4/20 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 Show. Part 3: Watching Deadstar Assembly, then driving home

Here is the story of the April 20th, 2010 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 Show (or “How I got to Cleveland and how I returned home. Oh, and I saw some bands there too, and some girls with metal underpants.”) This was getting to be too massive, so I'll be writing this in a series of three posts. Part 1, Part 2

My Photostream on Flikr has these pictures plus more, but they're not that great.
My YouTube Channel

Part 3: Watching Deadstar Assembly, then driving home

I talked to Ash from F38 for a little while between the sets. We mostly talked about the Apop show in Columbus, which was epic.

When Deadstar Assembly started their set I was quite happy to get close to the stage. I was right in front of Mubo, but I've seen their videos and knew that I didn't want to stand that close because he rocks the front keyboard forward and back as he plays. So I tried to keep some distance to avoid being right up against the stage. They did end up moving the keyboard further back.
What I liked about this show was that they sounded at about CD quality, but the energy was really good. They move around a lot, it looked like it would be a pretty exhausting pace. The crowd response was okay, but not all that wild, it that may have something to do with it being a Tuesday night show. I thought that they deserved a louder crowd, but I'm only one person and I can yell, but couldn't yell for everyone. It was generally a fun show though. Really loud, I felt that I was sufficiently deafened afterward.
As previously mentioned I did not have my usual group with me to help remember the set list, but that's okay. Maybe, at the next show I go to, I should take clips of each song in order to help me remember these things. In addition to what I captured on video I remember them playing "Breathe for Me." Anyway, here are some seriously short videos from the DSA show. After blowing through my memory cards at recent concerts I was paranoid of taking too much video at this show and then ended up with very little video. I should solve that problem and get a bigger memory card or carry more of them with me. Next time, I will.


F.Y.G


Dejected


The Darkest Star


Send Me an Angel


So those are the four songs that I can put into some kind of order, but not a very good order because there were likely songs before, after or between them. I just bought the Coat of Arms CD that night, but had heard the previews online. I must say that I really like "F.Y.G" and "The Darkest Star."

Here are a couple of my still pictures.






Not wanting to drive home right away, we decided to stick around for a while and see what Project X and Infusion was all about. We got to talk with Dearborn and Dro from Deadstar Assembly for a little bit, they both seem like generally awesome people. Also got some pictures, these were all taken with Melanie's camera. I look like I'm still somewhat freaking out from the caffeine in the pictures, but that's still pretty accurate. Apparently alcohol doesn't trump caffeine.





Melanie's pictures





A couple guys approached us to chat, and we did talk for a bit, but they ran off after I mentioned my husband. Whatever. We watched Project X and Infusion, which was mostly girls in metal-plated underwear getting various power tools, I believe grinders of some sort, put against the metal plates which caused arcs of sparks to fly across the stage. They did this to the beat of some Industrial music. It looked cool enough, but I only paid attention for a couple songs because it was kind of the same thing for those two songs.
I decided that we'd probably be leaving soon and became bored with my beer. So I handed it off to Melanie, she proclaimed it "magic beer" as her plastic cup was instantly refilled most of the way. It was a miracle...or something.
We wandered outside and tried to take some pictures of us outside by the street corner.


After grabbing some food at Steak 'n Shake, where the lady working there reminded us to take some coffee to go, we set up the GPS and were informed that it would be at least 4:44 before we arrived back, damn you technology...


We stopped twice along the way so I wouldn't fall asleep, and actually arrived back around 5:20am. I dropped Melanie off at her place and went home. Walking back from my garage my keyring fell apart and dropped my car key into the yard somewhere. Too tired to care I left it to find at a time when I could actually see it, which I did the next day.


I'll end this with some further info on Deadstar Assembly. I found out about them while looking for covers of "Send Me an Angel" a number of years ago (actually thinking back it was probably sometime in 2004), and when I started actually using my Facebook account earlier this year I became a "fan" on there and signed up to do street team promotions for them in central Ohio.
Over the years Deadstar Assembly have had some line-up changes, but currently the band is made up of Dearborn, Dro, Mubo, Chris D.K. and Dreggs. DSA originated in Florida and have three albums out, which can be purchased on their web page or through Amazon.com (I have that link set up for the "Coat of Arms" CD) and their newest CD can be purchased at some Hot Topic stores (and on the Hot Topic webpage.
Here are some links to their various social networking profiles: Facebook, VampireFreaks, Twitter and Myspace

And this concert write-up is concluded...
I will be writing in the meantime (actually working on a short story about a murderous organic farmer), but will be seeing Voltaire with a solo performance by Wolfgang Parker at Outland on Liberty in Columbus on Friday night, so expect another write-up soon. I'm really trying to work on my turnaround time, but this week was kind of beyond my control. I'll be reviewing my recent CD purchases sometime next week as well, which would be, of course, Deadstar Assembly's "Coat of Arms" and Filament 38's "Frail," along with Caustic's "And You Will Know Me By The Trail of Vomit."

4/20 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 Show. Part 2: Priorities

Here is the story of the April 20th, 2010 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 Show (or “How I got to Cleveland and how I returned home. Oh, and I saw some bands there too, and some girls with metal underpants.”) This was getting to be too massive, so I'll be writing this in a series of three posts. Part 1

Part 2: Priorities, and watching Filament 38

The GPS did not believe that The Breakfast Club/HiFi Concert Club existed, so it took a little driving around to find the correct address. Parking was easy enough, there was a parking lot right beside it and the meters on the street were free in the evenings. The area looked kind of like the Short North in Columbus, so it was a bit of a mind fuck for me, or maybe that was just a result of the massive quantities of coffee and energy drinks I had imbibed during the day. I finally got my chance to walk around, twitch, and didn’t feel much better. We went to stand in line at the door. Doors opened around 8:30pm. I had never been to The Breakfast Club before, but it was a good enough bar. The bartenders were cool, the floor by the stage was interesting and the bathroom that I saw was clean. It was definitely a comfortable enough place to do some drinking and hang out.

First priority: Make it to the show. Second priority: Keep in mind that I have to drive back whenever that time comes. The second priority made way for the third one, which was “Actually buy some merch this time.” That rule was made thanks to my lack of cash at the Apoptygma Berzerk show in Columbus that I previously wrote about here and here.

We checked out the leather items for sale from Crow Leather Works. Combating the caffeine jitters with alcohol, it kind of makes sense. We decided to do some drinking, I did a couple shots of Jäger, and we both had PBR. I never drink beer, but felt inspired by Melanie’s story of getting wasted on PBR and stealing a CD from some hippies when she was in Athens at OU. It sounded like a good time. My husband didn’t believe I was drinking PBR so I had to send him a picture.



The bar was playing some electronic stuff along with some Nu-Metal before the show, so it was kind of a flashback. I remember hearing Adema and Union Underground.
I made my first merch purchases next. Buying a F38 shot glass and their Frail EP. Their CDs can be purchased at the -NGP+ Store. I got a pin and a sticker along with my purchase, so that was pretty cool. I wandered around a little more before buying my Deadstar Assembly stuff (some of their merch is available online here), I wanted a t-shirt and the new Coat of Arms CD, but they had a “Ladies Night” deal, which included a t-shirt or tank top, booty shorts, the CD and three pins for $40. Good enough. I got the more boring-looking pins. I’m weird about having pins with pictures of individuals on them because it reminds me of High School marching band when the parents would wear their kids’ pictures on badges. Creepy.
Anyway enough about my High School neurosis, I talked to the merch guy for a bit, then went to watch Filament 38.

Their show this time went smoothly, without the technical difficulties of when I saw them in Columbus opening for Apop. The last show in general that I went to was at Outland (Only Flesh and Cult of the Psychic Fetus), and I felt there that the sound system, especially when Only Flesh was playing, wasn’t loud enough. This night at The Breakfast Club everything was definitely loud enough which was pretty cool because when the music is loud enough it kind of takes you to a different place and shuts out the world outside. Maybe that's just the deafness setting in, but it is a fun experience. It was loud, but not to the point where I could feel the bass pounding through my ribcage, that's a whole other experience.
I believe that I remember hearing F38's songs Frail and Catalyst, but since this was Melanie's first Industrial experience and I didn't have my group of people to help me, I can't fill in the blanks in the set list. That's okay though, everything sounded a lot smoother than last time because it seemed like the technical issues that they had in Columbus were resolved.
Their light show and fog machines were pretty impressive again. I did not take any video of F38, I mostly got distracted by enjoying the music and trying to photograph the band members that I did not get pictures of in Columbus.

Here are a few of the pictures I did take of Filament 38:




Filament 38 is an Industrial/EBM group out of Cleveland, Ohio. They are comprised of Ash and Sigma, but while doing live shows they add Creep and Jason K. You can find them on Myspace and Facebook.
To be continued...

4/20 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 Show. Part 1: On the Road

Here is the story of the April 20th, 2010 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 Show (or “How I got to Cleveland and how I returned home. Oh, and I saw some bands there too, and some girls with metal underpants.”) This was getting to be too massive, so I'll be writing this in a series of three posts.

Part 1: On the Road, and not much like that Kerouac book other than some driving and craziness
The morning of the event was traumatizing for several reasons, first my husband told me that him getting to work was more important than me going to see Deadstar Assembly, and that if my car refused to start that morning he would have to take his car to work, and I could not borrow it for the Cleveland adventure. Thankfully my car started, and with that I secured the trusted car for my own purposes. I had to put gas in that car now, simple enough, right?
It was simple enough, until the hillbilly in the rape van approached and told me that I had “purdy lips.” Yeah...I stared at him until he got back in his van. There will be no rape van lovin’ with some grizzled hillbilly that I had thought was a rough-looking old woman when I first saw him.
Things got more rearranged when Brannon canceled on the adventure because of work, it’s okay though I know he needs to work any evening he gets since the little old ladies don’t order martinis with their lunches... and no one is buying his screenplays or my cracked out bullshit, so I feel for him. Him canceling though freed us up to leave a little bit earlier, which was okay.

I did have my other friend to go with me still, so say “Hi” to Melanie. The picture is from after the show, and she's kind of short so I had to try to be short too. This will be her first Industrial concert, she usually listens to singer-songwriter stuff...which kind of sounds like Jay Nash.

She used to be into Slipknot and various Nu-metal and stuff like that during High School, as I was--I'll admit it, I saw Disturbed in concert three times because I'm cool like that. Yeah, I know it's not all that "cool," but I had fun. I'm not sure if I can get into Jay Nash's style of music, but along our drive we agreed that Industrial is kind of the darker electronic version of “singer-songwriter." From Melanie’s descriptions Jay Nash sounds like an okay dude, but when I hear “singer-songwriter” I always picture some pompous ass sitting on stage with his guitar. That brings to mind a show that is coming up this week, Voltaire will be playing at Outland on Friday April 30th 2010. :)

We started out our drive listening to what has turned out to be my go-to driving CD The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of The Reverend Horton Heat (just noticed that Rev. Horton Heat will be in Cleveland the same night as the 16 Volt, Chemlab and Left Spine Down show in Cleveland, which is on May 16th) as we departed from Lancaster around 4:30pm. The car has a 6-disk CD-changer, so also included in my driving music were CD's by XP8, Nine Inch Nails, Dismantled, The Matadors and Nick Cave. We drove up 37 through a lot of cute little towns that we said that we’d have to come back and check out, but I always say that when I go through Granville and then I never go back. We saw some interesting churches, a really neat cemetery, and three ice cream places with names like “Dairy Shack” or something along those lines. We stopped at a gas station and somehow got on the subject of music festivals and long distance driving for entertainment with some truckers. We talked Kinetik festival actually, and of musicians traveling from Germany and how much it costs for foreign musicians to come to the states. The one trucker had previously lived in Germany.
Then we drove for what seemed like forever, stopped for dinner at a Wendy’s in some smallish city that I don’t remember the name of, but the people there looked at me like I was the first weirdo that they had ever seen. And they were even staring at Melanie, which is kind of hilarious because she usually wears khaki and pink, but was decked out in black on this occasion.
We drove some more and after an hour or so, started to see surroundings that looked Cleveland-like, which was good since I was starting to get caffeine-related jitters and the urge to walk around in an attempt to dissipate the twitching. Melanie told me to not have a stroke or heart attack because she had to be at work the next day.

To be continued...

The odd, or artsy, pictures from my Cleveland adventures

I'm going to split this up a little. I have most of the pictures edited, but don't have the write-ups done. I'll aim for that tomorrow--today? Well, Friday anyway--, but most likely that too will be posted in phases over the weekend. I'll be taking advantage of no cover night at Outland on Friday, so I won't be sitting at the laptop writing or editing this evening.

Tonight I will post my weird, "artsy" sounds so much nicer, pictures from the April 20th, 2010 Deadstar Assembly and Filament 38 show that took place at The Breakfast Club in Lakewood, OH. I will likely be solving the not-that-great camera issue soon. Thinking about buying a digital SLR.
I believe that I have previously mentioned that I like light and movement. I also like how cameras interpret these items-- when it turns out nicely, not when I'm left with a blurry mess. Industrial shows are perfect for finding my kind of interesting. Lights, fog machines, lasers and people who don't hold still.

Filament 38


Deadstar Assembly

Music promotion, yeah it's kind of like that

I've been working on my little (and not that entertaining) writing project, and recovering from my Cleveland journey. Sorry, for the delays.
In my process of handing out fliers in the Central Ohio area for Deadstar Assembly I mostly just found places to post them where I thought the cool kids would see them. I also enjoyed putting fliers over religious pamphlets when I found those while out, someone moved one that I put over a pamphlet stashed by the pay phone at a grocery store, so I put another one down. Amusing, especially with the whole "F.Y.G." song on their Coat of Arms album.
I handed some directly to people as well, and one kid--I would guess he was about 14 or 15-- said that he had heard of Deadstar Assembly and that he had actually paid money for a couple of their songs. Maybe there is some hope for the youth.
I will also be telling everyone about the Midi Ghetto Tour featuring 16 Volt, Chemlab and Left Spine Down which will be coming through Cleveland at Peabody's. Oddly enough when I stopped at a gas station on the way to the DSA show I talked music festivals with some truck drivers and the trouble international musicians have in getting to play in the USA. I got to tell them about Kinetik Festival--and how I can't pull off driving 24 hours total for the May 16th shows. Have to justify the driving time by how long I'd be spending at the location...or at least close to that.

I'll be back sometime over night to post my DSA and F38 pictures and write-ups.

Faderhead love and the Victorian Fetish Party at Outland, other stuff

This is what I did a couple Saturday nights ago... but it all started in the morning when I saw faderhead was on the Vampire Freaks Industrial board. I thought, what the fuck I'll send him a note and express my love for his music and how we're trying to get more of his songs to play at Outland (they do a pretty good job already though). So I hit send, and he hit me back with a reply quite promptly (I was impressed because I had been waiting on an e-mail with some concert info from someone else and that took a couple days). Very nice guy. He suggested a couple songs I could request, so I intended to do so at the fetish party. I did not see the request sheet out and the night moved pretty fast, so requesting songs got lost in the shuffle of drinking, dancing, smoking and seeing the human pony show.
So we have Zigzag Machinery


And this was apparently packing the dance floor wherever Faderhead was at that time--


Here is my entertaining twitter exchange from that night:

faderhead: Making me very happy: Limp Bizkit "Rollin'" is eliciting the most energetic crowd response at this goth/ebm/darkelectro night! Awesome! :))

jLannan @faderhead awesome. We get DJs at Outland to play "Baby Got Back" ... some people got really pissy about it though

faderhead: @jLannan Fuck them!!!!! :)


So, with that tweet Faderhead became one of the coolest people that I've never met in person.

It seems like some of the most entertaining moments happen on the smoking patio and tonight was no different. We hung out under the tower, which I said was "romantic" and Gary declared as "phallic." Classy.
Amanda informed us that Nicolle is her mother's hero because she fixed Amanda's vacuum cleaner, and they're just like family. aww....
Nicolle made a comment about Facebook and Farmville, which none of us actually play. I got to talk about some guy that I have an awkwardness with that I gave my facebook info and he asked if I played farmville. I felt that he wouldn't add me because I think he's still with his wife who he was "thinking about separating from" when we worked together.
Then Amanda celebrated that Gary and James are the only two of her friends that she believes will never fuck each other. Hurray for them, but that raises plenty of other questions. All of them naughty.
The guy sitting alone at the round table appreciated our banter.
I have some pictures from that night, but a brief over view of the shows--

Glamazon Bunny was there, being a big, tall, toned lady.

Trigger the human pony frightened me because he wore old man socks and sensible shoes. It made me wonder if all old men are secretly human ponies in their free time.

Sinstress Maya fucked a blow=up doll with a strap on. That was fun.

She later did a show involving a fan dance and some oil. Good times. I was in the front row, but she had some other lady rub the oil on her breasts... good to watch, but it could've gone better for me. ha ha ha

Domina Snow did a show, but the evening was blurring together for me at that time. I remember belly dancing and lesbianism, faux humping on stage.

I danced on stage with Amanda and Nicolle. It was generally a good evening.

This is just a quick overview because I've been MIA recently. Busy, busy...or lazy, lazy. Either way I've been doing my writing projects, being bummed out about Peter Steele's death, BBQing with friends (we listened to Type O Negative while BBQing this past weekend), and doing street team stuff for Deadstar Assembly and will be heading to Cleveland tomorrow...later today? for the show.
I have some comments on music promoting that I'll probably post in the morning, but for now, it is nap time.

Peep Massacre 2.0

This is the 2nd time I've played with my Peeps and photographed it, but I think the only pictures I have left from that first Peep massacre are on the icon associated with my Twitter account. This is all the same set-up from different angles, what you're looking at here is a zombie peep devouring it's three regular peep victims.
As far as supplies go I made a tray of strawberry banana jello and added blue, red and green food coloring to it to make it more blood-like. I also did not add as much water as the recipe suggested, so the texture was thicker. After I forgot about it, it sat in the fridge for almost a week after doing these pictures and yesterday the texture felt kind of like translucent liver.
Zombie peep is covered in powdered sugar for pallor and cocoa power for the dust associated with rising from the grave. It's mouth was ripped open with a toothpick and I put rose-colored Wilton's Icing Colors gel food coloring into the mouth with a tooth pick.
The head injury puddle of the one peep is the jello mixture that I crushed into bits by hand. Chopping the jello made the lines too regular-looking.
The peep that is ripped apart only had the gel rose coloring initially, but I discovered that putting a few drops of liquid red food coloring into the severed marshmallow and squishing that into the wound made a pretty neat effect. It kind of became like the insides were meant to be red instead of white marshmallow.
The ripped apart peep and the peep being eaten by the zombie both have food coloring and crushed jello pressed into the slashes across them. The light picked up really nicely through that, giving them the illusion of having more innards.
I also have a couple vampire peep pictures, but I haven't uploaded those yet.
I set the peeps up in a large box with foil that I added texture to with a toothpick as the floor in order to create more variety of light and shadows.

I have family stuff to do this weekend, not completely looking forward to doing much of anything though because I think I'm getting some dread illness that it just going to add to the adventure. We are going to check out Haffa's in Athens tomorrow morning, so that journey will hopefully find me some interesting new vinyl. In boring life-related news I have laundry, cleaning and sewing to work on. My sewing list is still rather long and increasing since I haven't completed much of anything, and I've taken on another project, but this one will actually pay some money if I get all the information and can actually start on it.
I feel that I have the most free time, but the least accomplished which is disappointing.
I promise to do better next week.





Happy Easter if you're into that sort of thing, and have a great weekend regardless.
I'll have more pictures once I get them uploaded.