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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.
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Wow wow wow; today we're finishing up the series of strange Novelty Shows with the low-key, but oddly commercial Hydra event.  Is it more commercial than the vitaminwater 3-day super fest?

Possibly.
Just look at the flyer:
Hydra Image © Unknown
Just like the flyer, the event turned out to be just as pseudo-urban, graffiti pop.  All of the performers were basically DJs and they had art for sale in an out of the way place.  In addition to all of this the rooms were dark or strangely barren and the buffet of Mexican food promised from the restaurant Mexico City (also the venue/host of the event) had nearly disappeared after an hour (when I got there).  Hunted Creatures still put on a great show with their new laser lights and fog machine in the barren upstairs.  Quickly it filled with people and the crowd seemed confused and mystified, but I think that they understood for the most part that even if it wasn't something completely normal to them that it was still worth trying to figure out.

I also saw part of Expensive Shit's set.  It was okay, and it might have even been great if it hadn't gone on for what seemed like forever.  I'm not overtly disappointed to have gone; it was fun because it only lasted maybe 3 hours for me and was a weird detour downtown.  The show also benefited a pretty cool local charity called Arts Greenhouse with the price at the door and the silent auctions they had(all the stuff was from local businesses and was actually a pretty cool selection).  Arts Greenhouse helps kids learn and play music so that one day they can play at the Shop, Garfield Artworks, Lollapalooza, or a Mexican restaurant.  On the way to the bus I also ended up taking the cover photo for the Tunnel Musick album so the whole thing was definitely worth it.

Bonus Novelty:
I feel like I didn't actually go over all of the strangeness that occurred at the East Liberty YMCA for vitaminwater Uncapped.  You know when big companies give you stuff that's generally pretty standard, but doesn't always fit with their brand completely?

From what I saw every day at the YMCA this seems like it's everything that you could get with a vitaminwater logo on it.  From left to right we have: colored pencils, headphones, cellphone charm (on my cellphone), pins, and watch.  The headphone turned out to be pretty lame, mostly cause the sound quality's pretty bad.  They are pretty sturdy and look sort of weird. The colored pencils look really cool, but I haven't opened them.  I like the cellphone charm and the watch a lot.  Originally we weren't sure how to adjust the time, but all that you have to do is take the little clock face of the slap bracelet and poke its' tiny buttons with a pen or pencil.  The cellphone charm and headphones also came in different flavors like the buttons and I'm guessing that the watch does too.

That's it for Novelty Shows and back to the real world.
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Two new ··— releases for October:

Electric Fear is ··— #7.
It is a 3 track EP/single on an all black CD-R and comes in a sleeve with a few different versions of artwork.  It has a spooky sound and the songs on here actually frighten me if I listen to them in a dark room; it's pretty scary. 
$5

Album + Archive is ··— #8.
This is a compilation of tracks by my former band Belt of Venus that didn't appear on our EP.
It is a 14 track album on painted white CD-R that comes in a jewel case with artwork by each member of the band.  The 3" EP is included in a tiny pocket unless you already have it.
$10 ($2 goes to Animal Friends as per Patrick Gilbert's wishes)

Also be sure to check out the new Halloween Compilation by Production Procedures Productions.  It's the ninth in a series of annual compilations of mostly local and some national punk, lo-fi, and weird pop music.  It was a show at a now defunct venue, The Shooting Gallery, seeing the band Dark Lingo that encouraged me to make music in the first place.  Now I'm featured on this year's compilation.

Finally, if you haven't heard it yet, here's ··— #6 if you haven't heard it yet.  It comes in a black duct-taped box with assorted debris inside.
RJ Myato and Seth LeDonne have called it "album of the year."
"If anyone should be making money off of anything it should be you with this," Joe Mruk

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novelty [ˈnɒvəltɪ]n pl -ties
1.
a.  the quality of being new and fresh and interesting
b.  (as modifier) novelty value
2. a new or unusual experience or occurrence
3. (often plural) a small usually cheap new toy, ornament, or trinket

show  (sh)
n.
1. A display; a manifestation: made a show of strength.
2.
a. A trace or indication, as of oil in a well.
b. The discharge of bloody mucus from the vagina indicating the start of labor.
c. The first discharge of blood in menstruation.
3. A false appearance; a pretense: only a show of kindness.
4.
a. A striking appearance or display; a spectacle.
b. A pompous or ostentatious display.
5. Display or outward appearance: This antique tea service is just for show. His smile was for show.
6.
a. A public exhibition or entertainment.
b. An exposition for the display or demonstration of commercial products: an auto show.
c. A usually competitive exhibition of domestic animals: won first place at the cat show.
7.
a. A radio or television program.
b. A movie.
c. A theatrical troupe or company.
8. Informal An affair or undertaking: ran the whole show.
9. Sports Third place at the finish, as in a horserace. 

Little Italy Days is a yearly festival in Bloomfield  celebrating Italian heritage.  This year they had a small tent where local bands and musicians could play, even if they couldn't play in a normal manner.

On Friday, September 23rd at 4PM (but really starting at 5PM or so due to a delay in getting a PA and other stuff) Brian DiSanto played some weirdo pop musick and scared unprepared festival goers and the guy at the rib cart next door.  He played all of his hits, new songs, and some crazy covers of Herman's Hermits and REO Speedwagon and was flipped off by some guy in a truck for doing so.  Brian also had some children and his friends hit an unfilled piñata that he thought would come pre-stuffed with candy.  After about 25 minutes it seemed that he was being cut off far before the one hour slot that he was promised, but this turned out to be the normal set time (half of the hour seems to be set up for the next band).
Photo © RJ Myato 2011
Photo © RJ Myato 2011
The next day, Saturday September 24th, the annoyed rib guy moved and Satyr/Elfheim played horrible noise and frightened everyone and caused numerous problems.  I got there a little late because of lots of traffic, but I figured that it wouldn't be such a big deal.  It wasn't really, but to make up for lost time I started off with angry feedback and flailing around on the (not really) tremolo (but actually vibrato) bar.  Things got progressively louder and less musical.  Eventually, during a DNA-esque part, a woman approached me and told me to turn the volume down because she was in charge and it was too loud.  I wasn't sure if she really was in charge, but it was kind of loud; down it went.  She was a little annoying, but it was significantly more annoying that on the speakers behind me there as other music playing.  I finally got into a more standard kind of Satyr/Elfheim sound when a possibly drunk woman came up to me.  I reluctantly turned down the volume to hear her and was told to "play some normal music."  Being already very annoyed I told her something like "fuck off and die" and thrashed my guitar around.  A bunch of microphone stands flew around and I broke a string and everybody was like "what the fuck."
I knocked over the recorder and fucked up the recording.  That was it.

Next some teenage covers band played.  They sounded alright, but went on for like 573456321 years (some people call this one hour).  It wasn't the most interesting, but it was okay.
Finally at 7PM, Triangle & Rhino assisted by RJ Myato on guitar and vocals and noise, played to an enthusiastic crowd.  It was surprising that their musick went over so well, but maybe drums help out that much.  They played awesome Melvins riffs with heavy drums pierced by cries and screams.  People were actually dancing and some crazy old man kept offering flowers to girls if they would dance to the sludge noise.  At the end of the set he was egging them to continue, but the next band, a tame grunge/speed metal kind of thing made up of some old guys and a person I knew in high school, had to set up.  Triangle & Rhino ended up getting some tickets to get free food at a pizza place down the street and the old guy gave them a flower.
"You set all that up just for that?!"
Apparently so.

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The coming of colder weather brings with it a barrel full of holidays and fun times.  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's Eve are some of these things, but what about vitaminwater Uncapped, Little Italy Days, and Hydra?  What the fuck are these things anyway?

Here we go.

Here we see roupers Seth and Brian along with Steal City's Darryl Workman as they pose for pfotos at the weird vitaminwater press area on Thursday, the first day of the three day long event.  Some of these pfotos were published on the vitaminwater Facebook page here and here.

On Friday my friends Middle Children played some music.  Their set was pretty standard, but it was cool to see them in such a strange environment.  The whole thing was goofy due to how commercial that it was and their music was enhanced by the Ramones-ness of the whole thing.

Next up we have Hidden Twin.  I don't know much about this guy, but I guess that he is in local Pittsburgh garage/punk/blues band Modey Lemon.  This project however appears to be none of those classifications.  Judging from his set filled with drum loops and echo effects Hidden Twin is a synthpop/new wave sort of band with some degree of the solo drone/noise guy/girl who plays a guitar or bass (Satyr/Elfheim, Noveller, Thrones, Yellow Crystal Star, unFact).  I liked his set a lot, possibly because it's not the normal kind of stuff for me to listen to, but had the kind of atmospherics that I like.

After Hidden Twin, Rivka excited the crowd with what some weirdos call 'tropical noise.'  I'd rather just say that it was very similar to Animal Collective or Dirty Projectors and kind of boring.  They had an okay sound, but no stage presence.  Rivka's set was mostly a lot of standing behind laptops, dancing around, and saying stuff that was incomprehensible to me.

The final Friday band, Bachelorette, was similar to Rivka, but much more exciting.  Despite being still a dance/electropop/synthpop project, New Zealander Annabel Alpers put on a better show, probably because of her awesome projections that worked with the projections that had been covering the YMCA all night to create a living and moving room.  Bachelorette helped end the night off well.

In addition to drinking infinite, free vitaminwater, walking around in a long shut down pool, talking, and sort of dancing we also had a fun rollerskating rink on Saturday and got to mess with the normalcy of everyone else.
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Today we finish up the long review of Wherehouse activities from the past summer.

The list of bands that performed at rouper Ron Copeland's art show on July 22nd is significantly shorter than the number at the Albion Friendships exhibition on July 9th.


First off we have Seth LeDonne himself and other rouper Joe Mruk performing as Coyotes by the Way in a wild, but official looking set.  I actually missed this, but it was recorded and also viewable.



After all the locker slamming and violence Negative Witch Goddess made their frightening debut.

With RJ Myato on electronics and Autumn Rose Zwibel on vocals, Negative Witch Goddess tore up the Wherehouse and confused the unaware.  Their no-wave-ish set consisted of banshee-like howls and ghastly moans punctured by waves of hissing brutal feedback and destruction.



The first two minutes of the video above consist of Seth walking around and trying to get stuff ready; you might want to skip it if you hate things that are sort of funny (there is also another version of this video here; it's not as loud, but doesn't have the misadventures of Seth proceeding it).

The night finished off with the always exciting Hunted Creatures, a foursome consisting of Ryan Emmett, Micah Pacileo, Amy Hoffman, and Darren Myers, and the main focus of the label Dynamo Sound Collective.  Their improvised noise was not as harsh as Coyotes by the Way or Negative Witch Goddess, but it was still far from commercial pop or whatever.  They performed in front of Ron Copelands's amazing artwork sounding like Pedestrian Deposit; it was awesome.

The next week was the final of the Blurred Exhibitions.  This would be Dean Cercone's (the curator, but not owner of the Wherehouse, of the whole event) exhibition, but it didn't end up going as smoothly as the rest (even with the few problems in the weeks past).

Things started off fine with Supervolcano, consisting of Micah from Hunted Creatures playing some synthesizers, oscillators, and samplers.  His gear looked like it was made in 1972 and sounded like the music from an NES cartridge.

Next up, local Minutemen + Captain Beefheart punk/indie band Skinless Boneless played loud and fast and tough, but also nervous and jangly maybe.  Their set started off weird and off-kilter with all kinds of tempo changes and everything going all over everywhere; for the second half they slowed down or maybe just got more 90's indie rock sounding.  Then the cops came.

Here is the last picture that I took before Dean and a police officer (who I thought was a weird guy in a suit telling the bass player to turn up) got in an argument about whether the Wherehouse's loudness was nuisance or beneficial to the community.

I left with friends from Roup, but apparently things went on, but quieter; nobody got arrested.  I imagine that it was similar to these pictures to the right that I took at an earlier time.


The shut-down by the police was sort of frustrating; it seemed as if everything we had done had been negated.  I think that almost everyone had a great time at the Wherehouse throughout the summer and really wanted it to continue for a long time coming.
Thankfully this didn't prove to be the end.

A few shows have happened at the Wherehouse in the past few months and there is another one coming up featuring Dean Cercone, Ivory Weeds, Gangwish, and touring band Hume;  it should be a good time.

Meanwhile here are a few tracks from the Blurred Exhibitions:

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This is the second venture into the Wherehouse in the past few days.  This time we're going to look at some of the sounds that echoed around in here for two months.

In addition to fireworks being set off and painting Warhol flowers for the covering up of rundown houses, a lot of people, both scheduled and unscheduled, played music at the Wherehouse.  A lot of the bands and musicians usually were friends of the artists being displayed that week, but sometimes they were just friends of Dean Cercone or others attendees that decided to stave off boredom for a little while.


During the art show of Seth LeDonne a lot of cool bands played.  First we had the always unusual, Jim Storch, or Burnout Warcry as he calls his strange project.  Playing all sorts of household/kitchen/gardening objects and some actual instruments Burnout Warcry is usually a very interesting racket.  You can experience it for yrself right here right now.


After Burnout Warcry, new project Buoyhood started up.  Buoyhood is Zach Katonik, from somewhere far away in the South Hills, playing droning, krautrocking keyboards.  It's a cool sound and is pretty similar to my own project Satyr/Elfheim according to mine and his standards.  Buoyhood sounds a little more like a UFO flap than a chance encounter with faeries or a haunting by the devil, though.  After meeting Zach here for the first time, and despite him looking like a street fighting man, I found that he was a super nice guy.  You can check out his tape on NNNCO here and his other release on NNNCO (with RJ My Tao) here.

 Satyr/Elfheim was after Buoyhood.  I used Zach's amp and was sort of similar to him.  I played a song called the Pine Barrens and smacked a contact microphone on the hard Wherehouse floor.  Here are those sounds, implemented straight from the Jersey Devil(?):


Dean Cercone himself played after me and he did a short 23 minute set; usually he goes on for over an hour.  It was a good Dean set.  Concise > too long.

One of the strangest, most stripped down, awesome sets happened next.  Brian DiSanto, with only his trademarked microphone and the often used Zach Katonik amplifier, sang an awesome a cappella set of his weird, manic pop songs.  He jumped and ran around, waved an American flag, and confused a very drunk woman.  You can listen to half of the chaos, and some singing by RJ Myato, on the official release on Wild Raft Records.  A cool guy recorded it.
 
The third drone set of the night was RJ My Tao, alter ego of NNNCO head of state RJ Myato.  It was much noisy (or maybe just more dissonant) than the last two.  Playing some clarinet, twisting some knobs, sort of wearing a shirt RJ excited everybody in the room before Dean's amp overheated and started to smoke.  Sigh Meltingstar was nervous about the smoke and kept pointing at it.  I wasn't sure what to do, but ended up telling RJ about it and he stopped to a semi-humorous (not for Dean) end.  Nothing was actually broken.

The night started to wind down at this point.  Lucy Goubert, the second to last act left, started to read some of her poetry and attempted to use an overhead projector.  Not a lot of people payed attention and there were issues with the visuals (I can't remember what happened), but it was okay.  She was distracted or bothered by something (probably in no way related to the lack of interest and technical problems).  The reading at Quiet Sound Night VI that I have available in an earlier post is the one to check out if yr interested in her awesome poetry.

Finally reclusive singer-songwriter Joe Mruk played.  Other than his first song, an original that sounded like a Tom Waits cover accompanied by a drum, the Dead Refrain played relaxed experimental folk music for around half an hour.  It was a good way to end the night.  After a little while longer everybody went home, but there's still more to come next time.

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