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morst's PITOWN 2008 (pt 2)

Labels: Crampout, Greg Lisher, Jonathan Segel, Kenny Margolis, Pappy and Harriet's, Pioneertown, Victor Krummenacher

CVB's San Francisco Super Silver!



25 years ago, some guys in California started a band. Now they have celebrated 25 years by playing a gig at the world-famous Fillmore in San Francisco. Camper Van Beethoven has long been a favorite of mine, and I don't expect that to change soon. As good as they are, they don't seem to draw gigantic crowds, so they can still play cool venues which are designed for music, rather than having to book enormo-domes in every town. They booked a short tour for about a week's worth of gigs in various parts of California, culminating in a 25th anniversary show at the world famous Fillmore. Opening the show was The Cat Heads, who had played shows with CVB back in 1986, and who had not really played out since. Cat Heads drummer Melanie Clarin designed a poster for the show, as did CVB multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Segel. Michael Wertz did the lettering on Jon's design.





Crawdaddy article with a nice David Lowery interview, and featuring a photo by yours truly!




Live at the Fillmore on Archive.org
Setlist:
Mad Russian intro, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, Tania, Eye Of Fatima, Cowboys From Hollywood, Shut Us Down, R 'n' R Uzbekistan, The History Of Utah, Sad Lover's Waltz, Ambiguity Song, Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China, banter - a kiss and a hit, Militia Song, The Day Lassie Went To The Moon, Club Med Sucks, banter, All Her Favorite Fruit, She Divines Water, Waka, Axe Murderer Song, Good Guys And Bad Guys, Skinhead Stomp, White Riot, (I Was So) Wasted, Tina, Take The Skinheads Bowling, banter - popular songs and eyebrows, New Roman Times, One Of These Days, Turquoise Jewelry, Seven Languages, The Humid Press Of Days, I'm Not Like Everybody Else, (We're A) Bad Trip, Interstellar Overdrive, encore break, encore intro cake announcement and band intro, Lottery, The Poppies Of Balmorhea, Where The Hell Is Bill?, encore break, encore 2 intro banter, Devil Song, L'Aguardiente, recordist signout



After the Catheads opening set, Vladimir "Mad Russian" Noskov came out and enthused the crowd to make sure to register to vote, and not to go get shitfaced on Monday, November 3rd, then introduced CVB. Camper played a no-nonsense set of music, interspersed with some great stage banter. Musical rarities included Cowboys From Hollywood, (We're A) Bad Trip, New Roman Times, The Humid Press Of Days, The Poppies Of Balmorhea, Where The Hell Is Bill, Devil Song, I'm Not Like Everybody Else, and The Axe Murderer Song.

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Sunday Sunday Sunday!!!



My friend Glenn took that picture of me on the Sunday in San Fran. When we got back to the hotel room after brunch I told him I was NOT going to spend the afternoon in the hotel room, and so we decided to walk up to the Haight and poke around at a great record store called Amoeba. We had several hours before it was time to activate dinner plans and he had his laptop in the room, so I google-mapped the route to the record store (last week I noticed that google now has WALKING directions and timings added to their map!) and I checked the time and we took off. I figured if it took less than about 75 minutes to walk to where we were going that we would have time to hang out and walk back, but if it took longer we might need to cab back. We wound up having plenty of time, and in fact, while walking back, TOTALLY RANDOMLY ran into one of the friends we were going to meet up with for the show that night outside a coffee shop! I heard "Tom!. . . TOM! . . . TAAAHM!!!!" and turned to look but we had already rounded the corner and nobody was waving their arms. . a moment later I heard "HEY MORST!" and of course I whirled around like "WHAT??" cause that's pretty specific! My buddy Vladimir was waving us down. He was there waiting for a friend he had met the night before, and saw us walk across the street right in front of the shop where he was sitting! "I can't believe I ran into you here!" he said. . . I replied "well, it's a small town!" somewhat jokingly. About two minutes later when his friend who lived right nearby showed up, he exclaimed to her "look who I just ran into!!?" and she just said "Well, it's a small town!" HAHAHA! The trip was full of great little coincidences like that, but that was the funniest!

Then, Sunday night at Bottom of The Hill was the "after party party"- Jon and Victor's solo bands played, and played quite well. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a digital audio recording worth? How about a video?!?!


Victor Krummenacher Band live at Bottom Of The Hill




Jonathan Segel Band live at Bottom of The Hill

Labels: archive.org, Bottom Of The Hill, California, Camper Van Beethoven, David Lowery, Fillmore, Frank Funaro, Greg Lisher, Jonathan Segel, Mad Russian, San Francisco, Victor Krummenacher

morst's PITOWN 2007 (pt 5)

Saturday, Sept 8, 2007
I guess Saturday started sometime around late Friday night, somewhere around dawn, when the last few wakeful stragglers took a walk around Pioneertown, out to the post office, the ORIGINAL OK Corral, and to a peace circle in a resident's yard.









Recording Studio/Barn tour: There was talk of a tour of the barn where Kerosene Hat had been recorded. . . and it was true! A bunch of Crumbs and Hackensaw Boys got to go check out the big room! The previous year, MTP and IAMA2 were given a tour with Bugs Salcido of the place, but it was neat to get inside and check it out for ourselves.



From there, we went over to the beer garden at Pappy and Harriet's for the "Band Singing" which was actually the band SIGNING- all the members of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven were available to sign autographs and chit-chat a bit at this open event. This was one more bit of evidence that these bands are super-cool to their fans! They had a merch table set out, but you could bring in vintage stuff for them to sign too. People brought records, posters, old tour shirts, and other memorabilia for the guys to sign. ALSO Jonathan Segel's handprinted CD covers for HONEY arrived from artist Michael Wertz just in time, and were available for sale for the first time. I think I bought the first one, but since they were numbered, I chose #13/500 for myself. (The first ten went to Jon.)


The Outdoor Stage had a nice variety of acts performing under the desert sun, starting with Sixer, featuring Casey Martin on bass guitar. Casey is the on-again-off-again production manager and sound engineer for Camper and Cracker. Other than his turn on stage with Sixer, he spent the entire weekend mixing sound, mostly on the outdoor stage, but also doing some acts on the indoor one. The Sixer setlist was I'll take another drink so why don't you get yourself one?, Snake Oil Medecine, Truckstop Jesus, Ground Zero, Cedar St. Prison, and finishing with Sugar Water.

Next on the outdoor stage was the Darkmeat Family Band Galaxy. They are a WILD group, weird to look at with their faces all painted, and very complex-sounding, with lots of people on stage. Their set consisted of 5 songs: Freedom Ritual, Dead Man, No One Was There, One More Trip, and Three Eyes Open.


Meanwhile on the indoor stage, Sean Kennedy finally got a chance to play, having missed his slot on Friday. Here we show Sean in the obligatory "Horns" configuration. . .



Next up outdoors were the Hackensaw Boys from Charlottesville Virginia. They have toured with Camper and with David and Johnny's duo tours over the past couple years. Their setlist was Train 45, Dance Around, Blue Run, Radio, Gospel Plow, Baltimore, F.D.R., Oh, Girl, Blue-Eyed Girl, Too Much Time, Miner, Sweet Petunia, Cannonball, and finally Look Out Dog, Slow Down Train. I was glad they allow recording since I was indoors enjoying the Camper Van Beethoven members' solo sets!






Too much fun for one set of ears at the Pitown Crampout! Good thing I had some extra help with the recording gear! Jon Segel was kind enough to let me use his M-Audio Microtrack 2496 digital recorder to record the indoor stage sets featuring the music of the solo Campers.


First was Victor on guitar and vocals, with a set featuring songs from his older material, as well as a number of tunes off his 2007 release The Cock Crows At Sunrise: intro->Nocturne, Not Comin' Back, Sunday Morning Blues, Jack of Diamonds, The Southern Heights, Bittersweet, Motherless Child, Gulf Road, My Baby's Brown Hair, In Queen City The Girls Are Weeping. Joining Victor were Jon on Violin and Mandolin, Greg aka Gerg on the electric guitar, Chris Xefos on bass guitar, Kenny Margolis on accordian, and Andrew Griffin on drums.





Next, Victor switched to bass guitar and Greg "Gerg Rcoks" Lisher played an all-too-brief set of Feeling Cheap, By The Wayside, For Yourself, The Factory, and closing with I'm Sure You'd Understand. His new album TRAINS CHANGE was available at the merchandise booth at the campout, and is now available on his website at GregLisher.com.









The Camper solo sets finished up with Jonathan Segel's set: Orebro, Angels, I Love You, Greedy, Can't Help It, Enough Air, Gravity, Wonder Seeker, and Scars.
Personnel for the jes set was the same crew as Gerg's set, but with some different assignments:


Andrew Griffin - drums
Victor Krummenacher - bass
Greg Lisher - guitar
Jonathan Segel - guitar, vocals
Chris Xefos - guitar, keyboards, vocals












I did not hear much of Steven Brower or Teddy Quinn's set, but the minidisc managed to capture most of them. The minidisc recordings are the only things I have not really gotten through from this year's event, so the details of those sets will be forthcoming when I get a chance to do that.

That's all for this installment of the morst-blog, coming up next time will be Gram Rabbit, Cracker, Jason Molina, Porchstock IIIc featuring trombone solo after trombone solo. . . and some special stuff after that too. . .

Labels: Camper Van Beethoven, Casey Martin, Chris Xefos, Cracker, Dark Meat, Gerg Lisher, Gerg Rcoks, Greg Lisher, Hackensaw Boys, Jonathan Segel, Kenny Margolis, Pioneertown, Sixer, Victor Krummenacher

morst's PITOWN 2007 (pt 4)

Friday, Sept 7, 2007 (ctd): CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN!
I know my photo is lame (I almost always shoot without a flash unless I really need to use it), but my audio recordings are good! The setlist for the Camper set on Friday night was:
Interstellar Overdrive, Club Med Sucks, The Day Lassie Went To The Moon, Seven Languages, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, Take The Skinheads Bowling, One Of These Days, L'Aguardiente, Militia Song, New Roman Times, R'n'R Uzbekistan, Shut Us Down, (I Was So) Wasted, White Riot, Skinhead Stomp, All Her Favorite Fruit, Sweethearts, She Divines Water, Sad Lovers Waltz, Circles, The Long Plastic Hallway, Eye Of Fatima, Tania, and finally ZZ Top Goes To Egypt. . .

I thought it was great that they kicked things off with Interstellar, since that was the song whose presence on Their Third Album convinced me to check out their music, back in 88 or 89. I should have noticed the unusual song order when Club Med Sucks was followed by Lassie, but it had been a full year since I had seen CVB at the 2006 campout, with no live Camper in the interim. I actually left the outdoor stage area during Seven Languages to attend to my indoor recording setup (taper sacrifice!) which was not the best plan, since Camper has really been tearing up the 7Lang this tour. In retrospect, I should have gone out during the following song, but I had set my phone's alarm to alert me, and how was I to know what was to come? It seemed odd but very cool that they got the PoMM and SkinBowl out of the way so early but we still didn't "get it." Shut Us Down > Wasted > White Riot should have been the dead giveaway but again, it had been so long for me without seeing them that I knew there was something unusual going on but just couldn't put my finger on it.

Finally after Circles, they revealed the theme. . . David claimed that they were playing the setlist from the January 2005 show from The Middle East in Cambridge MA, but they were playing it backwards! Jon said "for those of you posting the show on archive.org" (who me?) that we can just take the setlist from that show and backwards it! Then Victor said "Morst is gonna double-check that and bust us" and David added that it might not be the Middle East, it might be Beachland (which is in Cleveland). . . Funny thing is, neither of those shows are on the archive at all, so how will we know for sure?

They closed out the set with the songs they would typically play to get things going, ending with the classic opener ZZ Top Goes To Egypt. A mighty fine set with the most insanely rocking songs played up front, and I even got a personal shoutout from my musical heros! Hard not to like that!!!

After the CVB set, I took down my gear for the move to the indoor stage for the evening's capper- Vermillion Lies. Part vaudeville-style burlesque, part Zappa-inspired stage madness, Zoe and Kim Boekbinder hail from the Bay Area, and play a decidedly quirky mix of instruments in the course of their sets. They also take off their pants, and their show involves quite a bit of audience participation. I had enough time before they started so I could go to the bathroom and change into my pajama bottoms, since I had read on their site that the proper attire for their shows included lingerie and hats, or at the very least, pj's. So, clad in my jammies, (thanks to IAMACRACKER2 for the photo) I set about enjoying and documenting their set.
I don't know their material too well, so the best I could come up with for the list is as follows:
intro, removal of pants, audience training, Global Warming, song for the lobsters?, The Astronomer, Kiss Me On The Lips?, Sisters?, Circus Apocalypse, what's in the box?, merch announcement, Up On That Shelf?, what's in the box?, ?, hostage holding - Dead Wrong, Mommy?

Like CVB, they also played their set backwards, starting with one of their best numbers - Global Warming, after which we all shouted out ENCORE ENCORE, and so they removed their pants (don't worry, kiddies, they had lingerie on underneath!) and proceeded to play the rest of their show. Toy Piano, Accordian, Washboard, Drums, Saw Guy playing the saw, with his pants around his ankles. . . Did I mention that they used some unorthodox instrumentation?
Jon Segel was in the crowd for a while, he seemed to love their set, I am pretty sure that they are friends of his from Oakland, and that he was probably the reason they were booked at the Crampout. At one point towards the end of their set, they asked if we wanted to be held hostage. Well, some of the folks in the crowd may have thought that sounded like a good idea, and before we knew it, they said that they would refuse to play any more music until they sold 5 of their CD's! Luckily, their set was strangely compelling to such a degree that it was a very short break. All in all, it was a wild ending for the second night of the third campout, and seemed to leave folks more charged up than we were before their set, what with all the crowd interaction and what have you?!
Well, not everyone. . . sitting over to my right was a dude who must have overindulged a bit, 'cause he spent most of their set holding his head in his hands. After the show, I think he puked on the floor before he got up and staggered out of the bar, but I managed to get a photo of him. Not really that tough since he was not moving, but notice Mungo's gleeful expression at the situation!


After Pappy and Harriet's shut down for the night, it was back to the motel for yet another spirited Porchstock festivity, in which I actually picked up a stringed instrument or two and picked some notes. I think I had Father Dan's ukelele and then traded that over to Mungo, and wound up with a mandolin in my hands! I am not much of a string player, saxophone and keyboards being my more fluent methods of musical expression, but I realized upon picking up the mando, that I had immediately doubled the number of strings I could play- to two! (Of course, the mandolin has four "double-course" sets of strings, in a similar way to the setup of a 12-string guitar, so I was still playing one note at a time! That's how sax players play, so go figure!)

. . . to be continued, tune in next time for Saturday's story, featuring the band singing, Casey and Sixer, Dark Meat, Hackensaw Boys, Cracker, and much much more!

ps THIS JUST IN, Steve Propp has just released his MATRIX MIX of my soundboard and audience recordings of CVB in PiTown! http://www.archive.org/details/CVB2007-09-07.matrix

Labels: Camper Van Beethoven, Jonathan Segel, Kim Boekbinder, Mungo, Pappy and Harriet's, Vermillion Lies, Zoe Boekbinder