Saturday, April 24, 2004

the cannon art collective is a nonprofit diy space dedicated to promoting art in the local (beavercreek) community, hosting cheap all-ages shows & other community events. the collective that runs the place is full of cool kids, who were very nice & fed us vegetarian chili & beer after the show.

bobby vomit was excited about the fact that beavercreek is apparently close to xenia ohio (the location for the movie gummo) & talked about it quite a bit. cannon is actually located on dayton-xenia road.

so i took 1/2 day yesterday & made the drive to beavercreek with drbmd & bobby vomit in tow. both of them fell asleep at least briefly during the drive up, which seemed pretty lame: i can understand passing out on the drive back, late at night after a lot of drinking. but in the middle of the afternoon on the way to the venue?

anyway, we showed up around 6:30 ohio time. the "soundman" & the first band weren't there yet, but we hung around outside for awhile, chatted briefly with jon (who booked us & organized the show), & waited for things to start.

yes, collapse is a three-piece harsh noise band that jammed out on a large set full of gear: guitars, a few keyboards, & plenty petals. one of them also had an older-style kaoss pad & was curious about my kp2. for some reason all three of them played pretty much the whole set with their backs to the audience. they were fun. unfortunately for them, they had the largest setup but had to go first because they were local.

after yes, collapse's set, we rushed down to the kroger for batteries & snacks (& a quick smoke). i didn't think we took too long, but when we returned omeggga blue was already playing, so i saw maybe 10 mins of his set. what i did catch sounded pretty good: hints of rhythm, synth washes, & other electronic sounds in a not-quite-dance context. i'm not really sure what to say here; the mp3s give you a better idea.

then i had to run out & move my car before bobby v & i could load in our stuff. i played a freeform set that started out with the piece i used for the opening of my set at sumthin' fierce, moved on to spamouflage, & i also worked in a variation of we will iraq you somewhere in the set. sadly, disc 1 on my numarks wasn't cooperating (sometimes disc 1 won't even acknowledge that there's a cd in the drive... i can get it to work sometimes, but i wasn't going to reboot the cd players in the middle of my set), which limited me to one cd player. but i added a radio to the mix, & using that & the kp2 i was able to work around that fairly well. the radio added a couple nice surprises, like a strange xtian program i stumbled across, & an r&b number i remixed (to drbmd's amusement). then i went for the old favorite ending of open as raw. now that i have the kp2 i can build it up to a better crescendo than ever.

no, i didn't get anything recorded because i didn't put in enough prep time to set up a recording.

after me came bobby vomit with a harsh set of turntable noise, and liberal use of the wand (a severed tonearm that he runs over various surfaces for texture noises). very little recognizable sound this time around. i don't know; i've seen bobby vomit play so many times that i don't often know what to say anymore. it was loud. it was bobby vomit. nuff said.

i sold one "combo pack" & bobby sold one "record/art piece". his current "art piece" is several broken records fastened together, with a painting on one side. most of the paintings center around the birth of his daughter but a few don't (mine has a beautiful large skull... someday i need to get some lp frames so i can display all the bobby vomit painted records i've accumulated).

8cylinder was supposed to come down from pittsburgh to play (he was even supposed to bring cutups from wrecked and maybe xanopticon with him), but didn't show up. so the show ended after bobby vomit's set. then we tore down & retreated to the apartment space above the venue, where we ate, hung out with the collective, & eventually passed out.

apparently "dayton has a sound" & that sound is punk/hardcore. poor dayton. we were the first (or one of the first) electronic shows at cannon, which puts on lots of punk/hardcore shows. the place seemed relatively full, although i guess many of them got in free because they were performing or part of the collective. i guess it was a smaller turnout for the venue, but it didn't really feel like it was that small, which is what's important.

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