Dr. Milo T. Pinkerton III's Journal

Whoops, sorry...
...if any of ya'll went out to the House of Shock last night expecting to see us perform. As I noted in my previous post, sickly guitarist Dr. A Rachnid had picked up another bug last weekend and I suppose didn't digest it properly! By Friday he had a 105 degree fever and was close to boiling over like a cauldron. I told him to call me Sunday with an update regarding his condition, which was only marginally improved. We briefly contemplated pushing him out onstage, lashed to a wheeled gurney, but quickly realized that he wouldn't be able to strum very well that way, so we called it off and called it in. They told me it was just as well with the PA problems they were having (I wonder if the HoS staff bothered to tell anybody there why the stage was empty?)

Whew, glad I hadn't already packed up the C.O.G. Aircar. Jeannine and I took the passes I got in return for taping Will Frank's band Friday and went out to see what we could see. She got to catch the tail end of the Bingo show while I parked the car. I returned to the Bingo stage by the end of Quintron's set. We enjoyed the beautiful weather, great food, and the company of friends while watching a horrible punk band on the NooMoon stage. After wandering around a bit and enjoying dessert, I bade Jeannine farewell so she could report to her work (which she was pretty disgruntled that she couldn't get out of at that point) and returned to enjoy Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship on the NooMoon stage (great band with a 20's/Klezmer feel, may have to book a show with them!) and the Morning 40 Federation (great light show & energy) in the Bingo tent. Then it was time for the Butthole Surfers set.

With two full drumsets and multimedia, there was some setup time involved for this show. My friend and ride home Caesar Meadows asked me if I thought maybe they were taking so long because of pre-show jitters. I laughed and explained that I had complete sympathy for them taking 30 minutes to get onstage with such a multimedia spectacle to deploy... and when they finally hit the stage it was well worth it! They had 6 video projectors going for a totally immersive experience - video was projected on a screen directly behind the band, as well as on the tent's own screens at far left and right, plus the tent's two 'Bingo Parlor' banners which were flipped around to provide more white space to project onto. Just to put it over the top, a 6th projector was aimed at the ceiling, which was blue so it didn't show very well. There was virtually no other lighting used. While there was no fire or anything dangerous onstage like Butthole Surfers shows of the past, it was kinetic and visceral, and quite inspirational to me! They refrained from playing their 'hit song' as well - bonus points for that.

This crummy picture from my cel phone really doesn't do the presentation justice.

But they played for nearly two satisfying hours, even throwing out a perfunctory and slightly ironic R.E.M. cover to assuage anyone having second thoughts about seeing them instead of R.E.M., who were presumably rocking the big stage at the time. Gibby Haynes sang through a rack full of effects processors, including a KAOS pad that was strapped to the top, but he got the best action out of manipulating a simple digital delay. Paul Leary played a Fender stratocaster through a Marshall stack. Bassist Jeff Pinkus played Gibson Flying V basses through an Ampeg cab driven by a boutique amp that said 'Honky' on it (which I later learned was the name of his own current band.) The drums in the back were hard to see but one of them was a clear Ludwig Vistalite.

In the projected video imagery, among the usual footage of explosions, meat cutting, surgery, rockets, stars and scientific diagrams I picked out footage from 'Space 1999', 'Dreamscape' and 'Jem & the Holograms' (?) scattered in the visual collage. They were using DVD players to play the footage on two separate tracks, and it wasn't really synchronized to the music at all, but it was endlessly changing and hypnotic.

I need to take a cue from them and take our video content up to another level... which should be quite possible with my planned new approach for backscreen video sequencing. By the time we get back onstage, the visual dimension of the C.O.G. show should be 150% improved. "Now I know what I must do!"

Current Music: hum of my office computers

Advertisement