The Nurse With Wound shows this weekend at the Great American Music Hall were both quite excellent. Jen and I both went on Friday night. We left Willow safely ensconced at the house of Baby O, which meant that for perhaps the first time ever we could stay out as late as we wanted to. We chose to park in the parking garage across the street rather than circle for half an hour looking for street parking. We probably would have spent an amount equal to the garage fee on gas if we had decided to try our luck on the streets.
The venue itself was packed with friends, both local and out of state (and country, for that matter). It was good to see Dax out and about, as well as friends from the east coast, Chicago, Seattle, Texas... and probably other places I'm forgetting at the moment. The merchandise table was stuffed with cds, vinyl, cassettes, shirts, and a nice show-only poster. The audience was on the older side (mostly thirty and forty somethings - I didn't really notice this until a friend pointed it out on Saturday).
Friday's opener was a curious character (actually a street performer from Santa Cruz) calling himself the Great Morgani. With his costume on, he resembled nothing so much as a giant, multicolored sea anenome. His accordian was costumed as well, making it indistinguishable from the rest of him. How he managed to play it with all of the bristling appendages flopping this way and that, I'll probably never know, but play it he did, including a french waltz version of "Stairway to Heaven" which was met with great approval from the audience. In fact, he was called back for an encore. Poor guy had a deal of trouble navigating the stage under all of the costumery, but fortunately he succeeded.
Nurse for the evening consisted of Steven Stapleton, Colin Potter, Matt Waldron, Richard Faulhaber, Stan Reed, Frieda Abtan, and Andrew Liles, with brief visual help from recordists William and Sherri, who unfortunately had a slight misunderstanding with the backstage security guards that limited the amount of time they were out on the main floor. Salt Marie Celeste provided the musical backbone for the evening, with everybody adding sound on top of it. Colin later said that they had discussed making it minimal, but seven people being minimal ends up not being minimal. At times it became downright deafening, with the entrancing visuals provided by Frieda and the hypnotic waves of sound sucking the audience into another world. Towards the end, William and Sherri appeared dressed as passengers from the ill-fated Marie Celeste. A seemingly indeterminate amount of time later (Vic, who had been watching the projector and timing it said it was actually about 65 minutes) things came to a halt under waves of applause. I think Colin's exact words at that point were, "thank you. You're very kind, and most likely deaf."
Afterwards, Jen and I, accompanied by William, Sherri, Matt, and Steve, ended up at a twenty four hour grocery store where, chicken, bread, and yummy cinnamon rolls were purchased. We ended up getting home around three - to a house with no kids, I might add. That was kind of strange, actually.
On Saturday, with nobody to watch Willow, I ended up going by myself. I picked up the recordists and helped them transfer their masks and little table to the venue. Once there, we discovered that Dawn and Nils were there as part of The Sun and Moon Ensemble, a local puppet troupe featuring very large puppets (go look on my Flickr page to see what I mean). They put puppets together and went through some moves while Nurse soundchecked. Nurse for the evening was minus Stan and Frieda (although Frieda's visual were still in place) and plus Moe! Staiano and Lana (although Lana only made a brief appearance on electric washboard near the end of the evening).
When things got started, the Sun and Moon Ensemble swept in from all sides and soon large puppets were gyrating through the audience and into a cleared area in front of the stage. Dawn was in there somewhere as one of the mermaid creatures (or sea hags...) and Nils made an appearance as a strange, stick-wielding monkey. Afterwards, Moe! did a record breaking set (literally) during which he played 78 vinyl like drums, reducing them to shards. It's interesting that so many different tones can be produced from a handful of records. As the pieces got smaller, higher tones were produced.
The Nurse set for the evening was no longer pinned down by Salt Marie Celeste. Moe! melded in nicely, and was actually more restrained than he usually is. William, Sherri sat at a small table center stage, and Greg sat in front of them, all with the recordist-produced masks in place. William and Sherri turned out a number of surreal little poems during the set, and Greg delivered them to random audience members. At least one of them has shown up on Flickr already. The combined effect of the music and visuals again was both humorous and slightly disturbing (in the best possible way). It's amazing how effective cardboard masks can be. The music really clicked as well, with little rhythmic bits sometimes emerging from the swirling sound and then submerging again, and other unidentifed noises weaving their way through the mix. A Truly stunning evening, to say the least. Hopefully there are more to come. Steve, Colin, Andrew, and Matt are doing a non-Nurse With Wound set in Portland tomorrow night, which should be great as well.
There was an after party, but I decided to go home and sleep instead since I had told Stan I'd show up for his set on KFJC the following day. Stan and his two compatriats record under the subtle monicker of The Broken Penis Orchestra, and on Sunday I briefly became a member (pun intended, of course). Their instruments are their record collections, so I brought along as much of mine as I could stuff into an old Amoeba records bag and joined them at KFJC. Three of us spun discs and Stan, with his bank of effects pedals and other equipment, altered the sounds on the fly. A particularly nice juxtoposition was a song about sodomy (from the Meet the Feebles soundtrack) played directly before an exerpt from a Jerry Falwell speech. Heh. I'll have to hear a recording of the event sometime.

Today I was back up in the woods teaching a science camp about reptiles. I've got fourteen kids, including a boy diagnosed with something called "general anxiety disorder." That's a new one for me. He did okay though, and has an aide along to help out. Camp is over at 1 pm every day, and the time just flew. One of the girls took notes the entire time. Why can't kids at science school do that?