Pasta nights of 1999

09 February 1999

posted: 24 January, 2012 00:11

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I actually thought I would have more flyers from other promoters here, when digging through these piles of 13-year old US letter-sized sheets.  Most of them are shows that I organised myself, or with Dan or Doug, which makes sense cause I would have Xeroxed these myself and had some left over.

Pasta Nights!  This was an idea Ailecia and I had to organise at REA Coffeehouse, which is the first place I ever set up shows.  It's kinda funny actually that I started booking shows at an all-women's college, but Ailecia was able to grease the bureaucracy and things were good for a few months.

The premise of pasta nights was that would could only charge $1 and cook a ton of cheap pasta and then provide people with free food, and only two bands, which would showcase new and local talent.  The idea was new and it was a (relative) hit.  This is the first flyer I made, to advertise all of them.  Note my phone number, which is on almost every single one of these - pretty crazy that I would plaster it all over town, and even crazier to think that someone would call for info (it happened once or twice).  Also note my wonderfully succint University web address!  Archive.org unfortunately only has a few snapshots of this page, but none from February 1999 when this was made.  (The earliest we can get is October).

To be completely serious, I think the pasta nights were the only shows I ever set up that had some spirit which still remains in what I do now at Ptarmigan, Tiib, etc.  It wasn't a big deal to have local bands and free food, but it was social and easy, and certainly a predecessor to all of the sushi-based events we did in Helsinki Ptarmigan at Nilsiänkatu.

I doubt anyone remembers these shows now, but preparing pasta in such bulk amounts every two weeks left me with a real aversion to the stuff which remains to this day.  I also think that Ailecia got some flack about my involvement since I was not a student at Chatham.

I doubt there are still shows in REA coffeehouse - I don't know as I haven't lived in Pittsburgh in years, but I think they had stopped before I left- which is a real shame, as it should be a legendary place in PIttsburgh's musical history.

If you have any information to add about this archival item, feel free to get in touch.