Halloween. Scaaaaary. Last night at Abuelita’s in Topanga Cyn CA, the seasonal ghouls and goblins took the form of ghosts in the machine. No not the xlint latter era Police joint, but instead as glitches running rampant in my pedal board. I spent the first 1/3 of the show crouching over my rig, disconnecting gizmos, reconnoitering the patch cords, bypassing loopers, warily wondering if wah wah weirdness was wild or wrong.
Eventually, I isolated the issues:
1) BOSS OC2 (Octave pedal, for when I play “bass” during Newtron’s excursions into the sonic beyond) crapped out internally
2) Pre/Post fx loop (post preamp send/return to the Boomerang looper) was busted at the input level – not sure if its the cords or the jacks
3) TMC Wah switch was out of wack causing cut outs
4) bridge pickup kept cutting out for a while.
Once I finally got everything working the bugaboos moved over to newtrons pedal board, zapping his looper… then moved over to the PA system which worked for a while then stopped then worked then stopped again.
Since this was a real last minute gig situation, we didn’t really announce it all that much, nor did we rehearse. This was pretty much a “cold reading” of improvisations peppered with a stew of song bits and between song excuses. Certainly not the best show we’ve played, but not the worst either. The highlight for me was a new song Newtron had written, which he showed us how to play right there on stage for the first time. His vision was some kind of country thing, but it ended up sounding more like Exile on Main Street era Stones. That segued into a blip filled loop fest of the 8-bit Pong variety, on into a majestically Sonic Youthian 6/8 fuzz fest with a codetta closing of Destination Imagination.
For those keeping score at home, the “Setlist” would be something sorta like this:
KTF @ Abuelita’s / Topanga CA / Fri Oct 24 2008 11:30pm-2am
Broken Pedalboard Jam >
Destination Imagination >
Broken Pedalboard Jam
Trojan Horse
Newtron’s New Tune >
Sonic Pong At The Gates Of Hades (with Lethur) Jam >
Destination Imagination (Reprise)
The first half really stunk, the last third was exceptional. For the first time out in 3 years or so, I’d say it was great success.
Pat recorded it on his mega bitchin camera so with any luck, you’ll get to see our Suckage & Redemption in HD.