Charalambides West Coast Tour Diary

10.30.00-11.1.00 Austin-Cheyenne currently stuck in cheyenne waiting for I-80 to reopen- closed now 19 hours and counting. all other routes out of town either too far out of the way, too hazardous, or also closed. cheyenne is a high plains cowtown, with all the charm of waco or abilene (translation for non-texans: not much) with about two places in town where vegetarians can eat. apparently the main pastimes here are laser tag, chinese food, and closing highways. olympia already cancelled- will take the long way through montana if we can't get out tomorrow morning. may wake up heather tomorrow. burning question-- does TV float or sink in hotel pool? answer: float (briefly), then sink. off now to pluck out eyeballs with fingernail clippers.

--tc

11.2.00-11.3.00 Cheyenne-Seattle finally out of cheyenne at 7 am, over solid sheets of ice on i-80 & through a very snowy wyoming. some scary driving; frozen windshield washer fluid necessitating a couple of windshield cleaning stops, smearing the brown dirt & slush around with a dirty shirt. heard 'blitzkrieg bop' in a mcdonalds in rock springs. overnight in boise- found good food (finally!) - beautiful weather & sunny mountain driving all the way to seattle.

feeling strangely calm at terrastock- many houston (current & ex) folks around (including u-ron bondage)! noisy bar area failed to overcome our set, we're seemingly well received (thoughts while playing: what do these people think of this)? we begin the set with nearly a minute of silence, staring out at the crowd, an indescribably bizarre experience with this many people. finally meet the esteemed phil mcmullen & family; turn ed hardy on to vietnamese vermicelli (from the 'noodle ranch', no less). overwhelming impressions- smoke, byzantine liquor laws, crazy videos (christina's face superimposed over jesus' during our set). solid performances from all, esp. heather, remarkably composed and shining for her second live show ever (counting ash castles).

saturday morning- tahini french toast followed by a long walk. no shortage of coffee or bicycles in this town. could we live here? we could go broke here definitely.

--tc

11.5.00-11.6.00 Seattle-Portland hit the road after final seattle breakfast. sheer volume & chaos prevented a lot of terrastock goodbyes; was sad to leave everyone, but eager to move along toward SF. last band we saw was children of the rainbow, damon & naomi's (& wayne & kate's) tribute to mr. fankhauser & hawaiian flowerpower. fairly disturbing, but hilarious (phil liked it). six organs of admittance did an ensemble set that flattened everyone (was there anyone that wasn't already bowled over by mr. chasny's acoustic set)? tonight we play with him/them again, finally in CA...

nice night in portland. got to spend a bit of time with rob vaughn ('rob' of pelt's rob's choice fame), and stayed in his fantastic digs- man of much hospitality & exotic teas. not enough time here but eureka's a long way away... spent a too-brief time in powell's books, the enormous bookstore here, bought a david meltzer 1st edition (around the poem box, signed & numbered) and the fall of the towers by sam delany... (no record stores for us-- showing great restraint).

played a longish set in the chilly medicine hat gallery to ed hardy (official tour friend) & a few attentive folks. the ebow is slowly giving up more of its secrets to me. hochenkeit opened, nicely woven drone improvisations (with teeth)--

--tc

11.7.00-11.8.00 Eureka-Davis long ride to eureka, through redwoods and gorges, so far the most fantastic scenery of the trip. we hit the pacific at sunset; the sun faintly illuminating the clouds with pink light, the horizon lost in mist, sun & clouds reflected in the sea-- impossible to say where the sky ends & ocean begins. i get chills, the feeling i get from the mountains is nothing, for some reason, compared to the first glimpse of the ocean. eureka appears after an hour or two of winding ocean driving, getting dark. looks like any off season resort town (whether or not it actually is); streets seem nearly deserted, a sort of musty salt tang about the place. we play in a coffee shop to as many people as we played to in portland. ben chasny (six organs of admittance) plays a very nice set that's cut short by a broken string. we borrow (and covet) his friend's chord organ...ben sends us off the next day with breakfast and a bag of food (and a listen to the red hash record), we're blown away by the hospitality.

another beautiful drive to davis, more redwoods (somehow the camera stays packed away for this, seems too inadequate for the sights). smoke or haze hovers low over the sacramento valley (something burning)? ... davis is a college town with no 'actual' venues so we're playing a house party-- and surprisingly, a bunch of people show up, giving us our best non-terrastock turnout so far. one of the guests turns out to be a founding member of smegma (donkey fly-by, he says his name is), which blows me away; he has some very nice things to say to us about the show, which is our best performance so far. heather isn't feeling well so we get a room at the trusty motel six- tomorrow is sf, which we're all incredibly excited about.

--tc

11.9.00-11.11.00 San Francisco easy drive to SF. so many expectations for this city, what we find is quite different: very small & compact, easy to walk in, friendly people. a complete bear with the van however, though parking isn't quite as difficult as i thought. we've been spending all of our time in the mission district, which is fine by me-- staying with windy, the owner of aquarius records (where we're about to play). like seattle, most of our free time is spent walking and eating: killer vietnamese food with kurt (3 day stubble sound engineer); thai with the visiting dave dove & susie (and again later in oakland); lots more coffee. our show contained a few curveballs; first the battery connector on the delay got yanked off; then a tube falls out of heather's amp, then my guitar fritzes out (onstage). despite all of it we endure & once again enjoy a great audience response. heather is pretty sick & freaked a bit at the show (over some unwanted feedback which no one noticed), but is calmed by mr. dove. despite her misgivings, heather has played fantastically the whole way, although tripping on decongestants and heroic vitamin doses.

next day we play at kfjc, ditching our normal instrumentation in favor of chord organ, guitar and voice. result is very scorces-like, and we get a good recording as a bonus. meet roy ross, grawer & pete dixon, the men responsible for getting us back into playing again (thanks guys)! from there we go to oakland (45 miles in 2.5 hours) to see pauline oliveros, fred frith, india cooke, and anne bourne play a fantastic quartet at mills college. i've never seen fred frith play, and it's pretty wild, the stage littered with rice, chopsticks, boxes, string, and other detritus by the end. particularly inspiring moment happens when he inadvertantly knocks a bunch of drumsticks on the floor, which he follows by deliberately tossing a few others after it, slowly & one at a time-- wordless essay on the value of accident.

after the show, back to windy's & sleep, along with discussion on the absurdity of s.f. rent & imminent moves to portland (by seemingly half of sf's not-.com population). tonight is sun city girls: are we ready?

--tc

11.11.00-11.13.00 SF-Los Angeles-Santa Ana final day in SF. we meet up with my high school friend todd, his wife & new baby- todd stays on for the in-store at aquarius but the others have to move on after an unfortunate diaper incident. the in-store is brief and quiet, but concentrated. windy lets me use her vintage fifties gibson lap steel, the pickup sounds amazing-- age darkened and warm. we dump our first serious dough on cds to replenish the van listening. after a nice dinner at windy's, it's the 3 day stubble & sun city girls show, which confounds (and exceeds) all expectations. stubble play a great set, donald is as bizarre & the music as darkly ridiculous as ever (and it's their twenty year anniversary in december)! the scg set is hallucinatory, over 90 minutes, half of which (at least) is spastic free-form, the rest split between drugged moaning, demented hillbilly, surf jazz, and slow modal plunge... finale is a collaborative set with stubble, moving from a cover of 'needle in the camel's eye' to total chaos. we leave exhausted, pick up our equipment, and drive back to the apartment beneath a full moon.

we hit the road for so-cal after a last stop at muddy's on valencia. driving again- everyone blazing down I-5 at 90+, all i can do is try not to get run over... LA traffic is as ridiculous as SF, we're backed up from 40 miles out-- some kind of biker rally going on, we stop for gas & watch a seemingly endless stream of bikes flow onto the freeway. we finally make it into town, meet our host peter (from open city), and go to the club, which is a long concrete room (texas style) in what appears to be a gutted taqueria. jarrett silberman opens the show with a brief feedback piece during which the audience is made to stand in the other room with the door closed-- we want to compliment him on the set but didn't get a good enough look at him. open city really rips up the place-- loud prepared guitar & drums, short & powerful. then azalia snail plays a nice set with a few other musicians (some of whom appear extremely uncomfortable on stage). she has some very flattering comments for us after our set, which is oddly aggressive (possibly because i'm waiting for my guitar to fall apart at any second, possibly because the sound man fell asleep during azalia's set, causing a little anxiety). next morning we buy another load of cd's from mr. hardy before he heads back to bullhead city, and head for santa ana.

santa ana is even more bizarre than l.a., with a lot of greasy hamburger joints, so-cal fast food chains, and strange architecture. our hotel is a couple of exits from disneyland but no one wants to go (for some reason). the show is opened by a ska band from brooklyn who is godawful, and who makes fun of us for sitting outside the whole time. azalia plays solo on a strange digital autoharp-like instrument called an omnichord-- she says her stripped down approach tonight was inspired by our l.a. set (which is very nice of her). next stop- tuscon.

--tc

11.14.00-11.16.00 Tuscon-Albuquerque a too-brief visit with jason bill & caroline, followed by a lot of desert driving. visited the 'mystery of the desert' roadside tourist trap, an incredibly bizarre 'museum' with ads for miles in either direction. the advertised attraction is a mummy supposedly dug up in the desert, but the real highlight is the wood carvings of one ray gallagher (apparently deceased), which include dozens of fantastical creatures fashioned from tree roots & driftwood, and hand-whittled primitive statues depicting the history of world torture.

--tc

11.17.00 Albuquerque staying at this absurd (but great) motel on old route 66, all fake adobe ('adobe revival', it sez) and southwestern neon glitz. very cold here (at least for us)-- freezing temperatures & ultra dry (our skin scales). looks like it's cold in austin too, so the dreams of the charalambides 2000 unheated tour ending in texas autumnal comfort are now nil. the venue this time is a huge dance studio space (heated, i might add) rented by a friend of our old cohort kyle silfer. despite the fantastic location & a nice audience, christina & heather are dissatisfied with the performance ('frozen guitar' syndrome, the feeling that your fingers are permanently rooted to one fret position, is cited). i feel surprisingly positive, although i spent the day sick & occasionally snapping at my undeserving fellow musicians during soundcheck (apologies to everyone). signal decay sound system opens the show with a drifting set of turntables, electronics, and bass--the aforementioned mr. silfer is in the band, along with virgil (the venue-tenant) and kyle's long-time companion jen. psychoactive film loops are provided by basement films, they dovetail very nicely with s.d.s.s.'s set; i have no idea how they looked for us (though reports are favorable).

--tc

11.18.00 Albuquerque decide to give up on making amarillo tonight in favor of more time in alb. with kyle & jen. (the i ching says to 'seek friends in the southwest'). they give us the touristy works-- first a ride up the mountain tram, then sundown at the volcanoes (cold & windy, long walk down a dirt road, then our climbing shapes silhouetted against ancient cones of pumice-- very surreal), then mexican seafood. tucumcari by tonight, okc tomorrow, and austin in two days.

--tc

11.19.00 oklahoma city the tour is almost over: our last denny's, our last stop at mcdonald's for french fries to hold us until dinner, our last motel 6. today is christina's birthday-- forgotten (by both of us) last year, while driving through tennessee on the way home from massachusetts. not much in the way of celebration on the road, but home is now only a few hours away.

oklahoma city is much as we pictured it, deserted on a sunday night, a few cars on the freeway but not many. the show is at the iao gallery and turns out to be one of the best of the tour, set up by the esteemed gabe wingfield (who also hooks us up with a free room & thai meal- thanks gabe)! basile kolliopoulos opens, a blues guitarist who has abandoned (mostly) the twelve bar form for free, open-ended sonics. his set is a duo with his partner elaina, who lays keyboard backdrops while he piles up processed harmonics in shimmering heaps. both are great people, and fellow ibanez enthusiasts. we're very happy with our performance, long solos from everyone, much more flowing this time, despite my guitar frying out through the whole set-- by the end, limping along at about half signal strength with the amp cranked. despite a thinned crowd by the end, the response is terrific. jim, the owner of okc's music dimensions, honors us with the assertion that union was one of the reasons he opened a record store-- we're speechless. elaina tells me that the microtonal ebow/voice passages sound like the seven trumpets of gabriel (after a moment's confusion from me, she adds 'you know, in the bible!'). grateful for all the compliments-- the show's over, and tomorrow we're home. oklahoma city gets a reynols-esque infinite thumbs up.

--tc

Notes From Other Performances

Scorces/Susie Wasserstrom/Susan Alcorn 11.24.00 (MECA, Houston) scorces' debut, and an exciting lineup altogether. the MECA auditorium is set up differently for this performance-- the audience and performers are all onstage together, with light provided by floor lamps and one hanging lamp. for once, i'm able to sit apart from a performance christina is in (though somehow i still feel very much a part of it). heather begins the set with long chord organ tones, christina joining in with voice; then heather-- but something in the p.a. shorts out & everything is engulfed with a spike of feedback, which goes away, recurring once-- christina soldiers on, almost seeming not to notice, heather is a bit shaken i think, which causes her to back off on vocals and organ-- the remainder of the set is guitar & voice, crystal sound bouncing back to the stage from the backdrop-concealed rear cavern of the hall, the long delay seemingly coming from a ghost scorces somewhere in the distance. nice indeed. susie's set is different from any i've seen her perform with dave, solo open tuning acoustic improvisations, long drifting lines coalescing into sharply fingerpicked cadences (& back again). and susan: playing with more economy & less outer rim treading, sliding microtones controlled with her accustomed mastery; reminiscent of indian classical vocals. from her viewpoint (she says later); the set was rough, though (as usual) no one else noticed. finality comes when the above-mentioned hanging lamp collapses, nearly crashing onto the stage in front of susan--the end. so then, off to late night food (fudge brownie sundae, which i photograph), sleep, and the drive back to houston.

--tc

Tom Carter Solo Performances

3.21.01 33 Degrees, Austin, TX and 3.31.01, MECA, Houston, TX weeks, literally, of practice for this pair of shows go down the tubes momentarily when my digitech gets knocked off my table at the 33 degrees souncheck, smashing on the floor & becoming totally inoperable. (i suppose it works if you can ignore the low frequency hum vibrating out of it at all times). so the show that night is completely on the fly-- with a borrowed pitch shifting delay pedal i (mostly) improvise a new piece, inserting a few familiar points from what i'd had planned (said insertions being, predictably, the low points of the set). manage to limp my way thru, somewhat dissatisfied with the whole thing-also struggling with heavy amp buzz, probably the ancient pickup on the guitar amplifying the omnipresent 33 degrees flourescent hum... but reception is ok, rick sez later it reminds him of tim hodgkinson... tape sounds ok too. troum played a nice set afterwards but i was a bit to rattled to really sink into it--nice guys to boot. nice meal beforehand courtesy mr. macbeth, are you out there anywhere chris?

houston show is a long speeding haul after work to MECA, then flash load-in/set-up. i actually get to see everyone play, which is a plus, although everyone plays very short (except for me, who was the only one not informed of the 20 minute limit- for me, a whopping 30). i manage to rent a delay unit exactly like the one busted, so the set is much closer to its rehearsal-- the piece is monument from the cd-r, i burn candles on a darkened stage. MECA room is huge & boomy & the sound envelops all the way to the back of the hall. everyone seems to enjoy. as for the other sets-- i miss half of jason jackson's 10 minute set (which was great solo sax/poetry edged by manic stage fright) due to a flash that i may have left my rack delay on the roof of the car (didn't, but had to check). brian allen did solo trombone, lots of extended technique that i don't get to hear much--nice. and defenestration unit-- first time i'd seen them in literally years, new lineup & approach-- loping melodic sense underpinned by bass & guitar. vocalist ben contributed alarming howls from the back of the room, throat singing, guttural coughs. horns moved about the room at the end also, nice violation of audience space. i really dug it & could've done w/another twenty minutes easy.

next day, race back to austin (but not before having my wallet stolen out of the car). miss the scorces/alcorn/binx/dove & wasserstrom sets unfortunately due to my inablity to get time off. tape sounds great though...

--tc

Intersect 3

4.7.01 Ceremony Hall, Austin, TX didn't actually play in any capacity here but want to make note of this evening's passage. ceremony hall is a small wooden chapel on the campus of the sri atmananda complex, with beautiful sound and seemingly set off from the world despite its proximity to the accident-prone intersection of 41st and red river. many incredible shows have taken place here (tonight, 4.11, evan parker & susie ibarra).

the intersect festival was started a few years ago by a coalition of local artists & musicians, and though involvement has changed, the usual suspects were in evidence tonight--jgrzinich, rick reed, brekekekexkoaxkoax (aka josh ronsen), jeff filla, and thom grzinich. ('katie and rachel', though on the flyer, are mysteriously absent). thom grizinich (brother of j) begins the evening with strummed piano and tapes, minutely detailed repetitive sound mass expanding out through the darkness (illuminated by passing headlights). thom's first public performance, and impressive (his kalimba solo spontaneously inserted during technical difficulties in josh's performance was similarly intriguing). next was brekekekexkoaxkoax-- small, spacious minature guitar/bow sounds, broken by a piano solo w/ slideshow accompaniment (photographs of stark, dark limbed trees by Carmen Resendez). i particularly enjoyed the guitar, played with delicacy and restraint--and the film accompaniment (despite glitches) understated, shifting, layered, hallucinatory. jeff filla came next with a rare solo performance on his motors, gadgets, and miscellaneous electronics (fuzzy as to what was actually played, all perfomers were mostly hidden). ratcheting pops and howls, looped into a giant creaking tapestry, fascinating & uncomfortable. rick reed has been performing improvised guitar around town for years with various ensembles. tonight was the debut of his electronic instruments, which he recently began working with while in search of a satisfying approach to solo performance. several oscillators and radio receivers delivered sound that was huge & overpowering, supported by rick's amazing hand painted films, abstract shapes in scratched stop-motion, seemingly racing side to side overhead. rick's further exploits in this area are hugely anticipated... final performer was jgrizinich-- his first appearance since a lengthy jaunt in europe & environs. main instrument was a piano wire stretched from wall to wall, played with what seemed to be a homemade ebow (blueprints, anyone?)- nice cap on the evening, harmonically complex, fundamentally simple, luminous swirling underwater films. nice to have john back. in sum-- great night, straightforward presentation w/out pretention. efforts by all were excellent & look forward to everyone's future activities...

--tc

Pelt Performances

5.15.01 Club DeVille, Austin, TX Pelt rolled into town about 6 ish, looking for good (make that 'killer') mexican food. We took them to El Azteca instead (workmanlike, yes, servicable maybe, killer no). And from there straight to the club, where the soundcheck morphed into a Pelt bluegrass/Fahey set, including solo stretches by Jack & Mike-- Beautiful, proficient mountain music, and unlike anything I've seen them do (though glimpsed asides by Mike at Jack at various times over the years at least hinted at the possibility). Club crowd mostly consisted of the usual suspects augmented by club regulars (there for 'karaoke night') coerced into paying the cover charge. Said crowd did a reasonable job of quieting down for our set, though the much reduced volume of our current setup (chord organ, vox, lap steel) made hearing ourselves (& making ourselves heard) an uphill struggle. But it came off well anyway, especially when we lingered on the dissonant high notes at the end. Primordial Undermind played next & it was interesting viewing the action from offstage for once (I'd joined the group for a while last year). Two drummer lineup was more reminiscent of the Dead than MX 80 (sorry Eric) & the up-front positition of Vanessa's tri-wave tone generator was nice (though, come to think of it, I was the soundman, so I would think so).

Pelt sounded gargantuan as usual, high volume clarity coming anew to the esraj (Mike's North Indian bowed instrument, difficult to amplify in the pre-transducer days), which snaked through the tonal soup in slippery hypno fashion. Much of the dissonance in evidence when we last saw them was bypassed for the big human drone that infuses all fleshy sonic endeavors from bluegrass to blues to the raga, and Pelt should now be fully appreciable to any being with a skeleton... Nice long set too-- everyone left happy, back to the house to bang on the organ & the piano & consume Brian's Tecate (& Eric's donuts, drunkenly procured from the 24 hour shack over on Airport, the name of which I can never remember).

5.16.01 Sound Exchange, Houston, TX Despite my faulty directions almost sending Pelt to San Antonio, everyone arrived in Houston safe & sound & with time to spare for refreshments. We played first this time, a much louder & more effective set than we had in Austin, though not without its difficulties (any advice anyone can contribute for amplifying a chord organ would be greatly appreciated). Rotten Piece played a terrific & loud improvisation on Farfisa and stick cello (piano wire stretched over a long pipe & amplified)-- the unintentional accompaniment from the house stereo that wasn't immediately turned off was a nice touch (took me about 5 minutes to figure out it wasn't coming from the band). If Shaun & Carol have done the same thing twice I haven't seen it yet... Pelt shuffled instruments, this time placing Patrick on the chord organ, Jack on tamboura, and Mike on tube oscillator(!), switching to esraj halfway through. Another great performance, unaffected by the feedback produced by the resonance between tamboura & chord organ. A nice farewell to Texas from Pelt (& no one spent all their door money on records)!

--tc