News/posts

I organised this show for Daevid Allen of Gong and Soft Machine, who was touring in a new project that was pretty lively –– much in the spirit of chaotic psychedelic that made the best Gong records so great, and doing a few of his old hits, but also improvisatory, spacey, and built around Allen's personality.

The high (for the time) ticket price was no doubt needed to cover the...

My flatmate in 1998-99, Dan, set up a lot of shows and I helped sometimes. This was another where he did all of the organising and I just helped at the door or somewhere else (the primarily heavy/hardcore lineup indicates it wasn't something I would have booked on my own). It's at a very forgotten bar called Pluto's that I guess were into doing all ages shows,which was...

I made this flyer, for my band was playing, though Manny booked the show. That's you you get my terrible 1997 design style of all-lowercase mixing of serif/sans-serif fonts with Manny's phone number.

I'm a bit shocked that this was a full 11 months after we played with <a href="https://johnw.fail/crumbles/renderers-pineal-ventana-blazing-bulkheads-meisha">The...

This is a pretty formative concert experience of my teenage years, so I'm thrilled to have the poster still.

I got into Chisel, and I mean way into Chisel, like 'favourite band'-level into them, just before this show was announced. They had played in Pittsburgh a few months prior, as the opening act for I think Superchunk, at a concert I did not attend, but my friend did....

I think this one of the first shows i set up entirely on my own, as by living with Dan people had our number and would call up and ask if we could help, and send cassette demos through the post. 1998 - it's ancient history now.

Because my friend was a student at Chatham and very involved in the student programming there, she was able to set up shows in her name that I could organise, which...

My terrible design, including the bizarre idea to have an 11x17" sized concert poster in landscape mode.

I think the lineup for the first ADD Fest was constantly changing, but this is probably more accurate than the first version. Actually I have a vague memory that my own band Land played at this, though before I was in it -- I think Luke played solo and that was maybe technically the...

I cringe a bit at the name 'ADD Fest', which is neither sensitive towards sufferers of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, nor is it even the correct acronym (it was renamed in 1987, long before this). But for a few years I was forever associated with this annual local 'fest', and if anyone in Pittsburgh remembers me at all, it may be for this over anything else I was part...

Part of the Mellon Jazz Festival, which used to have one or two interesting avant-leaning concerts in an otherwise bland programme. I missed Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton, and I'm not sure why I did.

Not a lot is coming to my mind about this except that the Rodef Shalom Temple was a really lovely venue, and as a gentile I have actually been inside temples very few times in my life....

Here's an all-time weird vibe concert, one I remember parts of vividly and other parts of not at all.

I don't remember how many times Manny booked a mini-festival and called it 'Indie Fest' but this was surely the peak era for me to be excited about it; 17 years old and just out of high school and excited to go to as many shows as possible on that summer, the first taste of...

I also think I organised this, or maybe Chris Strunk did, or maybe we did together as he was longtime friends with An Oxygen Auction, a very weird free noise post-hardcore group that seems to be forgotten by history. They were great - dirgy, and pounding, and inventive, with some sort of electric fencing turned into an instrument. I don't remember Bad Blood at all, but the Control Group...

I organised this show for Pelt, a fairly unusual type of artist for the Mr. Roboto Project. At the time I was fanatic about the Pelt CDs on VHF (and still am) so having them play in Pittsburgh, with my own band and my friends opening up, was a thrill. A designer friend named Steve Cypher contributed this beautiful design, which was printed on a mustard-coloured paper. Can't remember much...

Alternate poster design, which I think came sooner, because I remember the Positive Ensemble were supposed to play. This was a group of kids that called us up from Goleta, CA and explained that they were putting 11 people in a van and driving around American all summer to spread positivity. They didn't play any music, but they would jump around and try to make people happy and they had...

i feel like such an amateur historian doing this - documenting a slice of the Pittsburgh independent music scene from 13 years ago - and the one thing that is "complete" about this poster archive would be for the shows at the Stevenson Theatre, a short-lived venue in East Liberty that I had a hand in running. I have every poster from every Stevenson Theatre event that Doug Mousrak and...

Another Elephant 6 related concert - I'm going to get all of these out of the way. This tour came through before either band had really hit; I think Elf Power just had a 7" out, and Of Montreal were something I had only heard of. Both would later go on to modest success, particularly Of Montreal who managed to separate themselves from the E6-identification and probably still put out...

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.

I also financed the 53rd State CD which came out this night; not sure why it says the "real" CD...