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MT and WP Forever

On September 25th 2011 Weird Paul, local Pittsburgh lo-fi guy, and Manny Theiner, the infamous concert promoter and weirdly hostile dude, teamed up to play the music they played 20 years ago.
It was something like this.

Manny and Paul were accompanied by a bunch of other people.  First there was Dean Cercone.

Dean's set was better than usual; it was a lot shorter and was significantly more coherent.  A lack of endless jamming on overheard songs and alcohol.  Dean played Scott Fry's guitar I think and had some interesting situation getting used to the hum of single coil pickups.  This was perhaps my one complaint with the set as the lights and environment made everything else seem perfect.

Next up was the Scott Fry Experience which was sort of like middle-aged post-hippie stuff or something.  A lot of the lyrics were similar to things things that I imagine dads of people from my high school might say; stuff about becoming older and thinking about pot and stuff from years ago.  Scott Fry had some pretty good songs with a lot of cool parts despite the dadness and all of the joking around between him and his wife or girlfriend(?).  He probably isn't even a dad.

The biggest act of the night was up next; it was not Weird Paul.  A lot of people came just to see this and it was very, very cool.  Sometimes harsh, sometimes new-wave-ish IDM this set was also an anniversary show as this artist hasn't really played anywhere for like 20 years.

Who is this mystery man?
Who knows, but his long set was filled with the clangs of washing machine doors and death metal yells.  One song consisted of a recorder duel as a parody of Borbetomagus.  Jay Dowl provided backing tracks remade based on the old ones that were lost or something.


After all of the industrial songs about dictators and 80's politics, Weird Paul took to the stage to play his Homestead Records album accompanied by Manny Theiner on drums.




He played every song from the album, and even the two bonus tracks from the vinyl version.  On "Whaling the Shit Out of Guys" Paul was also accompanied by Ben Blanchard on guitar and Greg Cislon played saxophone on "Scott Baio Was Seen at the Legendary Pink Dot Convenience Store Buying 12 Cans of Tuna and a Carton of Cigarettes."
Weird Paul's set ended up being over an hour long.  It ended with him playing an old chord organ and singing about blue moons.  After all that, and all of the clapping, Manny and Paul returned for their encore of "Sucking Chest Wound" which was originally released on Manny Label SSS/Pop Bus.

Overall the show was very good, but afterwards I had a long, tired walk home.  I wouldn't mind seeing Scott Fry again, but I don't think that I would go out of the way to do it.  That industrial guy on the other hand, but apparently he isn't playing shows again and just did this to do it or something.  Whatever.