Performances

You just can’t sing in the supermarket…

December 12, 2019January 30, 2005 by Michael Hanscom

A couple of days ago, I got this somewhat cryptic e-mail…

Hello…

Something is happening in the produce section of your local Supermarket this weekend:

Jan 29 – 12:30 pm – Ballard Safeway – 8340 15th Ave NW
Jan 29 – 7 pm – University Safeway – 4732 Brooklyn Ave NE
Jan 30 – 12:30 pm – Capital Hill QFC – 523 Broadway E
Jan 30 – 7 pm – Everett QFC – 2615 Broadway

Still,
-jason webley

So, today Prairie and I wandered our way up to the Capital Hill QFC to see what would happen.

As 12:30pm rolled around, there were quite a few people wandering around the produce section. Some made a pretense at shopping, some greeted friends, some just stood off to the side, and some continued on with their normal Sunday shopping. Occasionally a QFC employee would wander through to see if anyone needed any help, but we were all quite content to keep puttering around and investigating the fruits and vegetables.

Eventually, in strolled Jason, guitar case in hand, looking much younger now that he’s clean-shaven and still growing his hair out after his last deathday concert. A few nods, hugs, and friendly hellos passed between Jason and some of the gathered friends and fans, and then he joined us in our purported produce procurement. A few minutes later, Jason raised whatever vegetable he was holding up above his head, as if to get a better look at it in the light from the window. The person next to him raised their veggie in the air. Another went up, then another, then another.

One girl who’d been strolling around listening to a portable CD player started humming to herself, then swaying back and forth, and then singing. First softly, then more and more loudly, she sang along to The Clash‘s ‘Lost in the Supermarket‘: “I’m all lost in the supermarket! I can no longer shop happily!”

Moments later, a guy in white shirt, tie, and a tag reading “MANAGER” strolled over to her and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Miss? Miss? Excuse me, miss, but could you take your headphones off, please? Look, I’m very glad you enjoy shopping here, but you just can’t sing in the grocery store. I’m sure everyone else here would much rather shop in peace. You just can’t sing in the supermarket!”

And then he turned to the people standing around, drew a deep breath — and sang out, “You just can’t sing in the supermarket!”

A girl in a white shirt and white kerchief tied over her hair joined in — “Anyone will tell you so!”

Jason started playing his guitar. Another guy pulled a clarinet out of his jacket. Three girls nearby joined the song, complete with chorus-line high kicks. Eventually, about half the people that had been hanging around in the produce section were involved in the lineup, waving their hands in the air for the grand finale: “Because if you sing in the supermarket, you will have to go!”

And with the clash of a small pair of hand cymbals, it was over. Jason’s guitar went back in its case, the clarinet disappeared back into the jacket, and, accompanied by much laugher and scattered applause from other shoppers, everyone quickly made their way back outside to the sidewalk.

“Off to the next one!” Jason cried, and up we all went to the QFC on 15th Avenue.

All told, we hit five grocery stores before Prairie and I had to break off from the group in order to get her back on the road to Ellensburg before it got too late in the day. When we left, the group was heading up to a Trader Joe’s, and we’d heard mention of the QFC at Pike and Broadway — we’re assuming they made it there as we saw them a bit later walking by Dick’s on Broadway as we were heading back from a detour by Twice Sold Tales on our way down the hill to the apartment.

What a blast. This world needs more random silliness in it from time to time, and we had a lot of fun being part of this particular bit of randomness. Much giggling and many smiles from everyone in the group and from whatever customers happened to be around in each store — just the thing for a grey winter day in Seattle.

More pictures of the event are, as usual, in a Flickr photoset.

Update: M. Whybark witnessed Saturday’s revelries.

Update: Accompanying M. Whybark were the not-entirely-mythical Danelope and Jim, who contributes this photo set (which, as he points out, is smaller but more focused than mine — hey, it was my first day with a new camera…[grin]).

Update: Steve Konscek, the “manager” of the troupe (more commonly known as Brandon) has posted his account of the weekend’s fun.

“Quite Contrary” by Webley, Jason from the album Counterpoint (2002, 3:08).

Voltaire at the Vogue

December 11, 2019November 11, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

Just a few quick impressions, because it’s way past my bedtime on a weeknight (and having to say that before it’s even 1am is so depressing…).

Excellent show.

Wandered up to the Vogue at just a tad after 9pm and headed in. Got to say hello to some of the few people I know — Ogre, Mickey, and Kayo — and then ran into Richard just a few moments later. Ended up getting a table right up by the side of the stage, with a perfect view.

The Arid Sea opened, who I knew pretty much nothing about. Not bad at all, though admittedly, not so good that I’m going to be rushing out to pick up an album. A good opening show.

Voltaire came up shortly afterwards. While on his albums he has backing musicians, his performance was simply him and an acoustic guitar. He started by walking up to the mic and saying, “Hi! I’m…Rammstein!” and then proceeded to do a tongue-in-cheek cover of “Du Haßt Mich” (“You / You love / You love this / Even though you don’t know what I’m saying.”)

The next song was “Ex-Lover’s Lover”, and then he went through a good number of songs that I didn’t know (as The Devil’s Bris is the only album I own — something that will have to change), but were all very entertaining.

He prefaced a song about being eaten by cannibals by talking about how he’d just done a show in Japan the week before, and while he was able to do his between-song chatter in Japanese, the songs themselves were in English, so the Japanese audience didn’t pick up on all of the puns in his songs. He did say that the show in Japan went really well, though, and so he’d decided to do the exact same performance, since it went over so sucessfully — and then proceeded to speak in Japanese.

Between two of the songs he took a moment to read a few short passages from a small book he’s just put out, What is Goth?, commenting that “the surest way to a girls…(long pause)…heart…is suck-ass Goth poetry.”

There was actually a lot of fun between-song banter, and since much of the music I was hearing for the first time, that’s much of what I’m remembering. He told a story about going to the PTA meeting for his six-year old’s school, a fancy private school in New York, and realizing that both Dave Gahan (the lead singer of Depeche Mode) and David Bowie also had children in the same school (“The parent choir is going to rock!”).

Also, just before a very sweet (if disturbing) lullabye “written to scare my son to death, apparently,” he told another short story about his son. Apparently he came home and heard one of his son’s friends talking to the nanny, and declaring that, “that coat smells like his dad.” At his point, Voltaire paused, hiding around the corner to find out just how bad he smelled.

“What does his dad smell like?” asked the nanny.

“Evil.” (Much laughter here from the audience.)

Then the nanny followed up on this. “And what does evil smell like?”

And then, very matter-of-factly, the friend just said, “Pretty good, actually.”

He ended up finishing his show with “When You’re Evil,” only with a slight twist to the final lyrics:

It gets so lonely being evil.
What I’d do to see a smile,
Even for a little while,
And no one loves you when you’re DJ Eternal Darkness…

All in all, much fun, and well worth staying up past my bedtime for.

“Anniversary” by Voltaire from the album Devil’s Bris, The (1998, 4:35).

Jason Webley Halloween Show 2004

December 11, 2019October 31, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

Prairie and I went to Jason Webley’s Halloween/Deathday show last night.

The show, of course (and as always), was incredible, and I’ll try to get a better writeup later on today. For now, though, I’ve uploaded a photoset from last night to Flickr.

The pictures don’t have full descriptions yet (another as-soon-as-possible project), but they start with the gathering of fans outside Town Hall, go through the entire show, and then follow us all out through Freeway Park until Jason left us yet again.

Enjoy!

Bumbershoot 2004: Monday

December 11, 2019September 6, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

And so today wraps up another Labor Day weekend at Bumbershoot. Being able to go at all was actually a rather nice surprise. The company I work for didn’t close their stores today, and since I work the evening shift, I’d long since resolved myself to only being able to hit two days of Bumbershoot this year. However, much to my surprise, one of the other people at work offered to take my shift so that I’d be able to have today off. I certainly wasn’t going to say no to that!

Prairie is in the midst of moving to a new apartment, so she went back to Ellensburg this morning, leaving me to head back to the Seattle Center on my own. After she left, I wandered my way down to the festival, making it there just a little after 1pm — and was immediately faced with the news that the wristbands for the evening show were already gone. This was not an auspicious start to the day, as the biggest reason I’d wanted to go today was to see the Pixies. So, a little bummed, I figured I’d go ahead and make the best of the day as long as I was there, and see what the day brought my way.

Since I hadn’t planned on being able to go today I hadn’t really planned out which acts I might want to see, aside from the Pixies and Critters Buggin’ in the evening. Now that I couldn’t make it in to the Pixies show, I had a long, unplanned day ahead of me before Critters Buggin’ took the stage, so rather than bounce from show to show, I just started wandering around the grounds.

The first performance I hit was the MASS Ensemble. Where last year they had their Earth Harp strung up (way up) on the Space Needle, this time they had two smaller versions of their Earth Harp, and used a Drum Orb as the centerpiece of the show (unfortunately, MASS’s site is purely Flash, so I can’t link to the information pages on the instruments). I just made it for the end of the show, so missed the Drum Orb, so the few songs I did catch centered around the two smaller harps (smaller in this sense meaning strings measuring from six to twenty-five feet or so).

Once the Mass Ensemble wrapped up their show, I hunkered down at the International Fountain. Long-time readers of my ramblings will know that this is one of my favorite places to spend time at when at the Seattle Center, kicked back and watching kids play in the spray from the fountain. Not only is it fun to watch the mayhem, but I’m usually guaranteed at least one or two good shots a session — the only potential downside is that people may get a little tired of seeing even more pictures of kids in the fountain, but hey…as far as downsides go, that’s probably not too horrible (at least I hope not).

Not surprisingly, politics have been a strong undercurrent in Seattle lately, and Bumbershoot was no exception — at times, it seemed like you couldn’t go twenty feet without someone asking you if you were registered to vote (a good thing, I’d say, and I hope they got a good number of people signed up). Rather amusingly, though, both Prairie and I have noticed over the summer that it’s incredibly rare to see Republicans at all. All the voter registration drives, informational booths, petitions, and anything else you can come up with are run by various “lefty” parties, most often either Kerry/Edwards campaigners or Nader supporters (they just won’t go away…). I’m not quite sure why this is — though I’m certainly neither disappointed nor surprised that it’s the Democratic contingent busting their butts to get people involved — but when I actually saw some Republicans venture out of whatever dark musty hole they hide in to make a public appearance, I had to snap a picture to memorialize the occasion.

Of the many street performers scattered around the avenues of the Seattle Center, this girl was one of my favorites, simply because she’d managed to draw a large group of completely befuddled onlookers, none of whom (including me) had the faintest idea what she was doing. She had designs chalked out on the pathway before her with painted Barbie dolls and various other odd bits of stuff strewn on the ground, and when I eventually walked away, she’d gone from dropping marbles onto the ground from her mouth to bending down, getting on hands and knees, and kissing the inside of a miniature coffin. I haven’t got a clue if there was actually an “act” to her act or not, but even if it was nothing more than seeing how long she could keep a crowd, she certainly had her audience, even if they were fairly confused.

After some time randomly wandering around and snapping shots of fairgoers, I was passing through the area designated “Fashion Alley” when I stumbled into a fashion show highlighting the work of many of the local artists with booths in the area. Not being one to complain about attractive women strutting their stuff and showing off good clothing, I hunkered down in front and played fashion photographer for a few minutes.

Back at my previous employer’s print shop, one of the personal projects we’d done at one point was a promotional catalog for a local women’s clothing designer. The clothing was gorgeous, all hand-dyed silks, but as I couldn’t keep a copy of the catalog for myself and it didn’t have any contact information in it, I never knew who the designer was. Luckily enough, today’s fashion show included quite a few pieces that I recognized, and I now know that the clothes are by Wai-Ching — and not only was her work in the show, but she modeled one piece herself (and quite honestly, the woman is as gorgeous as her clothing designs are). It’s all a bit out of my price range (and I do have to admit that I just don’t think I have the body for the dresses she creates), but I can definitely recommend at least checking out her work.

Returning to my wanders, I soon came across this impromptu swing dance session. There were two street performers playing some swing-style jazz on upright bass and trumpet, and as far as I could tell, these two people were just random passers by who decided to take advantage of the music and put on a little show of their own. Fun to watch, and this photo is one instance where fumbling the settings on the camera resulted in a better shot than I think it would have been without the motion blur.

Round about this time I was getting a little hungry, so I grabbed some food from one of the many vendors and settled down to watch another of the Mass Ensemble’s performances (this time showing up early enough to catch some of the drumming — in this photo, there are ten smaller drums around one larger central drum, all of which the girl spins while her partner drums). While I was eating, two teens met up with another couple teens just a couple feet from me. One of the first two had a wristband for the evening’s show, but her friend didn’t, and they were getting a wristband for her friend from the other two, who were on their way out. I got their attention, asked if they would be willing to donate their remaining wristband to a worthy cause — and moments later, was properly banded and all set to be able to catch the Pixies’ show after all! I love it when a plan comes together….

Before heading into the arena, though, I was able to catch a good portion of Critters Buggin’. I first heard them on Anchorage’s college radio station, KRUA, first saw them at a New Years Eve show in Anchorage (1998? 1997? I’m not sure anymore…), and have been a fan ever since. Somewhere in between avant-garde Jazz and balls-to-the-wall rock, plus a heavy dose of whatever random influences come their way, Critters have been favorites of mine for quite a few years now, and they always put on one hell of a show. Tonight was as good as ever, if a little less theatrical than I’ve seen in the past — but after a while, I had to wander away and find my way into the arena.

After winding my way through an incredibly long line and making it into the arena, I found a clear spot on the grounds and plopped down to wait for the show to start. I’m always amazed at how many people they can pack into that arena — maybe it’s just the “small town” boy in me coming out, but seeing a few thousand people in one place is still a little overwhelming at times. Cool — but I’m still not entirely used to it. Once the show started, I got up to wander around a bit to see if I could get any decent pictures, but I’m afraid this was the best I could do. Not only was the arena absolutely packed, making it nearly impossible to work my way anywhere near the stage, but the Bumbershoot staff were actually doing their best to enforce the no-cameras rule inside the arena.

Still, pictures are really a secondary concern — I was happy just to actually have made it in to see the Pixies. While I certainly can’t claim to be the “biggest fan ever” (heck, I don’t even actually have any of their albums), I do know and enjoy a fair amount of their music. Surprisingly enough, they put more of their more well-known songs towards the beginning of the set, which was nice — they opened with Caribou, and both Monkey Gone to Heaven and Wave of Mutilation were fairly early on. A pleasant surprise, as I wouldn’t have expected some of those to show up until later on.

I was getting tired (and a little burnt out on being in the midst of so many people, too), though, so I ended up bailing out a little bit before the end of their set, so I wouldn’t have to fight my way through the mass exodus of people slowly working their way out of the arena. I worked my way out, tried a few night shots of the carnival rides (which turned out better than I expected — I’ve got to get myself a real tripod one of these days instead of trying to hand-hold long exposures), and made the walk home.

So that’s it — one more year of Bumbershoot done and over with.

Now, I head to bed, and let my legs finally get some rest.

Update: All of today’s photos have been added to the photo gallery — these start at the bottom of page 24.

“Obvious Child, The” by Simon, Paul from the album Rhythm of the Saints, The (1990, 4:09).

Bumbershoot 2004: Sunday

December 11, 2019September 6, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

Yesterday (since I didn’t get around to posting this last night) was another fun day of crowds and music, made even better by the sudden appearance of actual sunshine, something we had been sorely missing on Saturday. Unfortunately, at some point during the day I hit the wrong button on the camera and severely overexposed a good number of the photos I took — though I have to admit I like the way some of them came out in the end.

We didn’t have as many acts that we were really planning on seeing, so much more of the day was spent just wandering around and sightseeing.

Every year I’ve been to Bumbershoot, these marionettes have been out front, just outside the entrance by the EMP. The work on the puppets is incredibly intricate, and the puppeteer does some wonderful work. Each puppet is a musical performer (I’ve seen Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in the past, this one was performing an Eric Clapton song, though it doesn’t look much like Clapton to me), and is their most intricate marionette — twenty-four strings, if I remember correctly.

There’s a giant magnetic poetry board set up by the Northwest Court jazz stage. Most of the creations were the usual amusing and somewhat nonsensical things you often end up with, but this one I actually liked. Kudos to whatever anonymous person came up with it.

Embrace the blue sky
beneath these gorgeous stars
and melt as you soar and fall.
Please always sing, young child,
and believe sad music

We ran across the same piper that we saw yesterday, only today he had been joined by another piper and two dancers. I got a good laugh out of this picture when I got home — between the hands-on-the-hips pose and my catching her just after a leap into the air, there’s a definite “Superman” effect going on in this shot. Apparently, in my universe, cute women in Scottish outfits have super powers and can fly. Somehow, I’m okay with that.

After some time spent sitting at the International Fountain and watching people play in the spray (and taking a lot of pictures that will need some work in Photoshop), we went over to the Main Stage for Liz Phair. I don’t really know Liz’s music that much, but Prairie had heard nearly every song that Liz played through friends. The sun was a bit much for us right out in the main area on the arena field, so we took up spots over in the bleachers. Far too far away from the stage for me to get any pictures of Liz (and, technically, there’s not supposed to be any photography in the Main Stage area anyway), but a great spot for peoplewatching. One couple was playing frisbee right in front of us, and this girl was amazing — not only was she dancing non stop to the music while tossing the frisbee back and forth, but she did it the entire time with her coffee in her hand. How Seattle can you get?

I’d wanted to check out DJ Cheb i Sabbah, so after a while we found our way back over to the Bumbrella stage and found a nice open spot on the grass. Great, great music here — perfectly mixed Bhangra (Indian dance music), with a live drummer adding extra percussion over the mix, plus some very attractive belly dancers. While none of my pictures of the show came out, we did have fun watching the people around us. This family was camped out just a few feet away from us, and the little baby was incredibly cute — bouncing along to the music, and every few minutes, worming her way into her mom’s lap, lifting up her shirt, and planting a big kiss on her mom’s tummy.

Back up at the Northwest Court (quick hint — there are restrooms in the art gallery building just behind the Northwest Court stage that have much shorter lines than anywhere else in Bumbershoot), we caught the very tail end of Vienna Teng‘s performance. Really beautiful piano and vocal work — unfortunately, we arrived late enough that they were completely sold out of her CDs. A bit of a bummer, but something to look for in the future.

Next up on the dock was the Mexican-electronic-hip-hop-rock group Plastilina Mosh. Another group I’d never heard of before today, but with that mix of styles in their description, I figured they would be worth checking out (last year, I stumbled across another Latino-electronica act, Kinky, and really enjoyed them). While they sounded good, they also sounded loud, and by this point in the day, both Prairie and I were starting to wear down. We hung out long enough to get some pictures, and then decided that it was time to wander out of the direct line of fire of the speakers and assess our situation.

Then came the one slight bummer of the day. I’d really been looking forward to seeing the evening’s big act, Public Enemy. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was really starting to wear down. If Bumbershoot had been the only thing planned for the day, we might have been able to stick it out, but I was also planning on being sure to hit the weekly fetish night at the Vogue, as it was likely to be my last Sunday night out for at least a few weeks (next week I’ll be in Anchorage, and then once I return I’ll be starting my new work schedule, and will need to adjust my sleep schedule so that I’m used to waking up in time to be at work at 8am on Monday morning…once I’m adjusted, I should be able to head back out again, but until I know that I’m not going to oversleep on Monday morn, I need to force myself into bed at a more reasonable hour). So, knowing that we had a few hours before Public Enemy hit the stage, and that we were planning on hitting the club for a few hours later on that night, we decided that it was time to behave like responsible adults and find our way home.

Y’know…growing up and being responsible really sucks sometimes. ;)

So, I missed out on Public Enemy, which was a bit of a bummer. But still, the rest of the day was another good one, we had a fun time at the Vogue later on that night, and all in all, it was another good day. Can’t really ask for too much more than that, I’d say.

Update: All of yesterday’s pictures (even the overexposed ones) are now added to the photo gallery, they start on page 14 of the Bumbershoot 2004 album.

“Be My TV” by Peace, Love and Pitbulls from the album Peace, Love and Pitbulls (1993, 4:23).

Bumbershoot 2004: Saturday

December 11, 2019September 4, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

Another year of Bumbershoot is off to a rousing start for Prairie and me. Lots of good music and peoplewatching today, and more to come. This rundown will be a bit abbreviated, as I’m pretty tired, but I wanted to get as much as I could out of my head while it was still fresh.

We got to the Seattle Center just a little after noon, right at the beginning of the day, and settled right down at the Bumbrella stage to watch Bakra Batá, a steel drum, percussion, and masquerade ensemble that’s been in Seattle since 1984. I’d actually run across them before, at the Seattle Folklife festival last May, but this was the first time I actually knew who it was I was watching perform. Really excellent stuff — a strong island flavor, of course, but with a fairly wide range of other influences also. Very danceable, and it wasn’t long at all before they had a good portion of the audience up on their feet.

From there, we wandered over to the Backyard stage for the Foghorn Stringband, very old-timey Americana bluegrass. Things like this are a large part of why I enjoy Bumbershoot so much — just a few minutes to walk from Caribbean-style steel drums, past some good blues, and over to traditional bluegrass. We sat back and ate some of the snacks we’d brought along while watching the band, and when I got up to dump our trash into a trashcan, the lead singer decided to inform the crowd that, “nothing goes better with a black Utilikilt than one of our t-shirts!” Apparently I’d gone and gotten myself noticed…

Right near the Backyard stage this year is a rock garden, constructed of rocks painstakingly balanced on top of other rocks. Okay, so that description doesn’t make it sound terribly interesting, but I’d hate to be trying to pull off the balancing acts that the people constructing this thing have managed to do. Far more patience and steady hands than I’ve got, that’s for sure.

With some time to kill before the next act we were planning on checking out, we started wandering the grounds, and ran across some more men in kilts — this time, though, these were men in traditional kilts, playing bagpipe and drums. They got a laugh out of my shirt, and we stood and watched for a while (me for the bagpipes, which I’ve always liked, and Prairie both for the bagpipes and to admire the man playing the bagpipes, who she highly approved of).

Not long after that, we ran across the Vamola drum and dance troupe on one of their many daily parades throughout the grounds. They’re always a lot of fun to watch — pretty girls in skimpy clothing dancing to really good percussion. I’m all for that!

Our next stop was to see none other than Nancy Sinatra. Her show was great. She started off with ‘Bang Bang’, which I’d first heard in Kill Bill, and went through a fair amount of her catalog. She had a cute little segment in the middle where she sang against a backdrop of scenes from the movies she’d starred in back in the 60’s and 70’s, and then eventually finished off her set with — of course — ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’‘, coming down and walking through the audience and greeting as many of her fans as she could.

Once Nancy was done, we spent a little time with AllGoRhythm, an modern Indian group. By this point in the day, though, things were starting to get a bit chillier as the sun went down, so we took a break for a while to make a run home and grab some dinner and another layer of clothing before heading back for the evening.

Once we got back, we didn’t have anything in particular planned out, so we started perusing the evening’s schedule. I noticed Robyn Hitchcock and remembered hearing something from him that I’d enjoyed in the past, so we decided that that was worth a shot. We headed over to the performance hall, and ended up getting in early enough to catch the last half-hour or so of Pedro the Lion‘s set. While I recognized the name, neither Prairie nor I knew anything about Pedro the Lion, but we both ended up enjoying what we heard a lot. Being entirely new to the music, I couldn’t tell you at all what songs we heard, but we’ll both want to look into that a bit more.

A little while after Pedro was done, Robyn took the stage. While his first song — sort of a cover of the Beatles’ ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ — was a little odd, his second song happened to be one that I knew, ‘Balloon Man’, which I have on an old MTV 120 Minutes sampler. The rest of the show was quite enjoyable, including a quite amusing tidbit about how if you’re at a concert while the artist is tuning his instrument, the vibrations from the tuning will settle in your spine, and when you get home and go to bed, as you relax those vibrations are released. Should you have a rodent of any type for a pet (gerbil, mouse, rat, rabbit, etc.), those released vibrations will crank up the libido of said rodent, and you’re virtually gauranteed to end up with little rodent babies before too long (assuming you have two un-neutered rodents of opposing sexes, of course). I’m not sure it made a lot of sense, but it was quite amusing.

And that was that. With Robyn done, we wandered back up the hill, made a quick run to QFC for water and for more batteries for the camera, and then back home…and now that I’ve got this done, it’s time for bed. Much more tomorrow…

Update: All my pictures from today are now up in the family photo gallery. More will be added as the weekend progresses.

“Balloon Man” by Hitchcock, Robyn and the Egyptians from the album Never Mind the Mainstream (1988, 3:34).

Rent

December 11, 2019August 30, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

As mentioned briefly last week, Saturday’s evening entertainment was wandering down a couple blocks to the Paramount Theatre to see Rent.

Prairie has been a fan of Rent for a while, and had tried to introduce me to the music a while ago, but I just hadn’t been able to get a good feel for what was going on simply by listening to the soundtrack album. Thinking about it on the way home after the show, I realized that part of that may have been because every other major musical that I’ve seen (Cats, Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), I knew the story before picking up the soundtrack album, either through reading the source material or because I’d learned it while singing the songs back when I was in the Alaska Children’s Choir. With Rent, I had no real idea of what the plot was and what was happening, and I couldn’t quite pick it up just by listening to the album.

Now that I’ve seen the show, though, suddenly it all falls into place. “La Vie Boheme” and “Tango: Maureen” were by far my favorite songs, though the entire soundtrack is a blast. I can certainly see why it’s such a popular show.

Our particular performance was quite good, though not perfect. The sound technician was sometimes a little late when activating people’s microphones, so we’d occasionally lose the first couple words of someone’s lines when they appeared. A couple of the performers didn’t have quite as strong a voice as they probably should have (most notably Tallia Brinson as Mimi — while she wasn’t bad by any means, she didn’t quite have the raw power that songs like “Out Tonight” require).

I was also confused for a while about Angel’s character — I knew that the character was supposed to be a drag queen from when Prairie had first tried to introduce me to the music, but Damien DeShaun Smith had such an incredibly feminine voice that I really wasn’t sure if it was a male or female playing Angel until I checked the program during intermission. It made for a slightly confusing first act (as a female Angel would greatly change the dynamic of the relationship with Tom Collins)…of course, on the bright side, if Damien really is a drag queen (off-stage, that is), he’s sure to do a spectacular job! ;)

All in all, though, while not a perfect performance, it was extremely good, and I’ve got a new musical to eventually commit to memory.

iTunes: “La Vie Boheme” by Original Broadway Cast from the album Rent (1996, 8:00).

KMFDM at the Fenix Underground

December 10, 2019June 25, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

Just got back from tonight’s KMFDM show. Very good, and very loud (but then, this is KMFDM we’re talking about).

I skipped out on the two opening acts — I’d been given a free CD from the first act, Charlie Drown, a while ago at a Pigface show and wasn’t terribly impressed; and whoever the middle act was simply made a lot of noise. I poked my head in from time to time, but decided to just stay downstairs.

When I headed upstairs to find a spot to watch the show, I ran into Ron again, along with Angel, a friend of his, and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with them. We worked our way into a spot underneath a staircase that had a fairly good view of the stage, and chatted while waiting for the show to start.

WWIII (off the album of the same name) and Blackball opened the show, and Sascha and company were in fine form. Unfortunately, as I was afraid of last week, I’m no great fan of the Fenix for a show like this. While it worked decently enough for a smaller show, there were just too many people this time, and it quickly got far too crowded and hot, and the three of us bailed to stand outside the bar about halfway through the show. We could still hear everything fairly well, though, so we didn’t feel like we were really missing much of anything.

We did wander in to catch the encores, though, and the night closed out with Godlike — very, very nice.

All in all a good night, though I’m no great fan of the Fenix as a concert venue. I still wouldn’t mind going again at some point on just a standard club night to see how it fares, so I’m not entirely writing it off — I’m just going to reserve concerts there for shows that I really don’t want to miss out on.

iTunes: “Dogma” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album XTORT (1996, 4:06).

Sister Machine Gun at the Fenix Underground

December 10, 2019June 19, 2004 by Michael Hanscom

Have I ever mentioned how much I love living in Seattle? One of the major reasons (aside from naked people on bikes, of course), is the simple fact that many of the bands that I’ve been listening to (and playing during my DJ career) for years actually come through town every so often, so I can actually see them.

Admittedly, time and budget prevent me from seeing every band that comes through that I’d like to, but so far since I’ve moved down here I’ve seen Concrete Blonde, Pigface, and KMFDM twice each, Peter Murphy — and now, Sister Machine Gun.

(Random SMG trivia: Chris Randall provided vocals for one remix of early 90’s techno hit “James Brown is Dead” by LA Style, making the ‘Rock Radio’ remix the only version of JBiD with actual sung lyrics — and, incidentally, also making it my favorite version of the song.)

The ticket I had said that things were going to get started at 8pm. Since I needed to rest after playing in the sun all morning long I didn’t actually make it to the Fenix until around 8:45, but as it turns out, that didn’t matter at all, as the show didn’t actually get started until around 10. There were three opening bands, and unfortunately, I’ve got to say that none of them impressed me all that much, and I ended up spending most of my time until SMG came on stage wandering around the club.

This was my first time at the Fenix. It’s an interesting place, though I don’t think one that I’d hit on a regular basis. It looks wonderful — all dark woods and brickwork, with the main floor holding one bar and the performance area, an upper mezzanine level with two more bars and a balcony overlooking the stage, and a lower level with another bar and a second dance floor. However, the downsides (as I see them) are that the drinks are overpriced (my usual drink, a Malibu rum and coke, was fifty cents more expensive than it is at the Vogue, came in a plastic cup about a third smaller than the glasses the Vogue uses, had more ice taking up volume, and was mixed weaker than I’m used to) and the clientele is something of an odd mix between the black leather, vinyl, and PVC clad goth/industrial people and the college frat boys and sorority girls brought in due to the Fenix’s Pioneer Square location. Overall, it’s not a bad place for shows (though the floor in front of the stage is pretty small — it seemed to work decently tonight, but I’m not sure how well it will work for next week’s KMFDM show), but definitely not going to be a regular haunt.

While I was killing time during the opening bands, I ended up running into Ron, an old roommate of mine from back at the Pit (my old apartment in Anchorage). We hung out off and on for the rest of the night, making snarky comments about the opening bands, being amused at the odd mix of customers, and swapping stories about old friends from Anchorage.

I also ended up spending some time talking to Kevin and Amanda, a couple from Canada who were in Seattle specifically for the SMG show. We got started talking when Amanda pulled me aside to ask me about my kilt, then just sat back and chatted for a good half hour or so, comparing the various scenes in Seattle, Anchorage, and Vancouver. I may end up running into them again next Friday — when I mentioned that KMFDM were going to be there, Kevin immediately started scheming to try to find ways to arrange his schedule to come back down.

Eventually all the opening acts wound to a close, and I found my way to the floor in front of the stage. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from SMG, as I haven’t heard any of their recent albums since they left Wax Trax records. I had nothing to worry about, though. Once they took the stage — Chris Randall at the forefront, Charles Levi on bass (who I’d seen play bass for Pigface the last time they came through), plus a guitarist and drummer whose names I didn’t catch — while I didn’t know the first few songs of the set, they were definitely right what I was hoping for. Halfway through their set they moved into their older catalog of songs, but not before Chris took a few moments to tell us a story. I won’t be able to relate the exact words — this is not a transcription, merely the best that my fuzzy memory can recall — but it should be fairly close…

Okay, we’re right about halfway through the set now. I tell this story at this point in every show, and I try to make it specific for where we are, but this is something like the fiftieth show on this tour, and I’m running out of witty shit to say.

See, a couple nights ago we were playing at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco when I told this story. Now the guy who runs the DNA is pretty big on the Internet, and they stream live webcasts of all their shows. When I told this story, he thought it was pretty funny, so he put it up on the club’s website. Well, it got around, and word got out, people started telling other people, and now our server is dead. We got slammed — our site, our record label, and every other site that was on that server is gone right now. I dunno, they may have gotten it back up again by now, I could be talking out of my ass here, but a few hours ago, it was dead.

Anyway. Here’s the story.

Everything we’ve played up until now, up until this point in the set, it’s on our own record label, Positron Records. You can buy any of the new albums right over at the kissing booth — two bucks for a kiss, ten bucks for a CD. Everything after this, all our old stuff, that was released on Wax Trax Records. Which is cool…or was cool, back then. See, now Wax Trax is owned by TVT Records [boos and hisses from the audience here], who are a bunch of ignorant fucks that can’t manage their books. So now all our old catalog is owned by TVT…actually, it’s not even owned by TVT anymore, it’s owned by Credit Suisse. Which I guess is kind of cool — my first four records were put out by a bank.

The point is, I don’t get shit for any of it — not one dime, not one red cent, not one wooden nickel. So you can go home, get on your computers, find any of our old Wax Trax shit, and download it for free. We’re not getting paid for it, you don’t have to pay for it.

Okay. Here we go.

Incidentally, all of SMG’s Positron Records albums are available for purchase from the iTunes Music Store. Too cool. And, hey — it sounds like a good idea to me.

Anyway, from here on out we were in familiar waters for me, and the band kicked much ass (not that they weren’t before, I just didn’t know the songs). They bounced around with a few from each of their first four albums, finishing off with two killer tunes — Addiction (probably my personal favorite SMG track) and Sins of the Flesh.

As an added bonus, today was Chris’s birthday! The owner of the Fenix (that was who that was, right?) grabbed the microphone from Chris, announced it was his birthday, and Chris immediately went running offstage in mock embarassment. He got dragged back on fairly quickly, got some birthday cheers from the audience, and then went on with the show. Later on, after the show finished and the band went offstage, the crowd sang Chris “Happy Birthday” before filing out. Quite fun.

Anyway, awesome show. Much fun was had by all.

iTunes: “Addiction” by Sister Machine Gun from the album Sins of the Flesh (1992, 4:16).

Jason Webley Deathday 2003

December 10, 2019November 2, 2003 by Michael Hanscom

Last night was Jason Webley‘s Deathday concert. Incredible, beautiful, fun, funny, and moving — everything I’ve come to expect from Webley’s shows.

The show was held at the Town Hall, which is just kitty-corner across the street from my apartment building. Just a little after 6pm, Prairie glanced out my kitchen window and noticed that something was glowing outside of Town Hall. Curious, I opened the window and poked my head out. The glow was easy to identify as a Jack O’ Lantern. What I hadn’t expected to see (though perhaps I should have) was the line that was already starting to form. Hoping to get good seats for the show, we decided that we’d go join the line, bundled up, and headed downstairs and across the street.

We found a spot in line right at the corner, and spent the next hour or so watching people play, identifying costumes, and chatting with the people in front of us — a cute girl with red dreadlocks and her boyfriend. We never did catch their names (even after mentioning at one point that we didn’t know each other), but they made for a fun way to pass the time as we waited, talking about everything from lemmings being thrown over cliffs to whether or not I liked artichokes (I don’t).

Eventually we made it inside, stood in line for a while longer waiting for the doors to the auditorium to open, and finally getting in and finding seats. We ended up getting great seats — the auditorium has a staircase in the center of the hall leading down and out, and we were just one row back behind the stairs, with a perfect view of the stage. Town Hall was perfect for the show, too. Huge (around 900 seats), and I’d guess the audience was between 700 and 800 people, primarily “alternative”/punk/goth kids in their late teens and early twenties, but a sizeable number of adults, also. One of the things I’ve always liked about Jason Webley is how well he attracts a wide range of fans, and that’s always obvious at shows such as these.

Not long after we all filed in, the musicians took the stage, and the show began…

The lights went down, and the auditorium went silent. A door opened on the side of the stage, and Jason entered — in puppet form. As a gorgeously done Jason Webley puppet, controlled by two puppeteers wearing all black, he walked to the front of the stage, guitar case in hand. He sat down, pulled out the guitar, and played the first song (recorded…as good as the puppet was, its fingers weren’t quite that dextrous).

Once the song was done, he walked back offstage, and the black clad assistants came back onstage. There had been a large box covered by a sheet at center stage, and they proceeded to remove the sheet to reveal a large trunk. They unlocked the trunk, opened the lid — and helped Jason (the real flesh-and-blood Jason this time) out of the box, clad only in loose yellow pants. As he came to life, he was given his trenchcoat and hat, and finally, his accordion, and the main part of the show began.

The show was incredible. The accompanying musicians were expanded this year to include a string quartet of two cello and two violin, in addition to the brass band, drums, and Jason switching among accordion, guitar, and piano (and occasional shovel). The addition of the fuller, more orchestral background was wonderful, filling out his songs and allowing for some beautiful background music for some of the more performance-art sets of the show.

Because Town Hall presented a more formal setting for the show than some other venues, like last year’s Deathday show at the Paradox, after the first few songs Jason took a moment to break the ice and loosen things up again by leading us all in a rousing sing-along of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” with everyone either standing up or sitting down again at every word that started with a “B”. This was fun, and got a good deal of giggles going through the audience, but apparently that wasn’t enough for Jason, as he decided to teach us another dance — the Gnomie.

Now, the Gnomie is quite easy to do. Inspired by those little lawn gnomes seen in the front yards of homes, all you have to do is get a sheepish grin on your face, pull your shirt over the back of your head, and then wiggle your arms (now pulled up a bit by the shirt) as you bounce around a bit. Have you ever seen a crowd of 700-some people doing the Gnomie? We almost didn’t, as there’s always some people a bit too shy to do something quite this silly. But Jason implored us to get everyone involved. After all, one doesn’t get too many chances to do the Gnomie, and so he asked us all to turn to anyone we could see who wasn’t joining in, look deep into their eyes, and sing to them, “If you don’t Gnomie by now….” The general mood loosened up a lot after that!

This year, love, the heart, and flight were the running themes of the show, and the thematic elements of the performance were nicely woven between the more upbeat, sillier moments. Three stories were told during the course of the show: The Boy With Wings on His Heart, The Boy With A Ball of String for a Heart, and The Boy With A Balloon For A Heart. Each story was about our relationships with love — for each other, for home, for what we see in this world. I’m really hoping that someone who was taping the performance was able to catch these stories on tape, they were wonderfully written and performed.

During the last half of the show, red balloons were occasionally tossed into the crowd. Small heart-shaped balloons, larger round balloons, and a couple really large round balloons (easily two feet in diameter). These would fly around the audience, bouncing from one person to the next. They’d disappear for the quieter songs, then as the energy ramped up again, they’d reemerge from underneath seats or more would be brought out, and the air would soon fill with red balloons again.

For each of Jason’s stories, he used a small doll (the child’s doll with a soft body and plastic head, arms, and legs) to illustrate the story as he told it. For The Boy With A Balloon for a Heart, the story told of a boy who’s heart would expand each time he saw something he liked, each time he saw something that made him sad — anything that made him love. This doll had had its body replaced with stocking fabric around a balloon, and each time the boy’s heart grew, Jason blew the balloon up a bit. Eventually, as the story ended, he had a (truth to tell) somewhat disturbing looking swollen baby doll, which he handed to the audience. Seeing as how we were already batting large red balloons around…well, the baby just got added into the mix. I’m not entirely sure if that was Jason’s intent or not, but for the rest of the evening, you’d see three or four balloons fly in front of your face, followed by a balloon baby careening through the audience.

Eventually, after a good collection of old Webley standards and some new songs (perhaps there’s a new album in the works?), a mass audience tickle fight, and everyone “getting wasted” for the Drinking Song by pointing at the roof, looking at their fingers, and spinning in circles twenty times or so, the show started to wind down.

Jason took off his coat and hat, and one of the assistance appeared in the audience with a doll version of Jason hanging from a pole with wings strapped to his arms, flying around the room, and eventually onto the stage. After a few flights around the stage, the doll Jason descended into Jason’s arms. Gently cradling the doll in his arms, Jason stood there, the auditorium dead silent — when the crack of snapping wood filled the hall, and the wings, shattered, fell to the ground. Anguish washing over his face, Jason gently reached into the doll and removed its heart.

Two white-clad pallbearers came on stage, bearing a small coffin between them. Setting it down on the stage and removing its lid, they reached up and coaxed the doll from Jason’s arms, laying it to rest within the coffin. One then turned and took the heart from Jason, placing it back in the body of the doll. They then stood back up and slowly left the stage, bearing the doll away and out of the auditorium down the central staircase, leaving Jason collapsed in grief on the stage. The two black-clad assistants then came back, gently picked Jason up, put him back into the trunk, closed and locked it, and covered it with the sheet again. The band played gently as we all got up and quietly left the auditorium, filed outside, and gathered in the rain outside of Town Hall, waiting to see what would happen next.

Eventually, someone caught wind of the next part of the night’s activities (for Jason’s big shows are never entirely done just because we’re no longer watching him onstage), and everyone started walking a block down the street to the closest entrance to Freeway Park. As we all entered the park we passed people with large bunches of balloons, handing everyone a single balloon. We got ours and continued on into the park, following the paths until we got to one of the large plaza areas next to the Convention Center. Here, the two pallbearers were standing next to a small stone cairn, still bearing the coffin with Jason’s (doll) body in it.

We gathered in a circle around them, each of us holding the balloon we had been given, talking quietly, reliving the show we had just seen, talking about prior Deathdays, and waiting to see what would happen next.

Eventually, people came back through the crowd, gathering all the balloons together again. We each tied our balloon onto one of the bunches, then all the bunches were gathered together in the center of the circle. Not long after that, the balloons started to rise, with Jason (in doll form) tied to the bottom of the bunch, to let him fly away into the night. Unfortunately, here the night hit a slight snag, to the amusement of the gathered fans. As there was a light rain that evening, the balloons were becoming slightly weighted down with water, and couldn’t get enough lift to fly away!

Jason floated gently above our heads, but wasn’t able to get much lift beyond that, and our cheers of encouragement as he floated above us quickly turned into laughs as he drifted first into one of the park lamps, then into one tree, and then into another. Each time, someone would extricate Jason from his predicament, knock some of the water off of the balloons they could reach, let him go again, we’d all cheer — and then watch him find another tree. After the third time, someone pulled the bunch of balloons down and those of us closest to the bunch, laughing and cheering, jumped up into the balloons, doing what we could to knock as much rain off as possible.

One last launch. Cheers and cries of encouragement. “Go, Jason!” “Fly away!” And fly away he did, finally rising above us, floating away over downtown Seattle, to wherever Jason goes during these long winter months.

And so Jason Webley has died. Until next spring and his rebirth…we’ll all miss you.

“Goodbye forever, once again…”

Update: More Webley links…

His website
The Yahoo! Jason Webley Forum
Seattle Times: ‘Happy Death Day’ with Jason Webley
The Stranger: Jason’s Dead
Karen Olsen’s review: Wings and Strings on the Heart (Or, It’s Midnight, and There’s a Puppet Floating in Your Office Window!)
The texts to all three “boy with a heart…” stories are now posted on Jason’s website.
Mike at Whybark.com’s Jason Webley Interviews:
1. Interview one: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
2. Interview two: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.
Mike at Whybark.com’s Jason Webley concert .mp3s
Habits of Waste: Jason Webley: A Man with an Accordion
From last year’s Halloween show: Waiting for the show to start