Assemblage 23 at Skully's May 7th 2010

Melanie was running late for her babysitting duties which paid off her Voltaire show debts, but we were kind of running behind as well. A quick dinner of pizza, and while we waited for Melanie I cut up and razorbladed some glittery tights that I've had since I was thirteen and turned them into crazy thigh-highs. Melanie showed up to babysit, so James and I set out. I finished a wine cooler somewhere between leaving my house and arriving at Amanda's place. James and I argued about something along the drive, but whatever we're both kind of people who don't know when to shut-up or what words to hold back, so it happens. That's when my knee was injured, inadvertently. It was a bad knee already, but it was definitely not improved by having a car door ran into it.

Amanda's party was a bit of a downer when we were there because hardly anyone had been there long enough to start drinking, plus it was being held for a guy who was losing his job for a really stupid reason. At this little party Nicolle and Amanda may have been kind of drunk at the point we arrived, but all Nicolle could do was talk about how big her beer was, so maybe she was pretty drunk already. We got to see Gary's new half sleeve tattoo, which is still in progress. Made me jealous, but I will have new tattoos soon, so that will all work out.
I helped myself to some vodka, it was a lower proof than what I'm used to, but it was free for me so I can't complain. I had two small purple glasses of vodka with a little cola added in to mask the delicious cheap vodka flavor.

James and I had to go onward though, finished our trek into the Columbus area, with the unnecessary help from the GPS, which talks in a spooky voice and makes comments about werewolves and Route 666. I think the voice is called "Dr. Nightmare." As we found a place to park there were minor signs of rain, and I hoped that it would hold off long enough so we could safely get the camera to and from the venue, and so that we could chill on the smoking patio for a while during the show. It held off long enough, we went to The Joint for our little clove cigars before walking back across the street to Skully's. We decided to wander around, have a cigarette and find some people, before starting our tab.

We had missed Encoder completely, but ended up with one of their stickers. I was listening to some of their music earlier in the day because I knew that I had heard them at some previous occasion and didn't really pay attention that time, but wanted to give them another listen.

Angel Theory was on stage when we got there, but I only heard their last couple songs. I can't give a really accurate impression from that, but will post the links to their Webpage, Myspace.

James and I sat at a table on the smoking patio, as soon as the cloves were lit the wind kicked up and it already seemed like trouble. We saw the guys from Filament 38, so went over to chat and buy our 16Volt/Chemlab tickets. While hanging out at the other side of the smoking patio the wind started up again and killed the only full beer on their table. Shouldn't the empty bottles have been the first to go?
We intermittently hung out with the guys from F38, did some drinking, tried to get some decent pictures and tried to find my friend Sarah who remained lost in the crowd because she was wearing dreadfalls, and even though she apparently waved at me I didn't recognize her.

Assemblage 23's set seemed really massive, but I'm not going to complain because it was awesome and I could listen to Tom Shear sing forever.
I took some notes on my cell phone's notepad, which I was damned impressed that I was able to read them and most of it was spelled correctly. Yeah, even when drunk I'm a spelling Nazi, I do let the grammar slide a little because that would probably end up being impossible to police. My notes describe the set as being Binary, Damaged, Naked, a couple songs from the new CD, Document, Let the Wind Erase Me, Disappoint, Spark, Sorry, Divide, Let Me Be Your Armor, Ground. One song was an exclusive mix for the tour if I remember correctly, but I did not indicate which song that was in my notes. As far as watching Assemblage 23 there was a small stage set up with the music being performed by Tom Shear and one other guy. Tom moves around the stage enough, but doesn't get into too many crazy arm movements or jumping around. I think it would be kind of uncharacteristic if he did.

We started out pretty far away from the stage and wished for the better zoom lens, but near the 2nd half of the set we decided to push forward and to the left side of the stage, which is about where we stood when we saw Apoptygma Berzerk at Skully's. For some reason the left side of the floor seems most sparsely populated. Some more people moved away from the stage, so we took the opportunity to take their prime locations.

Here are the pictures with the new camera, James took some of them and I took the rest, but I can't tell you who took which pictures. The one where there is a lot less red lighting is one that James took because he used the flash a few times, and I was not using the flash at all. We only brought the smaller zoom lens with us for this show. My editing was a lot easier because the quality was so much better with this camera, and the lighting was rather simple and not that challenging to photograph through.











Here is another one of those not that great pictures that looks kind of cool and artsy. It looked better at a larger resolution, but Flikr makes the pictures kind of small. Notice the mirror on the side of the stage? Skully's has mirrors on either side it's kind of disorienting to look at them in the dark sometimes.


We were hanging out by the bar area for a while as the set finished up and were given fliers advertising Ego Likeness and System Syn CDs. I'm not sure about System Syn because I don't remember if I have heard them or not, but I haven't gotten into listening to Ego Likeness no matter how much my Last.fm recommendations list tries to throw them at me.
I think some people were debating going to Outland, and for a while I considered it, but felt a responsibility to go back to Amanda's to possibly throw things from the balcony. James and I ended up going to The Dube instead to get a snack, by this time my alcohol mixing was catching up to me and eating a giant chili dog suddenly seemed like a bad idea. In my years of drinking I have still managed to not puke. Great success.

We returned to Amanda's as that party was winding down, chatted for a bit and then left, heading on our way back home.

I love Amazon.com's MP3 service, I was thinking about how I needed to listed to A23's "Spark" about a million times, so I went on Amazon, found the album (I could have just bought the one song if I felt like), one click purchase, and now I'm listening to the Compass album. It's like magic, and I know I could go to some torrent site and get the whole discography for free, but that's kind of a dick move. If a song or CD is really rare, or older, or I can't find it on my own I will use a torrent and do the asshole thing, but if you like a band and they have some music that you can buy, then you really should make that purchase. Or apparently there's some tiny amount of money to be made when people listen on Last.FM, but it's very little from what I've read.


Assemblage 23 is Tom Shear and is currently based in Seattle. A23 can be found online, on facebook (I couldn't get the link to behave, but Tom Shear is on there) and on myspace. And he runs a blog called Waveformless.
On a side note the first Assemblage 23 album that I actually bought was Storm. I ordered it from Metropolis and I had gone home to check the mailbox between a college final and a little party I was supposed to go to celebrating the end of finals week with some people from a US History class. I got in my car, started listening to the CD, drove to the bar and decided that I'd rather cruise around listening to Assemblage 23 than go to the party.