the show last night at harvard radio was kind of a mess, but still fun. it was a weird show, but i have the feeling it was good radio. the lecture was really great too. when i got to the studio lukey dragons was in mid-lect, and i jumped in only to find that we were right on the same page. remembering that the topic was “punk before 1977″, luke and i played kraftwerk, half japanese, the shaggs, hasil adkins, ornette coleman, albert ayler, and some of the later esp records caveman psych stuff. pretty awesome. luke, i find out, teaches electronic music at brown university! i told him he should have me come in and lecture his class, and as he should, he took my suggestion with a grain of ginger, if not salt. during the lecture he said that stockhausen invented bleepy bloopy music, i said that’s subject to debate, he said no it isn’t. pretty awesome.

tonight we’re playing the zeitgeist gallery in cambridge, at midnight. the show has a lot of ups and downs, energy wise, but good.

i’m in canton at luke’s house, goofing off until we drive to boston for our on-the-radio show. someone asked if i would and i said i would but now i don’t want to but still i will give a lecture at harvard on the topic of punk before 1977, immediately before our performance. isn’t that kind of peculiar?

i’m getting ready for this tour, which i think is going to be really fun. it’s now seven acts, i think, with hopefully all of us playing very short sets that run into each other. lazy magnet is on board, i’m pretty pumped to hang out more with him. robin amer is coming along to tape stuff for her archive show… it’ll be good. the past couple of days i’ve been mostly just getting my set together (i’ve almost got it down to a comfortable level of off-the-cuffness).

the last couple of stuffed animals, in order of most recent to least: a goon (based loosely on the goon from the old popeye newspaper comics), a kind of crappy vampire bat, a keith haring baby *or* ORZ (here’s more about orz), a wet cigarette (still lit), and a parakeet that clips on to your shoulder (pictured). i’ve very happy about the parakeet’s design, and have manufactured 12 of them to sell on this tour (i am touring as “jacob bird hospital” so it’s especially appropriate).

tonight me and parsons went to a pretty awesome show: noise nomads, bromp treb, vampire belt (with thurston moore), john “sissy spacek” weise, emil beaulieau, jessica “can’t” rylan. at the schoolhouse, in hadley. i gotta say, it was pretty crucial. noise nomads has a new set that’s a mic (on a little baby stand) in front of an amp, with an array of pedals. good, but not the slobbering intensity i love from him. bromp treb was in fine form, “in the zone” as it were, playing effects pedals and tape loops and stuff. i was describing bromp treb to parsons beforehand and this was our conversation:

jpb: he’s real…
kpars: sexy?

jpb: yes, but in a way… well, what do you think when i say “sexy”?
kpars: uh, wet + chiseled?
jpb: yeah, he’s not sexy in that way, but i’m confident that, having seen him, if i ask you, “well, would you say he’s sexy?”, then you would say, “yes.”.

so what, gentle reader, am i talking about? oh, you know, real life-affirming, joy of the flesh, joy of interpersonal communion. what do i need to draw you a diagram? of course i didn’t mention any of this when we spoke after the show. oh but i did plant the seeds of an upcoming release modeled after al “he’s the king” hirt’s “cotton candy”. you know, bromp “he’s the king” treb. additionally homeboy flowed me some new jams and i’m amped. after BT was this thurston moore guy. it was definitely good, it was like, you know, the end of a rock song when everyone goes crazy, but for a half hour rather than ten seconds. everyone was way into it but i feel like it was more because of the other guitarist, for whom it was a sort of homecoming, and who charged into the messy crowd and got messed up a couple of times. they both had peavey amps- i liked that. next up was john weise, from sissy spacek, and bastard noise. we talked a little about the cobra split 7″ cody sent me, which is 1/2 him and 1/2 little kids freaking out. i had a hard time getting into his set in part because i have a hard time with laptop guys. the problem is one of transparency and physicality. physicality means slapping a solid state pedal vs clicking a mouse. transparency means that i don’t know what your laptop is doing and what you’re doing. also just no one wants to watch a person behind a computer. maybe playing with your back to the audience, so they could look over your shoulder, that would help. i don’t know, i feel like more thought needs to be put into this on the performance end of things, but maybe that’s my problem. after john was emil beaulieau, who i had seen before, and liked more before because i could see him. western mass is the land of tall dudes and it’s kind of a bummer when you see a show and the dude’s sitting on the floor with tall dudes in a surrounding phalanx. some ideas i had to fix this: position the performers in the middle of the floor (increasing surface area of the performer), and have milk boxes for people towards the back to stand on. they are free and a good thing to have around in supply. or build a stage that’s like, 4 feet tall, which you’d have to admit would be pretty awesome, considering the space has an 8 foot ceiling and no one over 4 feet tall would be able to stand on it. from what i could ascertain, emil did his standard set of phonograph record player with mutliple tonearms, microphone made out of a tuna can. after him was jessica rylan, who was amazing. i remember reading an interview with wendy “switched on bach” carlos, talking about how the synthesizer musician has to be both a good musician in a classical sense and a good engineer. i feel like if wendy carlos saw jessica rylan she would shit her pants, as she is operating on new levels in both these regards. homemade synths without keyboard controllers, which sometimes play themselves, leaving her to play the way the play themselves. tonight’s set had her singing into the synth, set in such away that it gave a harsh tremelo on her voice which got faster when the volume of her voice was quieter (after a drop-off). oh man it was beautiful. bought the record, a picture disk though pricey. still i’d be a fool not to.

conversation round-up

look! dates posted for the stampede of precocious adults tour!

well, i sure was productive last night, too bad i fucked up all the t-shirts i was printing! waaah! last night’s stuffed animal was a bottle of window cleaner, which reminds me both of whistler’s mother and a weasel. the night before was this nice fan of ground zero (i’ve been listening to all of abel’s otomo yoshihide cds, there’s one of them in the background). previously mentioned but unphotographed is the swamp creature with energy arm, which pars brought back from providence where i left it on accident.

parsons got the job going around to schools doing flashy science experiments. at the request of the two guys she works with, she has adopted a science-related nickname, that being kelley kinetic.

jack w h turnbull asks: “is the jason purdy you’re playing a show with the same person as jasonpurdy.com?”. jwht, i don’t know. but i do know that that is some busted webdesign.

in other news: jacobberendes.com. i new it was going to happen and i’m not upset at all.

i tried to make candied ginger by soaking ginger slices left over from ginger tea (a usual late night repast) in a supersaturated solution of sugar water but all that happened was i made ginger syrup. tonight i put a generous helping of the syrup in my yerba mate with a scoop of baking cocoa and i know what you’re going to ask: was it delicous but also sandy? and my answer: yes, it was both these things. i see mate at the health food stores and let me tell you- that’s the chump shit. go to the brazilian store and get the big square bag. you will be unable to strain out all the grit, and this is how you know you’re getting what you paid for. in other brazilian store news: john’s brazlian food installed really nice wood siding with a dark stain, then changed their sign so “brazilian” was spelled right, then went out of business. i never went in because my understanding was that the only thing worth it was the buffet, but also everything in the buffet was carc-o-centric. i would walk by in the early evening and there would be some sort of religious meeting with acoustic guitars and people singing and crying. now it’s a vietnamese restaurant. the brazilian pants store on park ave is still enticing but i’ve decided that in order to not be a creep i can only go in with someone who is committed to actually buying brazilian pants. the brazilian store on highland street is still there i think but i only ever look at the model trains in the window– i have no idea what they sell, although i guess kevin built up a rapport with the guy, even helping him set up an email account (or this is a complete unknowing fabrication on my part). who among you is brave enough to buy me dinner at the vietnamese restaurant and then go brazilian pants shopping then look at the trains?

this morning ryan seaton and art and their friend sarah (not sara t) drove to worcester for tea and and it was pretty great. also i rode my bike to my mom’s house and worked on the enourmous plush squids i’m making for the dirt palace. it’s going to be great, but i still need packing peanuts and time is ticking away (as it frequently does).

fujichia: what do you think, we write letters all day?

i’m not going to lie, it’s been some hard days while i think about weird things. but at the same time i can’t front on the seven vegan pizzas i tasted for dinner.

this new england noise tour i’m going on next week is coming together pretty nicely. no dates are totally totally settled, so until further notice, freedom music fans of massachusetts and rhode island, keep the latter half of the week free.

here’s the last couple of days of one-a-day stuffed animals, in order chronologically (does not include today):
monitor,
fertilized egg,
six-legged and four-eyed (pictured),
creature with hideous face and short crest,
snake eating its own tail,

space shuttle with booster rockets,
sawfish.

yesterday we went to the open artist studios thing at the sprinkler factory, which is the building that houses the WAG. it was really great- good to see the rest of the space (which is gorgeous) and good to see the artists, a good number of whom were making really great stuff. i ran into a lot of like-minded friends who were there to check out the scene and get free coffee, and that was very fine as well. jason and anne from DC FIY were there and twisted my arm to be in a noise show they’re booking (with fat worm of error and tentatively thurston moore, so stakes is high!). also i laid it on thick about how they should let me design and print new DC FIY shirts for them and i think they bought it (design linked is a collaboration with mel soder). at night we made pizza; pars, mel, jj bucks and myself. this morning, potato chips for breakfast.

ha! many moons ago my good friends polina and bigfoot paul were traveling in europe and asia and found themselves at a radio station in belgium. so they called me up and put me on the radio, singing and playing the ukelele and saying swear words (which is totally fine over there). well the dj on the station was dennis tyfus and now he’s living at little pancakes in providence for a month, and generally goofing off. he publishes a zine called ultra eczema, the webpage for which is here (it’s noisy). he’s one of those guys that makes friends very quickly. would you believe that effective this morning we’re going on tour? in a week? details tba but so far it looks like a circus of small acts doing a one-week new england tour: providence, boston, worcester, lowell, hadley. tentative acts are dennis & polina (as “fake hippies”), me (resurrecting my “scientific boxer” persona, playing saxophone to live autonomous laptop remix accompaniment), luke helmet head, heart2heart, and lukey dragons. 10 minute furious jamz! bzzt!

today i walked over to downhill battle offices to print some stuff out. the best thing i saw was graffitti on the wall of the bus kiosk in front of worcester state college that was a list, in a hurried hand, of all the soft machine albums, including greatest hits.

lately i’ve been thinking a lot abou thow very still water can cool to below freezing and not freeze. also, how hot water ina freezer freezes faster than cold water. i’ve been reading the sun ra biography. it’s good.