. It was a long and fun and busy day!

After work, Mary Beth and I went on a walk around the neighborhood. Then at night we did the nachos and Treehouse of Horror combo again.

I posted about the me-shirt, just on my music-making fb page (which never gets any traction and is almost completely unseen if I don't share it with my regular self...typical post gets three likes and whatnot) so I wasn't really expecting but a handful of people at most to see it, but then it got a relatively large bit of traction and people liking it (kind of a ton if you go by the low low metric of a typical performance). So that's kinda cool. I guess people like this shirt! After work, Mary Beth started in on a little bit of a Treehouse of Horror marathon, we got through the first three while eating nachos. Then at night I went up to the Hi Tone to see a show. Nonconnah was supposed to play but dropped off at the last minute. I did see neon glittery and her set was good as always. Then this band called Insomniac played. They were alright. They were loud and heavy and pretty slow. Kinda metal but kinda heavy psych. Not mostly my kind of thing but they weren't bad and the singer used lots of reverb and faced away from the audience. Okay I guess that's about it.

I joined Mary Beth on a walk after work. She'd started without me but I caught up. Then later at night we chomped down some banana splits. We ended the night by watching This Is Spinal Tap (watching the sequel obviously whetted our appetites for the original).

We went to see the Memphis Symphony Orchestra's full season opener in the afternoon (as opposed to the "unplugged" thing that was more like a soft open, and it ruled too but wasn't a full program and kinda an even somewhat apart from the season). Okay yeah, so as I just hinted, it ruled. It was two longer pieces: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's Second Symphony. Both were really good. The second movement of the Sibelius has at the core for a good bit of it this walking pizzicato bass alternating with the cellos. Because of the walking it feels very prescient of jazz. It specifically sounds like abstract bop (maybe late Mingus or something). Probably just a coincidence of history, but it feels pretty otherworldly (jazz-like or not). And later in the evening I worked some on my upcoming Louisville show. I finished one idea I had which was to take a goofy sample and sequence it as a certain song, both of which are stereotypically "Louisville" (I won't say what the sample and song are just yet as it's all too goofy, but it amuses me and I plan to chop it up with the Morphagene in such a way as the source wouldn't be identifiable anyway). I sequenced it all using Schism Tracker, a port/clone of Impulse Tracker to use on modern machines. Impulse Tracker is the one I was mainly using back in the day. I was trying to find something to make just a simple sequence of a sample and was weirdly having trouble then I figured I could do this in a tracker. Looking up ones to use, trying to decide on the best, I saw Schism Tracker and was like, I used to use Impulse Tracker a whole bunch! So I went with that. But damn, it's the same interface and it's totally a pain to use given how I'm used to using computers nowadays! No undo (the big one), heavy reliance on F-keys (which wouldn't be bad but slightly annoying on this laptop as I have to use an extra function key to make them work right), and just general weird behavior that I guess would have seemed natural on a dos system but I'm used to certain things nowadays. Anyway, what I was doing was pretty small and simple so I kept at it but I probably wouldn't want to keep using it for something more involved like I used to! So I finished it anyway and exported it to a wav file. And then I started in on patching my modular for the show. So it's finally on the way.

I went and met my dad and my sister for lunch at Huey's. So that was a nice change of pace from the usual routine. At night Mary Beth and I went to see Spinal Tap II: the End Continues. I went in with low expectations, but it was good! Lots of really funny stuff and some good loud laughing. Not every joke lands but who would I think I am to expect that? It of course does not touch the original, but it's definitely good as a forty-one-years-later sequel. It does revel a bit in callbacks to the first movie, given the premise it makes sense, that it's about a reunion concert so of course all the songs they're playing are the older songs from the first movie (oh, and some songs too from their post-first-movie ventures). Not a bad thing, but just a note to address the extent the sequel lies in the shadow of the original (though very much not a bad shadow to lie under!). It does have plenty of original humor too and a lot of that is very funny. I'd say it's definitely worth going to see.