DEBACLE: failed and disastrous performances

Adam Naworal

​My absolute biggest live fail was Jacksonville Pre-INC 2014. I did a collaboration with Dylan Houser (as Hell Garbage) and maybe Katter / Norse Shit Band. The performance itself was great, with Dylan in harsh mode like early Hell Garbage. I was going for a William Bennett-esque spew of hate, yelling at the hipsters in the audience about how they were phonies and insulting JW (the person who ran the event) by screaming some of his corny catch phrases at him. How did it fail? Well, people actually LIKED it, whereas I was genuinely at a hateful point in my life and wanted to hurt their ears and egos. One hippie girl even hugged me afterwards. I went home disappointed and realized the nastier side of power electronics just wasn't within my skills. The amount of neck veins in the attached photo is absolutely equivalent to the amount of screamed and shouted vitriol that night. Oh well.

Another time I performed with two younger musicians who decided not to research the song we were gonna cover ("Down In The Willow Garden") and who brought different instruments at the last minute. None of us had fun then, and the audience didn't even clap until I told them to go fuck themselves. Oh well again.

Wolfgang Dorninger
Crashed Laptop

I was on the way to Berlin on August 4th 2007. We left late from
Leipzig, but I found enough time to rehearse at a rest stop on the
motorway during a longer break. Rinus van Alebeek, the director of Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival (Small Field Recordings Festival) in Berlin, invited me to perform an evening with Debashis Sinah and Yannick Franck at Club Wendel. We arrived punctually, after a brief meeting was the sound check. The laptop that had played perfectly two hours earlier was dead! I tried every trick I know to get the laptop up and running. Nothing helped. Debashis also performed with laptop, but had an older  version of Ableton Live. So I had no chance to install my backup on his computer. Bad luck!

Fortunately, I had countless CDs with me, with finished pieces based on field recordings, with fragments and very raw field recordings. There were about 20 CDs with material. So I saw a chance not to cancel the  show. I ask Rinus and the club owner if they have access to CD players. At the end I had four CD players and the club's mixing desk to perform. Thanks to the pre fade listening function on the mixing desk I was able to mix with control.

​Debashis Sinah performed awesome and so I was forced to risk something. Instead of a safe DJ set with my field recordings, I decided to perform as risky as possible, but still with the aim to tell a story. The audience was thrilled, which initially irritated me a lot. Back in Linz, I watched the video clip and realized that the chaos evening had gone a lot better than the planned well-rehearsed set.

Since those days I always travel with a full technical backup.

Wolfgang Dorninger, Linz, Austria February 9th 2019

Rinus van Alebeek wrote a comment on the evening

Lord Litter

It must have been mid 90s. We had two gigs in the western part of Germany. The ride with our car took about 8 hours. Our wagon was packed with musicians, instruments, drums, amplifiers, microphones, cables etc etc. uncomfortable crouching for 8 hours. We arrived at the first venue right in time to put up the equipment, have a rest at a wonderful backstage room with great food and drink. All was really perfect .. then we heard that a big name act played in a big hall elsewhere this same night, can't remember who it was - Sting or Genesis or..anyway - the time for our concert came and we went into the small hall in the basement and started playing to .... no audience..and played and played to...no audience.

The next evening we had a gig in a town nearby. It was an Irish Pub. We arrived on time to put up the equipment, have a little rehearsal, with hints by the owner "pssst..please not so loud". And I remember it was cold in the Pub, sooo cold. The time for our concert came and you probably guessed it - YES - no audience! We didn’t play this night. We rode straight back to Berlin. Again 8 hours. After this weekend of disaster we only played in Berlin and always had quite *acceptable* audiences. I'll NEVER forget this.

Lord Litter, February 2019

Tom Furgas

My friend Mark Hanley and I were once a duo called The Bliss Machine in the early to mid 2000's. He played electric guitar with digital delay, I played electronic keyboard, also with digital delay.  We improvised all of our concerts, using the digital delays to create long textural compositions, a-la Fripp And Eno. Most concerts were quite successful and enjoyed by one and all. One gig didn't quite come out the way we'd hoped. This was in the middle of Summer, and we played an outdoor gig at a venue called The B&O Station, a former train depot that had been converted to a cafe with outdoor patio.  We set up our gear next to a very tall light pole, tuned up, did a soundcheck, and started performing. The audience didn't seem to take well to what we were doing, and Mark and I couldn't seem to get in the right groove, with some technical glitches partly thanks to a noisy volume pot on my keyboard. Clouds started to form overhead and we thought we might have to stop playing and pack up. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck the light pole right where we were playing, creating a deafening crash. Luckily we were not so close to the pole that the bolt of lightning struck us, but it was a close call! We stopped, packed up, and left, to no applause.

Chris Phinney

Viktimized Karcass was supposed to go on before Panther Burns at a warehouse one New Year’s Eve (1987 or '88), show was running late, Tav & Panther Burns wanted the midnight slot so pushed us behind them, we went on & we were not happy about it so we did a totally fucked-up version of a song they did, The Archies - “Sugar, Sugar”. Tav was pissed but paid us our $100 at like 3 a.m.

John M. Bennett

I recall at least two readings I gave in the distant past in which the audience consisted of only the host and my wife, C. Mehrl Bennett. Kind of cool, actually, a big empty room full of chairs, so the readings became very intimate. Don't ask me where and when these occurred, those are trivial details beyond my capacity to recall.

Dylan Houser
Hell Garbage at International Noise Conference 2018

The equipment I used was a contact mic and a prepared guitar (which I would alternate between) and plugged into two small battery powered amps that went through a D.I. box. I had used this set-up before on a tour I did the previous November, and it sounded great at every show...not so much at this one, however.

The sound was VERY quiet. I'm not sure if I needed to change the batteries, or should have used a mixer or more pedals...definitely should have used my Roland Cube Street EX amp (which gets LOUD), but I don't remember why I didn't bring it in.

This was also the first time Emmy Lou and I have collaborated. I honestly think they're the only good thing about the performance, really.

The air conditioner was out all week, and as a result, it was unbearably hot inside the venue.

I shouldn't be too hard on myself considering it's "Noise" and I started Hell Garbage BECAUSE I wanted to make intentionally lousy noise. I just wish it was louder is all. I've actually started using a mixer recently, which helps.

Video by the ever reliable Andrew Chadwick:

Mike Nobody

Oh Geez,
Performances that went wrong?
More than ever went right!
My first solo gig went like this; I showed up at the bar, waited for my allotted time. The band before me got into a brawl with each other. Their singer got stabbed. Then, the police shut down the club. I never got a chance to perform. The end.

Ditlev Buster

​I got asked to open for a band called Love Crystals once, when the opening act cancelled in the last minute. What I didn’t realise was that this was their big night. They had invited all their college friends. The upside was the audience only wanted to see one band. The downside was that I wasn’t in that band. Love Crystals were a band of genuinely nice and decent people, who sounded like Nickelback. Very talented musicians too, but I didn’t fit in with them. I had a very hard time getting through to the audience with my acoustic folky songs. Afterwards on my way home I met my two friends Daniel (who plays drums in my current band) and Olivia who he was performing with then. I had only invited these two people to come to the gig, and they didn’t make it in time. They asked how it went, and I said “I was great but they didn’t care”. Olivia told me the following words which have inspired me a lot since “ the audience never really cares”.

Eduardo Gozne

Once, on a Tuesday, I noticed a nice place with tables that surrounded a circular stage. The person in charge was a nice woman who was glad of my proposal, to play there the weekend with some friends. Saturday at 22 hrs would be the concerts of four electronic artists in the area. We prepared the publicity (which arrived on the premises on Wednesday), promotion by social networks and notified friends.
The day of the event, the publicity was not put on the premises, the sound equipment (that the woman had promised me) was not there and the young man who answered us said he did not know anything. The manager of the place arrived to ask for the woman who had treated me on Tuesday:
Surprise!
The woman had been dismissed on Thursday as irresponsible.

Crank Sturgeon

So I had this idea to use candles in a performance, which is to say, already off to a dubious start. At the time, I was on some conceptual trope about the fiery waxy sticks serving as funny anti-celebration mechanism, vis-à-vis my costuming. Fast forward to the show: I'm narrating, interacting with the audience, making my usual noisy squeaks and squawks, when it's time in the performance to put the candles on my head. No problem, they light, the wax sticks, and I'm jamming. After a while I look up and make eye contact with an audience member. Her hand is covering her mouth and her eyes are really, REALLY WIDE. Apparently, my head has caught on fire. Quickly I swat it out. No big deal.

While the fabric from the costume is kind of smoldering - I never stop playing; it's on with the show. Then an eeriness befalls the room. I mean, I'm digging the sounds that I'm making, but there's a loop in the mix that hadn't been there before, and... the once-attentive audience is now flocking towards the exit. I've inadvertently set off the fire alarm. I should point out that the venue is in a downtown "arts district" office building; which is to say, not only is the performance space wailing with red flashing lights, the entire building's alarm system is going off. While it's sort of a magnificent way to finish to a show, you know, like an anti-show, the set that keeps on howling, some sort of Futurist Manifesto bullshit, it occurs to me that I have crossed the line between haha and, oh... fuck. Someone could've gotten seriously injured.

{An EeL}

Hal requested some write ups of disastrous performances, and I thought it would be interesting to respond in a sort of “ Tone {Poem “ fashion with remembering some notable aspects of performances I’ve been at -

To start, I’ve literally never been at a “ Disastrous “ performance of any sort, either as an audience member or performer. But keep in mind this speaks to my way of viewing things more than what actually might have occurred. - As an example, one of the best concerts I’ve been at also might have been one of the worst concerts I’ve been at -

Thusly - THINGS I’VE SEEN AT SHOWS

1. I was at a experimental showcase once, where one performer was of the “ Kitchen Sink “ variety, I/E: His gear list might closely resemble your junk drawer. He unpacked all his stuff and thoughtfully touched every object. When his performance was reaching it’s peak, he pulled out his phone and - as I watched in amazement -sent & answered a text. I would be very critical of this, but in honesty it was a highlight of his set.
2. On a similar note, there was a large group ensemble gathered to play the music of a relatively well known minimalist / electronic composer. There was a large visual backdrop, and he was obstinately conducting the group. At a certain point my attention wavered & I took a look back at the maestro to see at work - And instead caught a glimpse of him in the middle of enjoying eating a sandwich with Gusto. Almost laughed out loud which would not have went over well
3. As an audience member, repeatedly yelled “ FIRE “ in a crowded theatre. The fact that it was a song request should not exempt me from being guilty here
4. We were playing a basement show & loading in gear - Everyone in the band was really high on something or another. As I watched in horror, my bandmates who were loading a big amp with all the delicate gear on top of it tripped, and the amp & equipment took a big fall onto the concrete floor. Needless to say, this didn’t increase our already agitated state, and we had to just carry on & play our set. Nothing horrible happened to the equipment, but to say the respective members of the band were “ In a State “ might be an understatement - I’ve in the years since wondered if this happening was a good or bad thing as far as the subsequent show is concerned. ( I’m not a reliable witness in this regard )
5. I was in the audience of a really really great show by a member of a hugely influential & famous Free Jazz ensemble, and there was some fantastic percussion going on. Unfortunately as the famous artist in question was doing his drumming, his pants ( Puffy genie pants ) started to slowly - Very, Very slowly come off - Gracefully, everyone who noticed seemed sympathetically bemused by this
6. A Famous band that I can no longer listen to was playing a show where there was a problem with the guitar - A Tech guy was fixing it & during the lull, the ' Main Guy ' of this band asked the audience their names. There are many responses, but one makes him do a double take  " Did you say your name was Sky ? " he asked the audience member who seems quite thrilled to acknowledge this - Until, perhaps, they hear the response of " I would Kill Myself "

That's about if off the top of my head - I've seen a number of less entertaining equipment / performance disasters that have usually revealed more about the performers nature than anything else - But the bottom line is there's nothing like live music, Baybee ~~

Richard Franecki

    I have two short little anecdotes relating to this subject!  One is an F/i performance from the late 80’s and the other the first ever LIVE Vocokesh performance.
    F/i has had a complicated history. There have been many personal changes. During one period when the band was in a state of flux, we had the opportunity to open a show for Milwaukee psychedelic legends, Plasticland. Brian Wensing and myself scraped together, for one last gig, the lineup that was falling apart at that time. It was myself and Brian Wensing on guitar, Tom Schnier on bass and Co-founder Greg Kueczewski on drums. That lineup just wasn’t 'happening', we were a bit schizo at the time, not knowing which direction to go. To that end, we attempted a couple of songs with vocals. Never mind the fact that none of us really could sing!! It’s no accident that F/i and Vocokesh, to this day are INSTRUMENTAL LOL LOL LOL!!! In general, we gave a very lackluster performance, but the SINGING!!!!  AHHHHH!!!!! Some sicko taped the show, and I recently found a copy. I gave it a listen. It was still cringe worthy even after 30 plus years. I lasted about fifteen minutes before I HAD to turn it off!
    It’s a matter of supreme irony that Tom Schnier is now a respected and productive member of Vocokesh!
Speaking of Vocokesh:  I formed VK as a spin off from F/i, due to a few disagreements over musical direction. VK was, at the outset, a studio project, and for ten years we released LP’s and CD’s that were totally studio productions. We were seldom even on the same room at the same time. Drummer Rusty Olsen would send me drum backing tracks, which we’d over dub onto. It worked great! I put everything together in my home studio and sent the masters to whichever label were were working with at the moment.
   All that changed when were got a drummer who lived close by and had a place to rehearse. Soon after, we were invited to be on the bill of a six band bash at a local venue. This was a high profile gig in a converted movie theater, sort of the Milwaukee equivalent of playing the Fillmore!! The place also was notorious for poor sound. That was what killed us. We were also a bit under rehearsed and perhaps a bit over ambitious in attempting to play a couple of the pieces we did. In any case, we couldn’t hear each other!! It was so bad that I even stopped playing and had the band start over…BAD THING TO DO!!!  I’d like to be able to say this was an attempt at ‘audience confrontation’ or ‘pop art satire’ but no…can’t explain this away in any sort of ‘artsy fartsy’ fashion. The blunt truth is ..WE STUNK!!! The only good thing I can say about the gig is that we got paid 50 bucks!
    Once again, another sicko VIDEOTAPED the show. It’s on YouTube. But I’m not including a link. Look for it if you want. Type in: Vocokesh Miramar theater, Milwaukee. It’s there! The saving grace is that the sound is awful, but in a perverse way, it enhances the experience.

Walls Of Genius
Little Fyodor (with Evan Cantor)
Pirate/tENT WoG/Miracle debacle

The debacle I would like to describe requires a somewhat lengthy description, but Hal has asked me to address it in the past and I declined; now that Hal has asked the Electronic Cottage community for all of our debacles, I’m feeling that this just may be the right time.

I feel I cannot really describe the event adequately without including what may appear to be findings of fault, overtly in myself and perhaps in others, despite good intentions I’m sure were there on the part of all the parties involved.

It happened just about 33 years ago, so of course my recall can be questioned, particularly on details. Still, I feel strongly that I have a good handle on the key elements. (I’ll include quotes as if I remember them exactly, even if they should ideally be qualified with “something like that” or something like that.)

This incident is discussed somewhat in the Walls Of Genius archives in the middle of a page on our sister band, the Miracle, but I shall go into it in greater detail and from my own point of view.

Sometime in the spring (or maybe late winter) of 1986, a fellow who called himself by several names, but most often (particularly in the years since) tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, sent correspondence to Walls Of Genius asking for assistance in setting up a show in the Boulder/Denver area as part of a nationwide tour he was planning. tENT (for short) was based in Baltimore (probably his second most commonly used moniker was Tim Ore, making the name of his hometown a ha-ha sexual advertisement for him; the point of his use of variable names, as well as his most frequently used one, was to express his view that names are arbitrary and used merely for their convenience, thus not deserving of the concrete gravitas he felt is too often attributed to them), and his interests were decidedly in the avant-garde / experimental realm. Thus he was reaching out to whatever underground contacts he could find throughout the nation in the hopes of finding like-minded weirdos willing to help him with setting up these sundry shows. Nothing unusual there!

One of tENT’s requests was to have additional musicians from each locality assist him as part of his performance. Specifically, he wanted people to improvise along with short films he would show (in the midst of other things he would do).

At this point I would like to step back and say that by my memory, it was in late March of this same year that Evan Cantor told me, as we sat in a movie theater waiting for the flick to start, that he was bringing Walls Of Genius to an end. Evan may have disputed this timeline, in part, I believe, because he noticed that the flyer he created for tENT’s show (which took place in May) said “Walls Of Genius Presents” at the top of it. tENT’s letter probably came a little bit after the breakup, but not long after, and maybe slightly before. I can’t say with absolute certainty, but I believe Evan decided to use the Walls Of Genius name for tENT’s show for two, perhaps related, reasons. One was that it was Walls Of Genius whom tENT had reached out to, and Evan probably wanted to honor tENT’s desire to be associated with WoG.  Secondly, Evan probably felt it would benefit the promotion of the show to employ the Walls Of Genius brand. Perhaps Evan was even considering maintaining said brand in some capacity even after the music group named as such was no more....

You might notice that I’m talking strictly of Evan’s decisions here.  Evan was the Head Moron of Walls Of Genius; Ed Fowler and I were the Assistant Head Morons.  As such, Evan generally made all final decisions for WoG, sometimes with and sometimes without the input of either of his ostensible assistants. One could probably cite a great number of good reasons for why Evan broke up the band, but one was certainly that there was a great deal of tension between he and myself at the time. We were bandmates, roommates and more -- albeit NOT lovers, NTTAWWT, just sayin’!  Still, it was a good recipe for tension, and tension there was.

Anyway, since WoG had broken up, WoG playing along with tENT wasn’t in the cards, but the Miracle was still an ongoing project, and improvising was their thing, and so Evan contacted our friends Leo Goya and George Stone (RIP), who more or less formed the basis of this loosely knit “band,” about fulfilling tENT’s request for improvisers. I don’t remember how Evan communicated this offer (letter? phone?), but I’m sure I was privy, and what Evan said was that a guy was coming to town looking for people to play with (or maybe he said to “jam” with).  Leo and George were always up for playing music (and jamming), and thus they enthusiastically agreed.

At this point, I kind of noticed a problem. It occurred to me that even if tENT had asked for people to improvise along with something he was doing, he was most definitely not looking for musicians to act as equals in some sort of mutual jamming experience, an impression Leo and George may have gotten from Evan’s invitation. Rather, tENT was looking for people to do his bidding in a very specified context. Again, NTTAWWT, as long as it’s adequately communicated, but I could see that while tENT communicated this to WoG/Evan, Evan was not necessarily communicating this to the Miracle. It was hard in general for me to see the Miracle folks getting up to play at someone’s command and then sitting back down when their allotted time was up just a few minutes later. That just did not seem like their MO at all.  Freedom was their thing, and they would just go on and on in an open-ended manner without regard to “rules.” That they were not really being clearly informed of what exactly tENT wanted only seemed to compound the problem to my mind. My best guess for why Evan expressed it the way he did to Leo and George was that he sincerely wanted a good experience for all involved and thought that being improvisors the Miracle would have a fine time “improvising” with tENT and everything would be great. I cannot say for sure since I cannot read Evan’s mind, but it is my best guess than it likely never occurred to Evan that there might be a sort of small but at the same time important discrepancy between what tENT had asked for and what Evan conveyed to Leo and George. To me, that’s just how the human mind works, it’s full of rationalizations to smooth over things that we maybe don’t want to face up to directly. We all do this to one degree or another....

Well anyway, at this current point in time, as in now, as I write this and look back, it certainly seems like the obvious thing to do would have been to bring up my misgivings with Evan. I did not do this, and why I didn’t I cannot say with any certainty now. I can only assume that it had something to do with the tension between the two of us at the time. I know there had been other times that I had brought up objections or merely hints thereof only to receive a sharp rebuke from Evan followed by mostly mutual silence and certainly nothing resembling a healthy exchange of ideas on the given matter (I know vice versa happened, too!). I’ve since learned that a good “people skill” for bringing up issues or criticisms is to lead into it with something favorable or complimentary. I did not know of this stratagem back then! Regardless, I did not choose this seemingly obvious and obviously, in retrospect, preferable path of talking to Evan about the problem that I perceived....

Instead, I brought it up with both the Miracle folks and with tENT. I warned Leo and George, without discussing it with Evan, as to the true nature of tENT’s request and what he was looking for in improvising assistants. They did not reveal any particular reaction at the time, but later, in between the warning and the performance, I recall talking to George and hearing him say something along the lines of Evan not being honest with them, and although George was a pretty easy-going guy, there seemed to be at least a whiff of anger or bitterness in his words (I think they had also spoken with Evan since my warning and confirmed my version of things). I was a little taken aback by this description and stance.  Mainly, I had hoped that the Miracle would enter the situation with open eyes and thus be better able to navigate a circumstance they otherwise may not have expected when it came time for it to arise. I don’t *think* this displeasure impacted the friendship between Evan and either George or Leo, but it did occur to me at some point that my warning may have had the opposite effect from its intention, that instead of helping Leo and George adapt to what would be asked of them, it may have instead led to a jaundiced pre-judgment of the eventual situation, that is, they went into it with a chip on their shoulder, expecting the worst. I may have created ye olde self-fulfilling prophecy! Inadvertently, of course. FWIW, I also recall Leo afterwards saying he blamed Evan for the debacle....

I also wrote to tENT. I tried to described the open-ended nature of what the Miracle was accustomed to doing. I said something like that it was their thing to “jam all night.” This, it turns out, was an unfortunate turn of phrase. I had inadvertently given tENT the impression that the Miracle was composed of night owls!  tENT later very specifically brought this wording and his interpretation of it up with me to justify how he had handled the situation, which was to have the Miracle play last. It had only been my intention to describe how they were accustomed to going on and on and on. There were certainly a few Miracle jams that went somewhat late into the night, but I never really intended to stress the nighttime aspect of their habits. This, indeed, gave tENT the wrong impression....

Meantime, Evan was doing his best to find tENT a good venue for a show. tENT had originally asked for a show on a Saturday or a Sunday night. Evan was finding the going difficult and suggested to tENT at one point that instead of his playing a public venue per se that we just throw a party for him and he could play for the party, a good Saturday night of fun and music! tENT rejected this idea, saying that he most definitely wanted to put on a public performance in a public venue, i.e., for the public. He also informed us, maybe at this point but definitely at some point, that he had also been in contact with Joel Haertling and Architects Office and that they had set him up with a show in Boulder on the Saturday night in question, leaving Sunday as the remaining night he would have to do a show in the area. Well, this was a bit of a sore point, as Evan and Joel had recently had a nasty falling out that was still in full festering mode at that time. Anyway, Evan finally booked tENT a show at a Denver art gallery, the Pirate Contemporary Art Oasis, which had put on many shows in that time period including one featuring solely the Miracle just a couple of months prior. Evan proceeded to do his damnedest to promote the show, contacting his faithful contacts in local periodicals and indeed getting a bit of press, IIRC....

So when the weekend arrived, tENT had a Saturday show in Boulder with Architects Office and a Sunday show in Denver promoted as a Walls Of Genius presentation. I attended the Saturday show, and it was a good one. They had found some place in Boulder that either manufactured or sold sensory deprivation chambers, and so tENT did his thing amidst these chambers that were in various stages of completion, and that
was pretty cool. I would guess maybe twenty people showed up, not bad for a not very well known experimentalist a couple of thousand miles from home, and they were into it, sitting on the floor and smiling. When it came time for tENT to show his films, I think two of them, tENT introduced Architects Office followed by Joel Haertling and Rick Corrigan getting up and making synthesizer sounds until each film ended, probably exactly as tENT had hoped for. This was a good show for tENT, which was a good thing of course, but it also kind of also added insult to debacle for Evan, who later intimated to me that he thought tENT should have gone with the idea of a party with us on Saturday rather than doing a show with our rivals….

Then came Sunday night at the Pirate. WELL! Now, we finally come to the debacle itself!! First thing that happened was that the Miracle setup all their stuff, of which there was plenty (including real, homemade and improvised instruments), and -- they PLAYED!! This may not have been part of tENT’s plan, for them to play at the outset like this (and it may have forced a delay of the start of his performance), but hey, they were playing and having a good time of it, and things seemed to be going pretty good. While they were playing, I was, ahem, distracted outside of the gallery by interests of a budding romantic nature.... When I returned to the gallery, all was quiet, except maybe tENT having just started his performance or maybe he was about to. At some point, I remarked to George about how the Miracle had apparently yielded to tENT, perhaps trying to indicate some pride in them for “doing the right thing.” “We didn’t stop voluntarily,” said George, “we were SHUT DOWN.” Uh-oh. Now, I should mention that tENT’s shtick is certainly a little challenging for some people, and this was an interesting lesson for me regarding the various divisions there could be in tastes amongst people who might all share some interest for what would generally be called “the avant-garde.” The Miracle made music that a lot of people wouldn’t even call music, and a lot of their atonal banging and clanging would drive many people from the room complaining of headaches and such. (I loved their music, myself!) But when tENT showed a film of a woman peeing into his mouth (called “Pee in “Bob”’s Mouth”) while he pogo’d (live) in front of the screen, the Miracle folks were aghast and totally grossed out, and while I didn’t notice them expressing this to tENT, I think he got the message of how they felt.  Then, when tENT was done with his array of things to do, he said, “And now, the Miracle will play.” I looked around and saw Leo and Jeanne (Leo’s then girlfriend, later wife) packing their stuff out and leaving! Jeanne told me that Leo had to work in the morning and therefore had to go home and get to bed! (Thus tENT’s befuddlement over my “play all night” comment!) By the way, I counted two audience members who had shown up during the evening, a couple, who did some swing dance moves with each other and didn’t seem the least bit interested in anything going on in the gallery. They may have just happened by, and they didn’t stay long. No one else who wasn’t involved in some way had shown up, at all. I recall Evan saying, “I knew the universe was telling me not to do this, but I wasn’t expecting the message to be this clear!” I know tENT has posted a listing of all his shows throughout the years along with short descriptions, and he says of this show that it was, “Mostly memorable for the boorish rudeness of “Miracle” (who were on the same bill) & for Evan Cantor’s remarkable feedback-alto-sax & milk-can drum set-up”!  Whatever the actual impact of the Miracle’s leaving was on his performance, clearly he did not appreciate the Miracle’s behavior and, all in all, the bad vibes were thick enough to cut with a chainsaw, with a little elbow grease added for good measure....

In retrospect, I certainly realize that in lieu of having the cajones to address my misgivings with Evan, I was probably behooved to just keep my damn mouth shut! The event may well have turned out to be a debacle to some degree anyway, but ultimately I’m not proud of the role I played in it.

Evan’s Note:
This is a fascinating look into a drama I hardly knew existed. I have no recollection whatsoever of tENT requesting ‘back-up’ musicians as opposed to sharing the stage with another group of improvisers. Of course, ‘sharing the stage’ can mean that you are on a bill with other bands OR that you have engaged ‘back-up’ musicians. My recollection is that I arranged the show for the former of those two options. I have no recollection of manipulating or misleading the members of The Miracle in order to cajole them into performing on the same stage as tENT. If there were any misunderstandings, I’m sorry that such occurred as it was never my intention to consciously mislead anyone. I have no recollection of any of them being angry with me specifically. I thought they were angry about tENT’s interminable performance and the golden showers video. I know that Leo Goya was upset with me over the fact that I had promoted our collaboration as “Walls Of Genius and MIRACLE”. He felt that the Miracle’s name should have appeared first, with Walls Of Genius second or not at all. My thinking was that the Walls Of Genius name would more easily facilitate our audience’s entry into the world of free jazz, something we had not done previously. I still think, after all these years, that it was to The Miracle’s benefit to have that association because, without it, the world might have already forgotten The Miracle {see haltapes.com WoG archive}. Fyodor is entirely correct about my wish to fulfill our commitments even though I was dissolving Walls Of Genius at the time or intended to do so soon thereafter. As for The Miracle’s so-called ‘rude behavior’, it might also be noted that tENT’s performance, as interesting as it was, was quite extended, perhaps interminable. The Miracle, as the other band on the ‘bill’, saw that as rude in itself and, as Fyodor has pointed out, they very likely didn’t share our interest in tENT’s work. Perhaps there was breakdown of communication all around. As to the decision making process during Walls Of Genius’ ‘classic period’ (1983-1986), I have never felt that I was the autocratic dictator that has sometimes been portrayed. I would like to remind all concerned that I did care and respect their opinions and wishes. My recollection is that I made a variety of concessions to these concerns on a regular basis. Maybe I didn’t talk about those concessions and I am not going to now. I am proud that I made Walls Of Genius happen and I’m not ashamed if I sometimes made decisions thought dubious by others.

Michael Ridge

Late 2007 or early 2008 (I can't recall precisely), I was invited to perform a short sound/noise piece at Norwich Arts Centre. The piece itself involved performing with a contact mic'd sheet of tin foil running through set of pedals. The first two minutes went well, lots of textured loud noise then one of the soldered points on the contact mic came loose (poor soldering on my part) and within 30ish seconds the power supply (should have purchased a decent one) to my pedals had shorted out. Needless to say the piece came to a swift end and I shuffled off stage!

Walls Of Genius
Evan Cantor (with Little Fyodor)
Anti-Club Meets Fish Music

Walls of Genius performed at Los Angeles’ Anti-Club on Sunday, June 2, 1985 on a bill with The Black Notes and Richie Hass and the Beatniks. According to L.A. Weekly’s 5-31-1985 issue, “Option magazine presents (at 5 PM) from Boulder, Colorado, Wall of Genius (sic); plus Zoogz Rift drummer and man behind the Free Bass Ensemble, Richie Hass and the Beatniks; plus a rare appearance by the instrumental trance band The Black Notes.” Seems like nobody could get our band name right. People were always thinking it was something like Wall Of Voodoo. The L.A. Weekly listing answers my question as to how we got the gig. It was somehow arranged via somebody at Option Magazine, with whom we were in constant touch at the time. This show was the first on our ‘tour’, gigs scheduled for LA, SF and Eureka, California.

The San Francisco show was arranged via William Davenport (of Unsound Magazine) for the Fort Carson Center and was a huge success for us. We had a nice visit with Leslie Singer (Girls On Fire) and I got to play the bass out of an amplifier stenciled “Tom Fogerty”, connecting me to one of the bands I most loved to interpret in manic idiot style, Creedence Clearwater Revival. They were always one of my favorite bands growing up and their mostly three-chord songs were easy to figure out. We played on-stage in a nice auditorium with a sizable and enthusiastic audience. We stayed at William Davenport’s adapted-warehouse place in the lower Mission and promptly overwhelmed the plumbing. We had been on the road for a while, camping on the way to LA and at Big Sur on the way to SF, and must have been saving it up. So we had to head out and shop for a plunger in San Francisco because William didn’t have one. Meanwhile, Ed had flown from LA to SF and was staying at a fancy-schmancy hotel downtown.

The Eureka, California, show, arranged via Brian Ladd & Julie Frith of the Objekt zine and Psyclones, had been canceled before we arrived. Little Fyodor rightly thinks it had been cancelled before we even left on the tour, which would make sense because we didn’t carry cell-phones around in those days and there was no way to be in touch once we were out on the road. Lack of a scene and an audience in Eureka may have been the reason for the cancellation, but we went there anyway. Little Fyodor and I had a nice visit with Brian and Julie (the publishers of Objekt and members of the Psyclones) and we drove up the coast to visit Redwoods National Park, where we saw what was advertised as the tallest tree in the world. You couldn’t see the top of it. There were, indeed, a lot of big trees there. Ed flew home to Denver directly from SF, so missed the visit in Eureka. Fyodor and I then humped it 26 hours driving back to Boulder.

At this time, in the mid-80s, our lead guitar wizard, Ed Fowler, worked for Air Midwest at the old Stapleton Airport in Denver, so he could fly all over the place for no charge. For the LA and SF shows, he took the plane. Little Fyodor and I, on the other hand, drove from Boulder in my gear-filled Toyota Corolla wagon. We stopped in at Bryce and Zion Canyons on the way to take a look and a short hike at Zion’s Emerald Pools. Our accommodations in L.A. were in Pasadena, at the home of my junior high school friend (Luther Jackson Jr. High, Fairfax, VA), John Talley-Jones and his wife Kathy. Talley-Jones is the bassist and lead vocalist for LA punk band The Urinals, which later morphed into 100 Flowers and then back to the Urinals for the 21st Century. He was also involved with a percussion-focused group, Radwaste, and we got to see them perform. John and Kathy’s home was a monument to Godzilla, figurines and posters everywhere. We visited Venice Beach and had a midnight snack at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Avenue. I bought my Mom a sweatshirt that said “Canter’s on Fairfax”, the irony of being a Cantor from Fairfax, VA, too rich to pass up.

We thought we were supposed to go on stage at 5 PM, as the L.A. Weekly notice indicated. We dutifully arrived early, rendezvoused with Ed, got our stuff set up and did a sound check. Then they told us we weren’t going on first, like we thought, but last, ostensibly because we were the ‘top-billed’ act from out-of-town. What? Oh all-right, nothing we could do. They instructed us to put all our gear to one side, essentially rendering the sound-check a worthless exercise. By the time we got on stage, round-about-midnight, the place had cleared out and we played to a mostly empty room. Even worse, the PA system was set up in such a way that everything but Ed’s guitar amplifier was miked, the result of which was that nobody could hear Ed’s incendiary guitar playing on the extended improvisations, which was really one of the high points of a Walls Of Genius performance. Fyodor recalls that, to top everything off, the manager on duty decided to shut us down and turned off the PA right in the middle of our set. There was likely no audience left at that point, so it didn’t matter much, but Little Fyodor was sufficiently pissed off to angrily hurl an Alice-Cooper-inspired rubber snake he was brandishing at the moment right at the burly manager’s feet. The manager apparently took it well as there were no reprisals. All this was a huge letdown after driving halfway across North America to get there. We were just glad to pack up and go when it was done.

Another bad show I recall was the so-called “Fish Music” show at Pearl Street Music Hall in Denver, January 11th and 12th, 1985. The ticket indicates “admit one”, “FISH MUSIC, the trees” and “wall of genius” (sic) on “Jan. 11 & 12”. I only remember doing one date, but Little Fyodor assures me we played both nights. Previously, in December, we had played the Pearl Street Music Hall with the Trees and were advertised in Westword as “Trees, w/ WALL OF GENIUS (sic) and BOY”. Apparently, even though we were friends with some of the guys in the Trees and Paul Church (of Fish Music notoriety) had even interviewed us for a local ‘zine, Der Moderne Times, people were getting our name wrong right and left.

We thought we were supposed to go on first, but then they told us that the order had been changed and ‘since we were the top-billed act’, we would go on last. This again? Fish Music was an ambient noise group led by Paul Church. For the life of me, I can’t recall how we knew him, but we were getting pretty well connected in Denver’s underground scene via our performances, recordings, press and Little Fyodor’s “Under The Floorboards” radio show on KGNU-Boulder. Fish Music had brought a giant fish tank for the performance and my recollection is that most of the fish had frozen in the cold weather. It was January, after all. Their performance was interminable and seemed to last forever. Again, memory fails me as to the performance of the Trees, but they were a kind of straight-ahead new-wave band with some interesting twists. It may be that I wasn’t even in the hall while they were playing because I remember Ed and I heading over to somebody’s house in the neighborhood to smoke some pot. We met the guy while pissing in the alley behind the venue. We got to this guy’s apartment and found the room littered with vinyl LPs, as if somebody had been flinging them around in a rage.

By the time we got on stage, well after midnight, the place had cleared out. There was an audience of maybe five. I remember our stalwart fan, Frank Zygmunt, stuck out the evening. We had told him we were going on first and then he had to wait all night for us to perform. Another of our fans, whose name I regrettably forget, used to show up at our performances wearing a strait-jacket, or at least something resembling such. He was there that night, doing his odd slow twirling-in-place ‘dance’. This fellow had once told Little Fyodor that he was “meditating on death”. Jimi West of the Denver punk band Rok-Tots was also there. So we do our thing to the nearly empty room. At one point, Jimi requests “Magic Carpet Ride”, which was on our cassette release, “Crazed To The Core”. That version was from the same “Road Damage” session that had spawned “Abdul The Bulbul Amir”, meaning we had Brad Carton on drums and me on electric guitar, with Fyodor singing lead, Ed Fowler playing his trademarked wild electric lead-guitar and bass I overdubbed after the fact. It wasn’t on our “set list” for the night and we weren’t set up at the Fish Music show with that configuration, but I figured we could give it a try. There I was most likely with an acoustic-electric guitar in hand. So I started it up and Ed stopped us, saying “that’s not how it goes”. I thought ‘Damnit, it’s my arrangement and we’re playing it and why aren’t you rolling with the punches!!’ So I launched into “Born To Be Wild”, a version of which I had played many times on acoustic guitar and which we had also played together in the past. Apparently Ed was more comfortable with this and we did that instead. We packed up our gear and slunk out into the frozen night, swearing that we didn’t ever want to be ‘top-billed’ again.

David Nadeau

The event was organized by a community organization as part of a grant project and the participants had very little preparation and did not take the time to practice their performance. I played a hacked electronic toy, amplified with a microphone plugged to a guitar amplifier, and we decided that I would accompany a bassist in the first part, then a poetess in the second part. I will not talk too much about the first part, since it went very well, but when the bassist stopped playing, I continued to manipulate my instrument and the shy voice of the young woman who had decided to recite without microphone was barely audible through the glitches and the rhythmic buzzings. Because I was sitting on the windowsill, I did not have access to the amplifier to turn down the volume of sound. I felt that the majority of the audience, composed of friends of the poetess, shots me hostile gazes but I could only continue my electronic manipulations. Finally, the organizer of the event, who was also a stage director, struck lightly on my knee to signal me to stop playing; therefore, the audience was able to clearly hear the last two texts.

Leslie Singer
The most disastrous Psychodrama Gig

​My aunt Myra hired us to play my cousin Stacy’s 12th Birthday Party at their nice home on Embassy Row in NW Washington DC.  It was in May 1982. The residents of Embassy Row are real Type A/Got to keep up with the Jones' types. She wanted to give Stacy some bragging rights but was cost conscious and didn't want to hire a real cover band.  Brett, Rob and I show up and set up all our gear on the balcony of the house overlooking the big back yard and start to play. About 20 minutes into the show, my aunt pulls the plug, saying that the girls are crying and that they thought that we would be more like the Go-Go’s. I think that we still got paid.  My other cousin, Larry, (Stacy's older brother and who I used to think of whenever I heard the Wild Man Fischer song, My Name is Larry) was snickering at the crying girls and commended us on upsetting them. Recently I’ve heard that my cousin Stacy now brags about having a punk band play at her 12th birthday party.

Fly Mordecai
Frantic Failures & Things Gone Wrong

My first real failure or difficulty performing live was in my first band that got out of the garage and played 3 proper shows before we broke up. Neptune's Lounge/Summer/Circa 2003. My band was called the Latter Diagram. We were heavily influenced by Radiohead, Fugazi, Pixies, and Cave-In. And we were making quick progress in the Pre-Historic Emo/Metalcore scene in the Tampa Bay Area. It was originally booked for Three Bands; us, Silent Film Stars (KY), and what became a mini-Pre-Warped Tour bill of Pop Punk Bands in the wee hours of the night performed. The show was way over-booked.

We were on second, and had to stall. We had to make line-up changes shortly before this and the new bassist was running behind, so the drummer (Brian Florczack) and I performed some raps with backing tracks we made on a FrootyLoops program. We used to call the duo Hip-Hop Anonymous, but the name has been taken since, and this pre-dated Social Media.

Our bassist finally arrived and we played a 20 minute set of mathy Indie Rock. We had some friends attending, but the rest of the crowd was outside and I took offense and made snarky comments, which, NEVER FUCKING DO THAT!!

The tirade of Pop-Punk bands arrived mid-set and a member of the following band told me, not asked me, to play one more and get off stage. So my, already- butt-hurt-self told.the band to play, what felt.like, a 10 minute experimental jam; again, DON'T DO THAT!!

We.got mixed-reviews, even from our friends. I truly felt defeated. The worst part about the show, was my attitude. That night, we broke up, thinking we should've just been a Pop-Punk Band like the rest, instead of.taking the crucial time to develop a sound and make art

So! What did we.learn:

·Take the proper time to rehearse your.     written works; especially with new band mates

· Play in a timely manner. Don't open.          with.an hour set when there are 6. more bands breathing down your neck

· Your attitude and the manner in how you.react to a bad situation will absolutely reflect on you and your band. Choose your battles, have a positive attitude, don't insult yourself, your band, or the audience with a bad attitude; it will be reciprocated

And Lastly...

· Have fun! Be able to roll with the.              punches. Shit Happens! Your in this to. share an experience, make art, and.          have fun!

· Your 1st.band is like your 1st girlfriend. It's not always a perfect fit the 1st time around. Practice makes perfect, and ambition, persistence, and enthusiasm for what you love is important

Charles Rice Goff III
-Ing: Live At The San Francisco Inter Dada Festival

On September 8th, 1984, at San Francisco's Victoria Theater, myself and Steve Schaer, together performing as "-Ing," opened the final evening of bizarre staged activities sponsored by the "Inter Dada '84" festival. A number of calamities plagued us that night, and I remember this show as one of the most challenging experiences I have ever faced as an artist.

The temperature in San Francisco that evening was 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is unnaturally hot for the city. The way this heat affected our electronics combined with fate to afflict us with a variety of technical problems.

Our problems actually started before we even got to the theater. I had been lured into buying a newly-marketed, super fancy variety of Maxell tape to use for our Frippertronics-style tape loop system. Big mistake! During our soundcheck we discovered that the tape didn't record with a lot of clarity, and it had an unusual tendency to feedback noise into our loops. We were forced to reduce the volume of our tape loop repetitions to compensate, making the repetitions nearly inaudible.

Then, again during the soundcheck, one of our two monitor speakers blew out, making it even more difficult to hear these subdued tape repetitions. Because the rhythms of our music were timed by these repetitions (much as drumming sets the pace of the music for traditional ensembles), we ended up embarking on this big-stage Dada gig without any sort of rhythmic compass to guide us.

​Finally, to top all of this off, during the middle of our performance, Schaer’s ARP Odyssey synthesizer overheated and began to produce unexpected shifts in pitch and waveform, making every note Steve played a potential mystery in sound.

Despite all of these problems, we performed our set with bravado, a set which included the premier of an eight-minute-long, fully-notated, ballet suite. Amazingly, the large audience gave no indication that it was aware of our technical travails, and it generously offered us a rousing standing ovation. We left the stage sweaty and jittery.

Postscript: Steve and I had been playing together as -Ing for four years up to this point, but after the Inter Dada show, we never performed publicly as –Ing again. A tragic coincidence must be mentioned here as well: Steve took his own life exactly 14 years to the day after this performance. In his honor, I dedicate this little tale of woe to him and our many years of friendship and sonic collaboration. Between 1979 and 1998, we had shared membership in not only -Ing, but in Herd Of The Ether Space and Temporarily KY as well.

For the curious, I offer this recording from the Maxell tape that we created at our Inter Dada performance - a cover version of the Residents' "Smelly Tongues":
https://archive.org/download/INGinterDada/03SmellyTongues.mp3

Report by Jim Barker & Doug Murphy
with assistance from Paul Hamilton.
1984 - The Frog Children - Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK.

It was 1984, so we were generally 18/19. Our ‘manager’ was even younger. Stage names were Stan Dagger (Jim B), Hedge Benson (Andy), Pickaxe Handle (Doug), and ‘manager’ Dave Onion (Jim K). The event was a fundraiser for Animal Rights and was named 'All Day Jam' with many, many bands lined up to play. The Frog Children were not first but hit the stage around 2:00 pm. The place was far from full but Paul (a student at the Poly) was eager to spread the news of this ‘avant-garde’ band from his home town, and whip up some interest. We all wore long coats a la The Bunnymen at the time and entered the stage to prepare for our performance, laying cups and saucers and dinner plates on a table that had been provided.

The sound guy/stagehand asked Pickaxe what was needed in the way of mics and amps. He replied that we would need a bass amp, two guitar amps and three vocal mics. Doug also added, "Oh yeah; we'll also need some mics near the table, for when we smash the crockery". The sound guy replied, "Nah, I think they'll probably hear that", which we took to be approval for what we were about to do. Among the instruments we had was a trumpet that Dave Onion used to introduce us. He couldn't play. He just used it as a kazoo.

We opened with 'You've Lost that Loving Feeling', which was probably an a cappella version. Then after a second song, we performed 'The Crockery Song'. This consisted of Hedge playing guitar (he was more of a guitar owner than a guitar player so he just made noises with it) while singing in a Cleo Laine kinda style. Meanwhile Stan and Pickaxe picked up hammers and began smashing the crockery to smithereens. We had forgotten to bring any kind of safety protection so bits of broken crockery started to make their hands bleed. According to Paul, there was an art student at the front with a rather odd hairdo who thought we were the bee’s knees and kept shouting "This is DADA! Marcel Duchamp lives!"

It was at this point that the microphones went dead and the stagehand approached us and asked us politely (well, we were covered in blood and wielding hammers) to leave the stage. We were a little surprised at this, and one of us said, "but we were just about to do ‘The Sweeping Song’!" This was to have involved attaching mics to brooms and sweeping up the mess from the previous song in a rather rhythmical fashion with the help of Paul while Hedge continued on his free-jazz vocal performance. But sadly, our gig was cut prematurely short and we made our way across the floor of the hall, through the sparse crowd, towards the bar at the back.

The people in charge of the gig told us to leave not only the building but the campus grounds. Pickaxe wasn’t there when this was said (probably at the loo) and spent some time trying to locate the rest of us. Eventually he found us sitting on the grass in the lovely early summer sun. We were all rather thrilled about what we had done and felt rather pleased with ourselves. We eventually made our way back to the train station carrying our instruments (including the trumpet in a Tesco carrier bag).

On the train, we convinced some school kids that we were semi-famous and autographed their school books. Paul received a lifetime ban from ever appearing on the stage of Portsmouth Polytechnic again as a result of him booking The Frog Children. Later, he tried to get around this ban by wearing a papier mache ant's head for one of his bands. He didn't get far before (surprise surprise) they worked out who was hidden inside this costume.

The punks hated us but the art students loved it. They could see what we were trying to say. Strange that; since we weren't actually trying to say anything except “AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!"

W.A. Davison

Back in 2006, I did a performance - or rather, attempted to do a performance - called "Handbag Hoodoo". It was at a noise night at The Bagel, a downtown Toronto sandwich shop and unlikely noise venue. I don't remember who else was on the bill but I think it was only local acts. Back when I was working under the name Songs of the New Erotics (1991 - 2014), I would borrow visual and sonic elements from a wide array of sources - everything from Hieronymous Bosch to the Selk'nam of Tierra Del Fuego. "Handbag Hoodoo" was loosely inspired by, and incorporated, bits and pieces of Haitian Vodou and Southern US Hoodoo but it was more Screamin' Jay Hawkins than Papa Legba. A fairly irreverent and pop-culture  take on voodoo/hoodoo. I don't remember much about the event and the exact details of what went wrong with my performance remain a mystery. I remember being introduced, walking out of the back room (in full costume) and then standing on stage behind my equipment (of which I only remember a large, amplified cooking pot and some electronics) trying to get some kind of sound from something… anything!...on my table. Nothing worked! Almost every piece of gear I had with me seemed to be malfunctioning (talking to friends after the show, I came up with the term S.M.E.F. - Simultaneous Multiple Equipment Failure). I did the usual on the fly troubleshooting, wiggling cables, swapping out gear, etc. but after five, torturous minutes of this - all the while trying not to "break character" - I decided to do something I had never done before (or since). I gave up! Took off my mask. Apologized to the audience. Hung my head in shame. Of course, the noise scene is so invested in what I call the "culture of failure" (a, possibly ironic, appreciation for mistakes and disasters, or general lack of polish, in art, music, etc.) that they loved it! Best performance ever, man! Go figure.

For years after, I believed that "Handbag Hoodoo" was cursed, that I had offended the Loa and they put the whammy on me! But, in thinking about it now and looking back over the notes I wrote when I was developing "Handbag Hoodoo", I realize there is another explanation for the failure. I rushed it. My journal entry from just prior to the performance states that the piece was "not fully resolved but close enough for a first version". Wrong! Obviously. Previous S.O.T.N.E. performances were worked out weeks in advance and, although I was never big on "rehearsing", I would always run through the piece a few times to work out any potential technical problems. "Handbag Hoodoo" was thrown together at the last minute and not tested or rehearsed - a much more likely reason for the failure (although, who's to say the Voodoo gods didn't cause me to screw things things up by rushing my preparations? Think about it...). The fact is, by the mid 2000s, I was just not interested in staging the elaborate "performance art" pieces that had previously made up the bulk of my work as S.O.T.N.E. Over the seven or eight years following "Handbag Hoodoo", I performed less and less as Songs of the New Erotics and any S.O.T.N.E. performances that did occur were much more stripped-down and improvisational. "Handbag Hoodoo" marked the beginning of the end for the S.O.T.N.E. project and I had already begun working on less "theatrical" and more purely improvisational projects like Stactor, Th W rbl r, etc.

Lately, I've been thinking about going back to doing some bigger,
"performance art" pieces, like I used to do in Songs of the New Erotics. Could be the right time for it. Just to be on the safe side though, I think I may refrain from messin' with the voodoo!

​- W.A.Davison, Feb. 2019

Ken Montgomery

Once when I was performing ICEBREAKER - a piece I do using an amplified ice crushing machine I was jamming ice into it and put my fingers in too far and the blades cut my finger - blood spurted out - luckily I had a big bucket of ice to put on my hand as I found something to wrap it. I can’t call this a failure because people loved the performance and thought that was part of it.
 
I also got thrown out of CBGBs once because I was playing with Monty Cantsin who set fire to some police barricades and got Into a fight with Billy Crystal the owner - but again - that’s not really failure either.
 
But the first time I ever performed in public in 1980 was a failure.
 
I had bought my first synthesizer, a Korg MS-20 with sequencer and a little BOSS drumbox in 1980. I was playing at home everyday.  I was really into loud Throbbing Gristle kind of stuff. This was just before compiling my first tape, Gen Ken & Equipment.
 
Someone, I can’t even remember who, asked me if I wanted to play at a party in Soho.
 
I said “Yes!”
 
I worked diligently on a noisey set using my equipment. I was very excited and nervous too because it was the first time for me to play to an unknown public.
 
Turns out it was the party in Soho was a dance party. I was nervous and excited to play live for the first time. Oblivious to everything going on around me I set up my equipment. When it was time for me to play I turned up my volume, started the drumbox and started playing.
 
I didn’t know anyone at the party except maybe the guy who invited me. As soon as I began playing everybody stopped dancing. Shortly into my set a guy interupted me and shouted in my ear.
 
“ How much longer are you going to play?”
 
I had just begun so I think I told him something like,
“15 minutes”
 
I continued playing. Two minutes later he came back and told me,
 
“You need to end sooner.”
 
I said “OK, I’ll finish in 10 minutes.”
 
Moments later all my equipment shut off. Dead silence. No power. Then a Supremes song came on the loudspeakers and people started dancing again.
 
I felt terrible as I packed up my equipment in the corner of room filled with people dancing to soul music.  I had placed a cassette player in the back of the room to record my set so when I got home I could listen to the recording to hear how bad it was, but what I heard on my tape both surprised me and amused me. I had placed my cassette player in the back of the room where one of the hosts of the party was so I got to hear a conversation about my set being shouted over my music. The conversation was between someone I don’t know and the guy who interrupted me to ask me how long I would play. It went something like this.
 
“Who is this guy?”
 
‘What kind of music is this?”
 
“I don’t know. Someone invited him to play”
 
“He’s ruining the mood of the party”
 
(pause)
 
“How long is he going to play?”
 
“I don’t know”
 
“Why don’t you go ask him?”
 
(pause)
 
“He said like 15 minutes”
 
“That’s too long. Everybody will be gone by then. You have to go tell him he has to end sooner.”
 
(pause)
 
“Ok, he said he’ll finish in about 10 minutes.”
 
“No, that’s too long. we have to get him to stop sooner. People are leaving. Why don’t we just pull out the plug to his equipment?”
 
There was some confusion and noise and then came the confusing silence I remembered so well. I kind of enjoyed the sudden silence, but only for a few seconds. Then the Supremes song started playing.

osvaldo cibils
EXT. URUGUAY'S GARDEN - MORNING
February 11, 2019.

I was alone and very concentrated making a soundart performance in the garden when it suddenly started to rain torrentially. In a hurry, I started to pick up the electronic sound gadgets while the neighbor shouted at me from the window of his house: "You have ruined me a perfect day of beach, osvaldo cibils! If the noise was a rain dance, it worked very well."

Hal Harmon

​Playing out since 2012 [as Vasectomy Party], I've had my fair share of performances that went south. I'm sure we've all had those moments when a patch cable goes bad or we accidentally hit a wrong switch or knob during a live set. Out of all my performances that went wrong, the one that sticks out the most was at ATLAntiFest in Atlanta on December 10th of 2016. 

Earlier in the day I decided to take a day hike with my partner around Stone Mountain. It got pretty cold the night before and there were some small patches of ice around the mountain. No sooner than passing a sign with warnings of ice did I find myself eat shit. After some baby steps to finish out the trail, I got back to the hotel with some bruised ribs. At that point I took it as a bad omen of things to come and almost bailed on the show at the last moment. That said I've prided myself on never bailing on a show up to that point (and since then have only cancelled one time). So I loaded up on Aleve and headed out to the gig. I was pretty miserable lugging my gear out of my car. My body hurt and just drawing breath was a chore. I played pretty early on in the evening (I think 3rd or 4th in the line up). Prior to my set, Rurnt from Tennessee performed one of the best face-melting, harsh noise cut-up sets I think I've ever seen. So on top of being physically miserable I thought to myself “I have to follow that”! I got on stage and started my set. Just my luck, a minute in everything cuts out. While I keep a pretty cool disposition, I am panicking inside. I see some familiar faces gathered around my table; Sam from the Three Brained Robot, Rush Falknor, and Dylan Houser. I'm told that there were some technical difficulties from the night before and that my set is sounding good so far, despite the circumstances. While the sound person is troubleshooting I give a nervous, “how's it going?” to the people surrounding my table. Eventually, I get going again, but everything sounds muffled. I was thrown off my game. I was physically hurting and my performance sounded like garbage. I ended the set unenthusiastically and wanted to hightail it out of there, but stuck around for a while to support some of the other artists. Bone Magic and Narco Alms were fantastic. I headed out of Dodge uncharacteristically early. I always try to stay till the end to support everyone, but pain and shame won out. Despite giving what I consider to be the worst performance of my career, I did surprisingly get some nice words of encouragement and sold quite a bit of merch that evening. Even more surprisingly, Jerry Reed from Rurnt asked me to play the final installment of his Leaky Sockets Fest, which was one of the best shows I've ever played.

Robin B. James
February 28, 2019

Late in the autumn of 1979 The Theater of Transformations was invited to perform in Ann Arbor, Michigan at The New Old Brick, a small performance space, located in an old brick building, hence the name. Its long gone, it was
near where the downtown Ann Arbor Greyhound station was.

We were a performance art duo, pulling various theatrical traditions together including masks, puppetry, props, costumes, dolls and French Surrealist poetry, mainly Artaud and Rimbaud. We dressed in black costumes in the Japanese Bunraku tradition, head to toe in black, which included black hoods. My partner was Lorraine Tong. We were human shadows operating the performance objects, including a silvery pink silk puppet of a sturgeon which was a bit more than three feet in length, with a head constructed of papier-mâché in the form of the characteristic sturgeon shaped mouth. It had a long serpentine body, and a papier-mâché tail for us to hang on to when operating it. We would make it swim in the air. The sturgeon puppet was a combination ghost and symbol of ecological transition, as the sturgeon was once quite plentiful in Michigan, and now pretty much extinct from the rivers and streams. Hopefully there are a few hunkered down in the chilly depths of Lake Superior. There are no surviving
pictures of our airborne pink sturgeon, here is a photograph of a Lake Sturgeon from the National Wildlife Federation.

Our host, Gerhart, manager of The New Old Brick, suggested that we put on a free performance on the street to publicise the event and increase our audience.

We headed out to a busy street with our fish held above our heads, swimming in the air, part of the French Surrealist poetry thing. We got to the crowd and they were at first simply curious and surprised to see us, oddly dressed and all.

Unfortunately, the Iran Hostage Crisis had recently been troubling the public, so when we appeared nobody noticed the fish, they noticed the black hoods and assumed we were terrorists there to make trouble. The crowd surrounded us and somehow collectively decided to shout at us and got quite excited. One of the strangest things was that I recognized a friend, Jim, from when we both attended Thomas Jefferson College, part of the Grand Valley State Colleges as it was known at the time, based in Allendale, Michigan, which is kind of a suburb of Grand Rapids. He was standing right next to me in the crowd. The class we were in was called "Windmill as a variation on Stonehenge" which involved  obstructing an electrical generator powered by the wind. Stonehenge remains to this day but our windmill was gone within a few months after the class was over. One evening when Jim was operating a power drill at the windmill construction site on a windy hill, his long hair got caught in the drill and then suddenly
he had no hair and had to wear bandages for a few weeks after that. That's another debacle story, one involving pain and blood.

I could see it was Jim in the angry mob, but as I was wearing a black hood and busy with the fish swimming in the air, he had no idea it was me, and he started shouting with all the rest, angrily calling for us to return to Iran in shame, and to return the hostages right now, dammit. I was tempted to pull off the hood and say "Hi Jim! Its me! We are performing poetry!" but alas, the moment passed and we were too busy with self-preservation and getting our fish the heck out of there.

We survived, with no physical damage to us or the fish, but it was certainly a performance art debacle. Despite our efforts at promotions our performance at the New Old Brick was sparsely attended and we went on to the Greektown Theater in Detroit, again sharing our ambitious performance art with an empty house.

Promotions and explaining strange new concepts are an important key to successful performance arts, in addition to persistence and the careful cultivation of an audience (and self-preservation). With proper promotions, posters, and flyers to hand out, we could have informed the crowd, before they became an angry mob bent on our destruction, that we were not the terrorists that they assumed we were, and possibly could have enjoyed more popular success. One of the key problems we had was when describing our performance art we sometimes made the mistake of using the word "puppet" which would light up the eyes of the parents and they would pack in the kiddos to our show looking for merriment and a good laugh, as we presented our dark surrealist tales of ecological doom and flaming death on the battlefield. Live and learn, and then eventually die. Enjoy it all on the way!

Penny Grune-Fae

1. One of my earliest was when i was first chair tuba, day of the show, on stage, warming up, i decided to have the entire brass line do the intro to The Pirates Of Penzance. The entire brass line turns the pages of the book to the start of that song, we run it through a few times until i felt we really had it. i do believe we did the opening few measures like 3 times. i felt good, the line felt good. we took a break. the conductor came on stage. did his verbal introductions to the audience. turned around, gave us that "are u ready look?", tapped his baton three times, all the instruments are now in ready position. he looks at me and gives me a nod. the entire line, blasts out in full brass force!!!! he gives me a very angry look..does the universal baton stop!!!! gives me the evil eye.. turns to the audience and says.. you know how brass is.. with all that heavy metal... he looks at me... no smile.. just then all of the brass line notices we never turned our books to the start of the performance. our brass blast.. totally ran over the elegant flute solo.. oops. this was also an interesting happening, i was still in the closet and some stranger comes up to me right when i was just sitting there with my brass line and asks me if i was a girl.. because i did not look like a boy and he thought it was cool a girl was first chair of the tubas. 
the end...

2. another failure. years later. i am very much out of the closet as a woman.. and some of my sisters were getting on me for not dressing up as a cute girl when i played drums at concerts. so one day i decided to finally do it..  i remember it was a hot day, i was drenched, make up was all melt-ie, i was in the middle of long hard run on, my toms, i was traveling the kit from floor toms back to high hat and snare and well my chicken cutlet (a device to make my breasts look better) got hit so hard from my right inner bicep that the chicken cutlet went flying out of my top and crash landed at the foot of bass player, right near his pedal board.. he turns around and laughed so hard we also messed up the song.. he then slowly pushed it back to me, i placed it back on and went on to the next song.. technical difficulty and fashion faux pas. 

i have others... I think these are pretty funny...  

Hal McGee
debacle at Liminal Collisions, MOCA, 2010

I think that this photo might have been taken by Danny McGuire. You can see him in the videos, on one of the balconies overlooking the performance space.

Like so many of the debacles and failed performances cited above, this occurrence was in many respects actually a triumph because of a desire to perform for the pure love of it and because of comradeship between performers who stick together through thick and thin!

In the Spring of 2010 I was invited by distinguished University of North Florida professor Clark Lunberry to perform a special edition of his ongoing Liminal Collisions series. He obtained permission for me to perform at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in downtown Jacksonville, Florida.

I was honored by Clark's invitation and looked at this as a fantastic opportunity to perform electroacoustic improvisation in a high profile public space. I decided to invite two seasoned improvisers from Jacksonville, multi-instrumentalist Jay Peele, with whom I had already collaborated on numerous occasions, and well-known avant garde saxophonist Jamison Williams.

I was pleased to see an advertisement for the show in the local Jacksonville entertainment magazine: 

We arrived at about 6:00 PM to set up our gear, and I was quite thrilled to see that we would be performing in the atrium of the museum, in front of a massive painting by Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell! I brought with me numerous pieces of gear to give myself plenty of options during the proposed one-hour performance: contact microphones, a shortwave radio, a Moog Theremin, plus a Moog Freqbox and Behringer mini-mixer connected in a feedback loop, and four 10-watt Marshall amplifiers. Jay brought a trombone, a trumpet, numerous small hand instruments, an electric guitar, and his trusty Micromoog analog synth played through a Big Briar analog delay. Jamison came and started preparing his alto saxophone. As we set up and plugged in our gear I had high hopes because the setting was so inspiring and I was going to perform with two seasoned and skillful improvising partners.

The entire performance was documented in a series of five artfully filmed and edited videos by Christopher Miller, all of which you can view below.

I am going to let the videos tell most of the story, but I want to share two screen capture photos from the videos that tell important things about the performance.

The first screen capture is a photo of Jay and I playing side by side, in perfect improvisational intuitive partnership, in front of that inspiring Joan Mitchell painting. As you will see below in the videos, Jay stuck with me until the bitter end, through thick and thin. I would like to say that I consider my contribution to this article to be a tribute to him, a real true trouper and one of the best artistic comrades a guy (me) could have!

The second screen cap shows the pivotal moment at about 20 minutes into what had been a successful performance, when Clark Lunberry approached me as I was performing, and said to me:
"The chairman of the board [of MOCA] is here, eating dinner, and he asks if you could turn it down a little. I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed."

We continued on performing, as you will see after a while it was just the two of us, turning "failure" into the performance itself.