Monday, November 17, 2008

PFF(F)(F)FFT! post mortem

it wound up being a pretty good show, altho not well attended (i changed the slogan on our myspace thingy to "ars longa, spectatores fugaces," which means "art is forever, audiences come and go" -- stolen from pere ubu).

putative second-bill ghostcar was a non-starter -- something to do with trumpeter karl poetschke's ride breaking down in new mexico and him having to catch the bus back to arizona -- so we played right after the missus finished. stefan the sound dude even mic'ed our amps -- a good precedent for future stoogeshows at the fairmount.

first set felt a lot more assured than we have in some time. clean-shaven guest bassist jeremy hull did a good job of listening and avoiding the area of the frequency spectrum where the freshly-shorn hembree was operating; throughout the set, mr. hull switched back and forth between standup and electric basses, arco and pizzicato, sometimes in the course of a single piece. guest keyb dude matt hickey sat on the floor behind me and wove atmospheric washes around the rest of the cacophony. clay-boy said he was deliberately holding back, which gave the music more ebb 'n' flow than it sometimes has, altho there was that "wall of sound" thang operating at times.

the combination of endorphins from the first set and more alcohol made the second set a little less coherent, especially after a guy from the bar got up and wanted to sing some blues, which we obliged for awhile until things finally ground to a halt. we at least managed to salvage the december date, after which levi said we'd see about further shows in the new year, which is all we can reasonably ask. he, stefan, and ryan the bartender have always treated us well, even when we weren't drawing flies. bless them.

next (maybe last?) time will be december 21st. i'm hoping trombonist marcus brunt (currently attending school in california and coming back to visit on weekends) will make it out to play then, and hickey and jeremy have already been invited back, so the possibility exists that we'll be PFF(F)(F)(F)FFT! in december. for the third time, the opener will be bill pohl, who promises "something different" -- maybe a duo with nathan brown? film, as they say, at 11.

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