Feed Us A Live Insect

Residency week two in review

The theme for week two of our Pehrspace residency was, in case you missed it, outer space. Mary and Ashley (and Ema on guest vocals) wore sequins; I wore my best attempt at Barbarella fashion, with white pants, white motorcycle jacket, a grey pajama/Star Wars-esque shirt with white piping, and (courtesy of Ema) glitter antennae. Mary hung day-glo planets, stars, and...er...long squiggly spirally things from the ceiling and put up a flourescent black light bulb--which sort of made the planets glow in a feeble sort of way. We also hung up large watercolors of the girl and monster from the "Best Friends In Space" single cover. Wristbands this week were cheap glowstick bracelets.

Billygoat started the night with their magnificent 17-minute animated projection opus, with Nick and David providing dreamy synth-fuzz bass-and glockenspiel live accompaniment. The room was packed for them and utterly quiet throughout the entire show--apparently Sean had trouble finding anyone to watch the door because everyone wanted to watch Billygoat. They very, very sweetly ended their set with a cover of "Best Friends In Space," which utterly demolishes ours, and also medley'd in a few verses of "Sleep the Clock Around" by Belle & Sebastian--all while Mary Monolator performed a sequined slide projector dance! Actually I'd say it was less a Dance than a Sway.

Manhattan Murder Mystery went on next, introduced in slightly rambling fashion by one Karen Centerfold. She mentioned that the band were named after a Woody Allen movie, which apparently is true--for some reason I had it in my mind that they were named after a track on the third Velvet Underground record, which, I now realize, is actually called "The Murder Mystery." This bums me out slightly, but no matter! The MMM were magnificent, and extra cool because of Don of Don's Music on bongos! Even if, as Mouse says, it was a slightly off night for them, it was still one of the best sets I've seen of any band this year...

The Heath Club are old friends from the Mr. T's scene, and I think this might have been the first time I've seen them play outside of Eagle Rock/Highland Park. They played beautifully, and, as Mouse says, 'I will publicly complain on this blog after until "Swim" is recorded.' Except that I DID record it on 4 track on Monday! Does the HC want to hear it? It, uh, sounds like a 4 track recording.

Then it was us, and we played a few more tracks from Rejection (Summertime In My Car, Tiny Bicycles) before moving on to the Tears era. Except that I forgot to call out "Our Tears Have Wings," so we didn't play that one! Idiot! Well, maybe next week. We were very ably assisted by Ema on whistling for "Tiny Bicycles," Ema, Arlene, Jesse, and Jade on background vocals for "Santa Claus Versus Dave Matthews," and David from Billygoat on glockenspiel for our version of "Best Friends In Space." Speaking of the latter song, I'd gotten pretty well sick of playing it for a LONG time, but after putting it away for a while it felt pretty cathartic, especially that last verse. Thanks so much to everyone who stayed to watch!

Finally rounding out the night was 60-Watt Kid, who were pretty astonishing (I think they run their entire band through a Space Echo), except that the guitar player's amp blew up just a few minutes into their set, blowing fuses and taking a lot of Pehrspace's lights out with it in the process. We smelled smoke and wondered if the place was actually on fire--it wasn't, but it kind of threw a wrench into the proceedings. I very much want to see them play another set to get the full effect.

NEXT WEEK: Mr. Andy Bollas joins us on bass, we move on to the "Train" period, and the dictator costumes come back out again...

posted by Eli Monolator @ 11:17 AM