Showing posts with label 1997. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1997. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

archives: Players Choices #3 & 4: Opus23 & Dr. Oblivious

As we continue our collection of favorites from the top players choices.. we move on to the number 3 & 4 positions.. and CURRENTLY at this time, they are a CLOSE race!!.

Players Choice #3
for Opus23

session #27
February 18, 1994, KUCI FM, Irvine, CA

http://www.archive.org/details/instagon1994-02-18.flac16

Opus23 (aka Justin Cline) was one of the early conspirators involved with the expanding the Instagon project into the hands of reality. He was involved with the planning and booking of the first live public performance.  Currently Opus rides the #3 position of those that have played the most with the Deamon.. having appeared in 69 separate documented sessions.. and probably some that are not documented. He was a major player in the early days of the project and the many wild and crazy "conceptual" performances that Instagon did in those first 3 years were due directly to Opus' influence on the Deamon. He has not appeared with Instagon since Eugene Noise Fest in 2007.  He currently lives in Seattle,WA with his wife and child and runs a wonderfully successful Ice Cream parlor called "Full Tilt Ice Cream".  When contacted and asked about what his choice for his most memorable adventure with Instagon ..he choice a show from the early days that has become known to the initiated frequencies as "NIRVANA".
  During those first few years of Instagon we were very lucky to meet and befriend a local OC collage radio DJ named Brian MacDonald (who also happens to live in Seattle now). Brian was hosting a 3 hour late night weekly show called "%$#&YER&*%TV" (Yer TV)..it happened on Friday nights from 2am to 5am.. it was live...and it was pretty much anything goes. Brian was open to having live sound artists come and do odd sounding weird stuff on his radio show.. and when we found out about it.. well, it seemed like a match made by destiny!
Instagon made 4 separate appearances on Brian's show and he pretty much handed over the show to us and let us freak out in the studios and halls for KUCI, with as many people as we wanted, for the entire time the show was on air for each of the times it happened...it was RADIO CHAOS.. and we enjoyed the hell out of it.. it was one of those experiences that helped to establish the "no boundaries" attitude that Instagon developed as a growing Audio Deamon.   Session #27 (aka Nirvana) was a live on air performance over the FM airwaves of KUCI at the University of Irvine in Irvine,CA. It was the 4th and final appearance of instagon on Brian's show. It lasted 2hours and 40mins and was epic.. This recording is sometimes hard to listen to.. but its also really amazing the things we did for fun in 1994.. boys up late at night.. with radio waves to entertain an audience that may or may not even be there.  As we were loading in for this show around midnight.. we heard drumming coming from across the college campus.. and upon further investigation found 5 guys playing big Japanese style Taiko drums.. so we asked them to join us on the radio and they agreed.  So this session now had 5 drummers, Lob, Opus, and also the late Rev. Andy Warthog, Wm Rage (BlueSabbathBlackCheer), Daniel Bremmer, Dan Young, Christoher Bradbury (aka Xtopher Robin) (who also now lives in Seattle.. what is this a conspiracy??), & Brian MacDonald...and we were chaos incarnated over the air for hours. Towards the later part of the session.. there was a moment of vocal interplay between Lob & WmRage.. and one of them said the word "Nirvana".. and this led into a frenzy of sillyness surrounding Nirvana..
and making fun of the band, the members, in a very very childish way and it was very fun and infectious.. by the end of the night we were all screaming and yelling "Nirvana" like it was some crazy drug.. we left the studio and defaced the office, hallways, & elevator at KUCI with black markers.. leaving the Instagon symbol, the number 23, psychick crosses, the word Nirvana.. and Opus even signed it.
It was not a very nice thing to do..but it WAS loads of fun.. and the following Monday we were called and told we had to come back to the college and clean up our mess.  I asked a photographer friend, Alexis Grimler, to join us and she documented some great photos of our chaos and shenanigans.  At least one of these photos appeared inside the debut CD by Instagon later that year.. and the title of that CD was also taken from this "clean up" session....While we were cleaning up our tagging.. a well dress woman walked by and stopped to look at us.. we asked her what she thought of our art?  she replied.. in a slight English accent that "It was the most creative thing she had ever seen.."
So.. this session..has TONS of history and story behind it..  Rage & Lob still joke about the "Nirvana Incident" occasionally to this day..  and the track "Nirvana" itself later appeared on the "THIS IS INSTAGON" collection released later in 1997 on cassette.  This recording is the ENTIRE performance as captured AT the station to cassette using their equipment...the tapes were transferred to large audio files and all of the titles, EXCEPT for "Nirvana" were created for this digital remastering in 2011 for this etree posting to make it easier to explore.
[All photos from session #27 by Alexis Grimler-Donato]




Players Choice #4
for Dr. Oblivious

Session #136
February 2, 1997
The Chameleon, San Francisco,CA
http://www.archive.org/details/instagon1997-02-02.flac16


Dr. Oblivious (aka Alan Urbany) is right behind Opus in regards to the number of sessions he has played since his first appearance in 1995..which is currently 68 sessions. But he has played as recently as 2010 and is scheduled for an appearance later this year... so his numbers are likely to change before the end of the universe (towards the end of next year supposedly...).  Dr. O was a gift given to Thee Instagon Foundation by the late Reverend Andy Warthog (RIP) and to this day, continues to be one of his greatest gifts every given to the Deamon's cause. Dr. O is very much a part of the "NOISE" personality of the Deamon Instagon.. and this too adds to his race with Opus..as they are both probably the players with the most "noise" involved Instagon shows as their accumulated appearances. Dr. O was also one of the FIRST RESPONDERS and so his FIRST choice was a show that was already previously posted..this is his 2ND choice we have taken for his Player Choice pick.
Session #136 happened at a bar in the mission district of San Francisco called The Chameleon, it has closed long ago. This was a late afternoon session..Lob & Dr.O were on Instagon's first Tour or Northern California and playing shows with people from the cities they stopped.  This was Instagon's first public appearance in the San Francisco Bay area. For this session we enjoyed the company of Crow Mayhem, of the band GALAXY CHAMBER, (who was an old friend from OC), also Wm.Rage (BlueSabbathBlackCheer), Gravity Goldberg ..who attempted jumping rope with a live mic cord during the appearance.. and who also played accordion.
This was Gravity's ONLY appearance with Instagon, although she was a very close friend to the original crew and still remains a good acquaintance to this day.  This show also happened to fall on the 4th birthday of the deamon Instagon.. it being the 4 year anniversary of the first ritual in Fullerton,CA.  This show was attended by many friends from the bay area from 23rd Current and TOPY circles. The session was just under 40 minutes long.. it consisted of 3 improvisational drone based sound sculptures..2 of which were named by members of the audience upon request and these requests can be heard on the recordings.  This was Dr. Oblivious' 2nd choice from the year 1997, so it seems that was probably a good year for noise. These recordings are the best available using the equipment that was on hand to capture and document the event.
[session #136 photos taken by Unknown person]
-/\-


Friday, August 12, 2011

FIRST RESPONDER'S CHOICE SHOWS

so, as mentioned in the previous blog we have begun a new archive for live shows.. the question was put forth to the fans of our facebook profile for what Instagon performances would they like to have first available.. ..the first 3 responses have been posted, and we would like to give a little back ground on those shows here.

The first three shows that were requested (in order) are:
session #568 - 4-30-2011 @ Poo Frog Ranch, Clipper Mills,CA (requested by Matt Conklin, Sacramento,CA)

session #76 -  3-25-1995 @ Club Sin-a-Matic, Hollywood,CA (requested by Sharon444, North Hollywood,CA)

session #141  - 5-2-1997 @ Impala Cafe, Los Angeles,CA (requested by Dr. Oblivious, Phoenix,AZ)

Poo Frog Ranch
http://www.archive.org/details/instagon2011-04-30.flac16
Show #568 was late at night.. Instagon played the headliner spot of the Saturday night in the 2 day musical event that happened over May Day weekend at the Poo Frog Ranch.   PFR is a place in the mountains outside of Marysville,CA...sorta between Marysville & Grass Valley somehow...They have a nice big piece of land & have built a very cool stage to invite bands to appear on.  Because we played last on Saturday night...and there were issues during the early part of the show with time scheduling.. we played really really late at night.. and it was rather cold for those left in the crowd to hear us...many had already retired to their sleeping bags to await the warmth of the sun.  This was a large ensemble with 2 drummers  (Mark from GJA, & Moe from Set Theory), 4 guitars (Chad from GJA, John Keeling, Stephen Elliot, & Gary Piazza from Redding) and a trumpet! (Nicole from Upwords Movement) ..it was really great to see Gary.. we met him a few years ago when he toured with Greg Ginn's band...the last time he had played with Instagon was for show #500.  We started the set very psychedelic by flowing out of the Invokation into a cool version of Dripfall..  the recording really features the trumpet.. as it was turned up a little louder than everything else it seems.  Over all its a pretty smokin' performance. The stand out track for me on this is the version of "The Sound of The Night" which just tore it up, features lyrics (rare) and Gary Piazza's opening guitar work is outstanding.  (great choice Matt!)


SIN-A-MATIC
http://www.archive.org/details/instagon1995-03-25.flac16
session #76 is probably one of THEE most unique shows and recordings of Instagon..which is saying a lot actually..i mean we ARE talking about Instagon.  This show is a dance show.. a techno dance show.. 40 mins of blistering beats pumped by DJ OSST and pounded on by tribal drums and guitar assaults...it was at a really popular industrial dance club in Hollywood at the time and it was PACKED!  there were probably 300-400 people there that night to boogie to the deamon grooves.  Tribal drums were provided by Sharon 444 and members of the Drums of Pangia, and the guitar work was from Opus23 and the late Rev. Andy Warthog.   This show also featured a dancer girl in a bikini wearing a Nixon halloween mask (Gretchen Del Villa, who has also passed away since then) .. it was a visual and sonic spectacle....we are lucky to have this soundboard recording.. if only personal video was happening in 1995!  This one is like NOTHING else you will hear in the entire Instagon archive.. we promise..
(thanks to Sharon for the request)
IMPALA CAFE 5-2-97
http://www.archive.org/details/instagon1997-05-02.flac16session #141 this is a noise show.. its not a great recording.. but its all the documentation that we have.  Instagon played a number of really great noise and live sound art collage type shows at the Impala Cafe during the time it was open.  Dr. Oblivious is a toy collector.. and so for this show we let him bring toys.. he brought a zube tube, and other fun weird little wind up and electronic noise making toys.  This show also features the only appearance with Instagon of local Orange County filmmaker and straight edge music enthusiast, Evan Jacobs.   (Evan returned the favor later by including a short interview with Lob in one of his films on OC hardcore music!).  This show has some really sharp moments of feedback and super heavy sonic drones laid down by this trio.   An odd choice.. but not so odd when you think about it coming from Dr. O.   (thanks for the pick!)

so these are the first 3 shows, as requested by the Facebook fans of Instagon.
they are now available for free download and streaming..

the next group of shows that are going to be posted will be the PLAYERS CHOICE picks.. and we will ask the 10 individuals who have played in the most Instagon shows over the years what their picks are..  first up Cary Pealer.. next Chad E. Williams.. followed by Opus23..  stay tuned in .. more great moments in the archives are coming soon.   -/\-