A lot of these Stevenson Theater posters have more than one version, sometimes with different information, suggesting we jumped the gun a bit on making them.  I have no idea why we put black militants on this one; I think Doug made these as they are too well-done to be my own work.

If one thing is complete about this scattered 'archive' of Pittsburgh indie music posters, it's the ones from shows I booked myself at the Stevenson Theater in Shadyside/East Liberty.  Doug Mosurak and I booked a bunch of things together during our brief partnership of 1999 and because we made the posters ourselves, I had a lot left over so I'm pretty sure they are complete.

This is the one that blew it wide open for me.

This show actually took place in Baltimore. Dan, who I was living with at the time, was a big Six Finger Satellite fan and also loved Moss Icon, who I was just getting into.  He found out somehow (as I don't think the Internet was involved) that Tonie Joy's new band The Convocation Of were playing, so we drove down to it.

The first real Land show with me in it.  I guess we were insisting on a lowercase L then, and the full stop/period at the end.  EAR was a mess of circuit-bent speak and spells; Sonic Boom dug our messy set and wrote down his address for us to send him stuff, but I couldn't read his writing.  He smelled like a walking pot plant.  Land was a trio that night, or maybe a bassist.  I have no memory of Bobby Conn's set.  The Johnsons were probably great.

The first pasta night was a hit; it was the first (or second?) show for the Saint Syndicate, a short-lived Pittsburgh band that was heavy on the organ, and boasted a strong influence of mod 60's pop.  They were fronted by an artist who later moved to NYC and was tragically murdered, and I don't think the few recordings they made ever surfaced.  A friend from high school was playing bass in the band, though we weren't friends anymore by this time, and I'm not entirely sure if he was still in the lineup then.

I started going to see independent/"underground" music at a very early age - I somehow convinced my parents to drive me to CMU in 1993 to see a couple of shows; even though i had to leave before the final acts, I'm pretty sure I saw Guided by Voices on the Vampire on Titus tour, though I don't remember anything of it.

It's astounding how many of these posters are from 1999 - I don't know how I managed to work and study at the same time. I think this one was the pinnacle of my concert-organising work in Pittsburgh, and I'm amazed that it was 1999, as I swore this happened in 2000.  Despite all of the indie rock and post-hardcore shows I was organising, I was playing minimalist/experimental music myself in Land, and my main interest was in drone, psychedelia and outer sounds.

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.