as the world burns

As the Vernal Equinox flings us willy-nilly into another Rebirth, our Hearts full to bursting with the Mystery, Power and Beauty of our Earthly Mother’s Bounty, we pause a moment to consider the average mpg of Humvees and how this might be related to fluctuations in the latest style of miniskirt or the health of the President’s bowels.

On another subject, be sure to read down to the April 6 listing below. You’ll be horribly excited.

Wednesday, March 30, Bickett Gallery: Tom Whitelock and Crowmeat Bob.
This will be something like two Lacanian neurotics attempting to schizoanalyze each other through a complex system of fragmentary aural semaphors. Dasein was never so thrown.
Or, as de Selby might have said, “Pataphysician, heal thyself.”
Mixed, intertextual, metasophical references aside — Tom plays guitars. Bob plays alto sax, bass clarinet and guitars. Wilhelm Reich plays weather control machine.

Thursday, March 31, Kings Barcade: Kolyma with Pyramid.
Kolyma is an Engine of Destruction, a Doomsday Device for the Leisure Class. Michael Leroy Isenberg plays drums, Jennifer Thomas plays vocal chords, guitar and brake drums, Russ DeSena plays bass and voke chords, Crowmeat Bob plays alto sax, guitar and vokes. (http://www.myspace.com/kolyma)
Pyramid is awash with dreamy dread. (sidewalkexplosion.com)

Wednesday, April 6, Bickett Gallery, 9:30 pm sharp, $3: BE THERE.
A whole slew of great out-of-town musicians will be coming through and I will be mortified when nobody shows up for this. They really deserve a lot more than 3 bucks so give what you can.
There will be three sets, starting at 9:30.
The first two sets will consist of formations from these four individuals (you will not regret being on time for this):
Audrey Chen (Baltimore) — cello, voice http://www.highzero.org/2004_site/the_musicians/index.html#chen
Tatsuya Nakatani (NYC) — percussion http://www.hhproduction.org/TATSUYA_NAKATANI_WORKS.html
Jack Wright (Easton, PA) — reeds
http://www.springgardenmusic.com/jackbio.html (see also his bio below)
Ben Wright (New Mexico) — double bass, brass, saw (see his bio below)

The third set will be these folks (along with whomsoever from the first group feels like playing):
Michael Thomas Jackson (Winston-Salem) — clarinets, found objects
http://www.microearth.com/jackson/
Ian Davis (Chapel Hill) — percussion
http://umbrellarecordings.com/
Morgan Kraft (Marshall, NC) — guitar
http://www.microearth.com/morgankraft/
Dave Menestres (Greensboro) — double bass
Crowmeat Bob (Raleigh) — reeds, guitar, trombone

Y’r Ob’d'nt S’v'nt, etc.,
The Ventriloquizer DL

there being nowhere else to turn

I awoke the next morning to the sound of muffled shouts. From my location it was impossible to divine their implication — whether they were of a celebratory nature or the cries of an angry mob. The carnival had pulled up stakes and pushed westward the day before; it was unlikely they had returned.
The general sense of unease and the inexplicable behaviors I had witnessed since arriving in this place two days previous had put me in a state of — not quite panic — but a vague sort of alarm. It was as though the claustrophobic cobblestone streets and gray, imposing buildings were designed from their inception to cast a suggestively flickering glow on heretofore obscured recesses of the mind. All of the shadows in this town had a furtive life.
The inscrutable cries were growing nearer.
I decided I had best move on without investigating, fear being my deciding factor. But when I left the inn, the street was unfamiliar. The crowded buildings prevented my getting my bearings by the sun, and the labyrinthine design of these oblique streets and alleys made it exceedingly difficult to determine a path out of town.
And the direction from which the cries emanated was equally indistinguishable — I could only tell that they still seemed to be closing in. It was obvious now that it was a large crowd of revelers, a real mob of singular mind and purpose, however unsavory that purpose may have been.
When they came into sight, I saw that they were wearing masks.

Wednesday, March 23, Bickett Gallery, 10 pm: Esperanto Bat
This formation will be Ethan Clauset (former organizer of the Transmissions Festival, member of Earthworm, former WXYC DJ) on keyboard & electro-effects; John Randall Pelosi (Kismet, The Feraliminal Lycanthropizers, Viroid Stew, Nu-Clear Merkins) on guitar; Marvin Levy on drums & electronic percussion; Crowmeat Bob on guitar.
This will hopefully sound something like DNA meets Elliott Sharp.
See a review of John Randall’s record (now apparently out of print, but you can find it used around here pretty easy):
http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue19/pelosi01.html

Wednesday, March 30, Bickett Gallery: unconfirmed players

Thursday, March 31, Kings Barcade, probably around 11 pm: Kolyma with Pyramid
Kolyma is Jennifer Thomas on vocals and guitar; Russ DeSena (Table, Night Moose, DeGrassi, author of Penalty Box column in Raleigh Hatchet) on bass and vox; Mike Isenberg (Strange, Olympus Mons, Viroid Stew, The Numen, Prima Facie Evil, Artificial Inseminary School) on drums; Crowmeat Bob on guitar, alto sax and vokes. We rock louder and harder than your favorite band. Unless your favorite band’s Slayer. Or Earth. If your favorite band is Earth, I will bow down to you.
Pyramid is an original sort of mellow noisy psych indie country band with reeds and cello and guitars and drums and stuff. (sidewalkexplosion.com) They’ve got some songs on the All the Real Girls and Undertow soundtracks.

Wednesday, April 6, Bickett Gallery, 9:30, $3: extra special improv night with a bunch of travelling musicians.
We’ll be starting early this night because we’re having three sets. The first two sets will feature Jack Wright from Easton, PA, on saxes (see his bio below) and we will be charging $3 at the door. He will be playing two duets: the first featuring his son, Ben Wright from northern New Mexico, on double bass, saw and brass (see his bio below); the second with the incredible Audrey Chen from Baltimore on voice and cello (http://www.highzero.org/2004_site/the_musicians/index.html#chen).
Then the third set will be our regularly planned death jazz thing with Michael Thomas Jackson from Winston-Salem on clarinet and probably electronics or other objects, David Menestres from Greensboro on double bass, Morgan Kraft from I think Northampton, MA, on guitar (http://www.microearth.com/morgankraft/), Ian Davis from somewhere sorta between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough on percussion and Crowmeat Bob on horns and guitar. And I imagine we’ll ask the other visitors to join us for this set.

–The Ventriloquizer DL

Navigation by magnetism.

True north is dead. The covalence of temporary anomalous zones incites potential crystallized moments of imperfect identity, torn from the flux of differentiated flow.

All events are potentialities in the unfolding of experience. Actualization exists only as a partial memory reconstruction of a multiplicitous event.

The spirit of the hive is a numenal magnetic coalescent navigation device for the splintered soul fragments of those who have Gone Over. If von Frisch had collaborated with mediums, no telling what might have been revealed about the direction of time-flow. Your spirit is time-reversed to your body.

And thus we investigate potential becomings: here and there, now and forever. We dance like the bees.

Tuesday, March 15, Library, Chapel Hill: Mowing Lawns with Boner Machine.
Mowlaw features the songsmithing prowess of one Mike Meyerson, the guitarpicking iniquities of one Todd Emmert, the surgical-precision drumming of one Mike Glass, the motivatin basslines of one Chris Gerard and the inane caterwaul of one Robert Chandler.
Boner Machine claims their moniker is an entirely unintentional intermusical reference — referring neither to the Pixies song nor to the Tom Waits album. Hmmm. They need to get they asses some culture.

Wednesday, March 16, Bickett Gallery, Raleigh: The Numen
I reckon it’ll be Amy Wilkinson on clarinet and percussion, David Morris on tuba, Claire Hollins on violin, Mike Isenberg on home-made percussion, Chris Eubank on cello and Slowfeet Robert on horns and guitar.
Empty Chamber Music.

Wednesday, March 23, Bickett Gallery: Esperanto Bat
John Randall Pelosi on guitar and maybe tenor sax, Ethan Clauset on electro-sample-computer-noise, Crowsfeet Bob on guitar/horns and not sure about the drummer yet. Maybe Marvin Levy.

enough for the time being — being what it might be.

–The Ventriloquizer DL
Resident Transient
Retroactive Dynamics, Inc.

another egregious offense to taste and decency

and thus we crawl, bloody-fingered and on raw bellies, toward the vague flickering light that might prove itself some exit from the dank horror which has become our world.
And Civilization lumbers on in its mechanized course, its far-reaching fatality masquerading as ‘progress’.
The Suicide State, the ghost of Werner von Braun still haunting its corridors of power, perpetuates the dream of a frontier — outer space, life on Mars — as a placebo for the sterile and dead Heaven of ages past that pretended to offer a vague satisfaction to our ravenous appetite for blissful nothingness.
And we are all complicit. At least the republicans don’t try to fight it — they’d rather revel in the certainty of the planet’s demise in an orgy of over-consumption and sucking the very teat of Death. Fuck it all. Perhaps they’re right on some level.
If you can’t beat the shambling, unthinkable, unutterable, monstrous thing that the human race has become, then join it…
On Wednesday nights at Bickett Gallery. 10 pm. Free, aside from the toll it will take on your peace of mind. But who needs sleep, anyway?

Our calendar is patchy right now as I’ve been down sick for the past week.

March 2: Cruelbient
Esotic (aka Dave Zahn) on A/V sample recoding, DJ.exe (aka Rattmouth; Matt Routh) on CDs and vinyl, Brian Donohoe on drums, Crowmeat Bob on horns and guitar.

March 9: TBA

March 16: possibly The Numen
Haven’t made sure everyone’s available yet. If it happens, this would be Carrie Shull on oboe/english horn, Amy Wilkinson on clarinet/percussion, John Heitzenrater on bassoon, Mike Isenberg on percussion, David Morris on tuba, Crowmeat Bob on horns/guitar, and possible others.

yeah. okay.
–Ventilator DL