Announcement
This is the Really Big Show of the summer: performance artist/accordionist/drywall whisperer Stephen Pellegrino is putting on a massive live show around his piece "Calling Mr. Conrad" as part of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Media Tonic 2. Steve will be playing, of course, but there will be other acts as well, since the whole thing's going from 7 to 11:30. I'll be doing at least two sets (one guitar/uke-through-the-laptop, and possibly one all-feedback or all-drone set), if not three or four total, when you count collaborations. There will also be a number of non-'Nyayzar acts, too, elsewhere in the building. (Including, I've just learned, John Doe of X.)

As Mr. Conrad was the Pittsburgh-based developer of commercial radio, there is a radio theme going on--it's station NYZ, broadcasting from the alternate dimension of 'Nyazar. In fact, while the musicians and other performers are in one room, the performances will be broadcast via microradio to radios elsewhere in the building. Pretty slick, huh? But wait, there's more: we'll also be incorporating visual performers, including belly dancers, a radio-only mime, and other diversions.

So mark your calendar and start setting aside your spare change: for this evening of entertainment (including a whole range of non-'Nyayzar stuff going on elsewhere in the building), you'll be ponying up $15. If you only have to spend $15 at the Filmmakers this year, make sure it's this $15 at this event. We'll see you there...on the radio.

477 Melwood Ave, Pittsburgh, 15213 - (412) 681-5449. Map.

Report
This had the makings of a significant show, but a series of negative events tends to wear one down. For an evening show, load-in was oddly early--I met Steve down there at 10:30. I planned to bring my gear later, but for the morning I helped Steve set up the room--arrange tables/chairs, set up a background, test the transmitter, etc. Steve had asked which direction foot traffic would be coming from, so we arranged the performance side of the room to face the door, and allow people to come and go freely. We put down dropcloths as the background, and also mounted one as a backdrop--not bad looking.

I returned home, sat out the hot day, did work, and prepared for the show. For quite a while I've been threatening to do an Earth-inspired drone piece, and put the EH Big Muff Pi distortion in the bag. There were snags, though: ironing my shirt (dress code) made the place as hot as it could possibly be, and as I was heading out to the car, I noticed the shirt was stained. Great. I hadn't been able to make dinner, either, but at least there would be food at the venue for the performers, I'd been told.

Various frustrations of the day had built, and on the trip down I realized what state of mind I had attained. In Zen practice, there's what's known as "beginner's mind." In my case, I had attained what I'll call "blow me mind," the state in which one's first reaction to any bad or even inconvenient news is simply "Blow me." At the Melwood Screening room, I had to park waaay back in the lot and schlep the gear all the way. On the way I ran into Mike Yaklich, who'd be drumming for us, and we commiserated. Turns out we were pretty much in the same frame of mind.

We got our performer badges, and arrived at the installation room to learn that we'd been told to set up...facing in the wrong direction. Most of the foot traffic would be at the entrance immediately behind us, and if people wanted to come in the audience-friendly door, they'd have to go down to the end of the main hallway, take a turn down toward the restrooms, tack back along a rear hallway, and somehow find us. There was no way we were going to have time to break everything down and move it, so we put a map on the door, and hoped that people felt like following it around to the back hallway.

At this point I could either snag some food and a drink, or be a professional and set up my gear, so I opted for professionalism to guarantee that I'd be set up by showtime. When I was done with my setup and went in search of the food tables, though, they were pretty much depleted. The staffers tried to be helpful, directing us to other tables, but those too were depleted. There was, apparently, plenty of beer and wine, but I didn't want to be impaired for our sets. In the end, I scrounged a few vegetables, a small amount of cheese, and a petit four in the hopes that this would be enough to get me through the evening. Indeed, others weren't so lucky.

We didn't start at doors-open time, there being so few people who made the trip around to the back hallway, and we started essentially an hour later, with a bit of an audience. We had yet another musician with us--a young man named Luke, who'd be on guitar. He happened to have his own EH Muff, and was apparently quite open to experimentation. There--that was one good omen. We did some old 'Nyayzar favorites, as well as a couple new pieces of Steve's and it went down well, although we had audience members drifting out moreso than in. Another good omen--the Funkies drifted in and checked out a chunk of the sets.

The plan was to play several sets through the evening in different combinations, so after the first piece I had a bit of a break, and wndered around, checking out the other installations. The food was not replenished anywhere, and there appeared to be no plan to restock.

Back down in the performance room, it was soon my set, so I busted out some of the belly dance stuff. I seem to have held people for a while, but most of them moved on--was this the fault of my playing, or was it just the smorgasboard nature of the event? Parts of what I did were pretty good, and Steve jumped in after a while, which was nice. The gradually dwindling audience irritated me, though, and I took out some cumulative frustration by ripping out some more direct, overdriven, less textural modal lines--probably the straightest I've ever played in public.

After some other combinations of players, Steve announced a break, but since I'd just returned from one, I volunteered to do the fuzz drone piece I'd wanted to do, and Luke was willing to join in. I announced notes to him (based on the cycle of fifths), we droned, I grabbed loops for additional texture, and we gradually chased everyone out of the room except for a couple stalwart listeners. It was nice, although unfortunately the recording I made of my signal chain doesn't include Luke's contributions. The next step is to work out more of a structure to this, and do it with the large group.

Things seemed to wind down during the next round of performances, though people were still walking around, and I quickly set up to do another belly dance piece, which was pretty much ignored--what draws them in on the street apparently does little for the Filmmakers audience. After a command performance for Steve's wife Mary, our hungry and grumpy crew broke the gear down and called it a night.