THIS SUNDAY: Bringing the noise

Just a reminder: You have plans this Sunday night in Georgetown.

The Electric Possible's organizer Jeff Bagato tags these events a "mad monthly laboratory for Promethean sound experiments" and that seems accurate.

But this weekend's event is crucial:

Your intangible narrator is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT project, which began in a tiny apartment on 16th Street in 1988, with only a guitar, some aluminum ducts, a toy drum-kit, an open-reel tape machine, and a plastic Casio sampler. The equipment has changed since then, but the mission is still, simply, to build a hypnotic swirl of improvised music, and to have insane fun while doing it.

After several relocations across the country, the INFANT is back home and making hypno-surrealist noise in DC again, using a mix of electronics, weird acoustics, and whatever else I can find...

Also up is VIOLET, who's approach to drone and noise-music has been legendary in the DC area (and elsewhere, via overseas tours) for decades. And FIELD SHAMAN creates vast carpets of ambient soundscapes, using voice, cello, guitar, and ??? -- All highly recommended.

Details on the when-and-what on the flyer above. Click it for a higher-resolution version. And I'll see you at the 'Possible.

BSI to be reborn on June 1

I was active in the DC experimental music scene in the mid to late '80s: Played a bunch of shows at venues that no longer exist (DC Space, BBQ Iguana) and a few that DO still exist (DC Arts Center, Takoma Park planetarium, WMUC, the Alternatives Festival in Dupont Circle). It was a vibrant and creative time for local noise bands and avant garde improvisers.

After moving to upstate NY, live performances dwindled (Syracuse isn't much of a "psychedelic noise" town), so I retreated to the home studio. I played just one show during that period: a collaborative effort with NYC's Changes to Blind, at the Last Exit in Troy, NY (another great venue lost to history). Moved to Tucson, and by 2001, all music had stopped. Even coming back to DC didn't break the inertia.

Fast-forward to 2008.

An epiphany struck: The first cassette I did as Blue Sausage Infant (Trance Warfare) was born in the winter of 1988. Jesus, that's...twenty years, innit? Suddenly, the prospect of BSI having a 20th anniversary seemed profound enough to kick up the noise once again.

It's evolving every day, but the new sound of BSI is louder and stranger; more disorienting, blissful, self-indulgent, and FUN than it ever was before. This is music for swaying on the floor like an idiot while drooling on your shoes and letting your pupils dilate until they swallow the room in a pool of sticky black shadows. And that's before the fleet of jellied owls begin vomiting fire into the air and making tiny constellations and galaxies with the burning embers.... dig?

Dig!

Anyway: The rebirth will be June 1st at The Electric Possible, which is a monthly series of experimental music events at George Washington University. El Possible has been going on consistently for five years already, on the first Sunday of each month. See the poster above for show details (click the dirty space koala for magnification).

Also on the bill is Violet, who has been a comrade of BSI since the early days. In fact he's the only one from that circle who's been making music all this time. The Violet sound can be lo-fi loops and drones, or blistering walls of distorted noise...but always very satisfying. I haven't seen Field Shaman yet, but what evidence I've heard online is very promising. This could be a new Golden Age for DC experimental music.

So be brave. Descend into the bowels of Georgetown on Sunday, June 1st. The consciousness expansion begins at 8pm sharp.

There. Shameless self-promotion now concludes. Samples of older, less relevant BSI can be found here.

Aint I no fortunate one?

And so it came to pass:

Suddenly unemployed due to a freak decision on the part of the Purchasing Company (hereafter known as Caesar), and facing a day of fruitless job-searches (being the holiday week after Xmas), it seemed the only thing to do was have a walk. A nice long walk.

It's one of my greatest pleasures, since returning to DC from a spell in Maine and Arizona... You really learn to appreciate the walking appeal of of city streets. Suburbs can't give you the same experience...there's always something (or someone) bizarre to see. A long city walk allows one to blow out the mental cobwebs. Chatter to onesself like a deranged boob. Make passers-by completely insane with fear.

There were many cobwebs to clear out this time. The internal dialog was hypnotic:

(my interviews with Company X have gone well... or I THINK they've gone well... it would be nice if they just took the bait and HIRED ME...but nothing is final until The Handshake... assume the worst... and what about the house payments? we wanted to fix up the back yard.... install a fence for the puppy.... jeezus CHRIST, we wanted to get a DOG in the spring... dogs gotta EAT... how the hell are we gonna PAY for that... There's also the resume I sent to Company Y, but I'd really prefer Company X... DC has more opportunities than Bangor or Tucson, but this isn't exactly a Magazine Design Mecca... it seems all the design gigs are for godforsaken cheap-shit marketing agencies; sweat-shops that transform good designers into feral, suicidal beasts within 90 days... dammit..... Oh wow, that's the Pakistani Embassy, isn't it... where the hell am I?)

In my delirium, I had wandered from Irving Street & Georgia Avenue through Columbia Heights to Woodley Park, down Connecticut Ave and 23rd Street and through a posh collection of foreign embassies, across M Street to the stinking heart of Georgetown, up Wisconsin Ave, back down to M and over towards Dupont Circle (because escaping Georgetown was an urgent thing), across to Adams Morgan, to U Street, and finally hopping the 7th Street bus back home. The map tells me it was about 8 miles of walking, but seemed longer. Georgetown will do that to any sensible human.

White Devils in Lacoste shirts lurk there, in Georgetown, worshipped by little tribes of Credit Cards from Daddy...it is a terrible place.

While on M Street, I was taken by the sight of Mrs. Dee's Psychic Reading shop and was compelled to photograph it (see above). There was something about the sign: the simplified anatomy of the palm-reader's craft. Lines of a hand. I couldn't give a squat about no.3 (health), no.5 (children), or even no.6 (life), but 7-9 (future, business, jobs) made me laugh... it was the melancholy, woe-is-me laugh of the hapless fool: "future, business, jobs"...Wouldn't that be nice.

I figured I'd drown my sorrows at Crooked Beat Records in Adams Morgan. There, maybe, I could find solace in the financial waste of buying records. Good vinyl. Real records. Some folks stuff themselves with chocolate when faced with calamity. Others buy records.

When plummeting to one's death from a plane with a faulty parachute, why not go down singing?

Then, as I trudged up 18th street, the cell-phone beeped, and on the other end was a verbal offer from Company X. They agreed to my terms and all wishes were granted. Just like that. Well Jumping Jiminy Cheesecake, maybe that palm-reading sign at Mrs. Dee's was trying to say something...

Screw melancholy, now we have a REAL reason to go record-shopping.