Announcement
It's time for another belly dance gig on the street on East Carson, for the Blue Light District night. Once again we'll have excellent dancers working in traditional, tribal, and modern dance idioms, and I'll be playing variations on the percussion-heavy guitar/uke/PowerBook improvisations. I may even have found a way to reduce the distortion out of the little Pignose amp, but I'm of two minds about this--if I went cleaner, I might lose that nifty Konono No. 1 vibe. In any case, check it out.

Thursday, August 18, 7-8 PM. 1102 East Carson Street, South Side.

Report
This was another fun one--as with the Co-op show, we brought the baby along to show off, as this would be an outside show with my control over the PA.

As prep, I'd reconfigured the percussion tracks, adding some more "modern" patterns, and also spreading the patterns over three channels, so that I could play up to three simultaneously. The result is a constant rhythmic flow, without the jarring transitions that have been bothering me. I have to offset the sample quantization from one bar to a half bar, though, so that I can get more complex interaction between parts. Works nicely, although when I want to start my own recordings right on the bar line, I have to remember to change it back.

As with the last gig on the street, we had two dancers, and this time they added zils to the arrangement, which I quite liked--I like the sound of them, and they fit very well into the percussion arrangement. I played some things I liked, though perhaps the real advance on this one was the constancy provided by the offset rhythm patterns. I saw an old tourmate across the street, and felt oddly disoriented when it turned out not to be him. A few photos were taken of the dancers (and me with them; my appearance in them will be chalked up to new-parent tiredness). Our friend Mary Ellen dropped by, and we followed up the show with an early social night out with the boy.