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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...

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

Maybe I've said that before.  I went to this show the summer between 11th and 12th grade, excited to see Butterglory.  My friend Amy had dubbed me Are You Building a Temple in Heaven? and it's twee-ish indierock harmonies rocked my world.  Karl Hendricks Trio were about all I knew of "local music" at the...

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.

I remember the Ottobar being a fairly cool place and that...

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...

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...

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.

Most of my high school years I dreamed of being able to...

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...

I seem to have saved a large concentration of posters from 1997 and 1999 especially right after I started University which was September '97.  I think at the time I was affixing these to the wall of my bedroom to make a tapestry of musical memories.

Run On played at CMU in the spring of '97, I think around May.  I remember this being one of the best bands I had ever seen -...

Some experiences really stay with you.  This show happened almost fifteen years ago but I remember a lot about it; it's got a pretty high place in the "formative shows" list for me.  This was officially the local record release party for the Storm and Stress album on Touch and Go.  i never heard Storm & Stress before - I just knew they were the new band by one...

This was a show that I set up, which I apparently titled in a series called 'The New Breed'.  I think I grabbed that from an Impulse records compilation LP I found (a pretty good one with Archie Shepp and Grachan Moncur III on it), attempting to brand shows i promoted.  It's funny cause in Pittsburgh in the late 90s, no one did that, whereas my experiences in Europe are...

This was a night to remember, forever.  A year and a half after I saw Neutral Milk Hotel play the Beehive, they came back to Pittsburgh, only this time they were my favourite band.  Ever.  I mean, they aren't my favourite band ever now, but I think it's safe to say that my passion for this music at this time was greater than I've ever felt about a recording artist -...

I don't remember a whole lot about this one either, another CMU show.  Run On had broken up at this point but Sue and RIck were touring together, not doing a Fish & Roses reunion but playing separately.  Les Batteries I believe was originally a project that featured Charles Hayward instead of Rick Brown, though I didn't know this at the time.  All I remember about it...

The Pittsburgh Sound was a project organised by John Roman of Microwaves/The 1985 fame, which was modeled after a thing in Chicago called The Chicago Sound, which I think Weasel Walter started and looked to franchise.  The Pittsburgh Sound was about 10 people who would play along to a mix CD of carefullly curated classic rock songs, which was played back through the monitors for us to...

Luke made these posters which we mailed to all of the people promoting the different shows across the UK.  I liked how he did this - it certainly fit in with the aesthetic of the old tape reels and low-budget yet distinctly 1960s/70s feel that we were going for.  You can see this particularly in his artwork for the LP we never put out.  Scanned 25 July 2010.

Intro to Pterodactyl (which was myself + Caleb Waldorf ALWAYS, and then usually with Rob Dingman and sometimes Pat Crawford) only actually performed once, on December 27, 2003, at the Horrible Room in Lexington, KY.  Here was our "setlist", which was really a more formal set of instructions + lyrics as we attempted to reconstruct some of the music we recorded on our...