dragons 1976 hungry brain 10-18-2004

the second night of the phrenology fest and dragons were to play the second set. we hadn't played at the brain since about february, so it was nice to be back.. the first set was played by On Fillmore, a duet with Glen Kotche, who is the drummer in Wilco, and Darrin Gray, a bass player who is from St Louis that plays alot fo different music, he is also in the band Grand Ulena, i think.. they played an improvised set using a wide arrange of small objects amplified to make lots of different sounds, but generally on the low, dark side of the spectrum. not too much harmony or consonant sounds were being coaxed out of the drums by the contact mics nor out of the electric bass that Darrin put bells and mallets on...i thought the set was interesting, but a bit long winded. sometimes a typical thing in improvised music.
after the tear down of their things and the set up of daisy's drums, we were ready to play in front of a pretty full house. we strung our first two songs together - the first getting into some free felt rhythmic acticivty, ending with the dry ballad passage. i've been much happier playing sets without any break in between songs lately, but we took a break after the ballad and before going into brand new. after that we got into an intense cyclical/drone improvisation that finally died down into nothingness. we finished the set with drifting, which i felt we could have done without.
the third set was fred lonberg-hom's lightbox (lite-bach?) orchestra, he had the 2nd citizens take part, along with michael zerang, sture erickson, dave rempis, and a trumpet player named jamie, that i will get the last name for ....she sounded good, just moved here from boston. that set got pretty loud and rambunctuos, but was good & fun. the way the lightbox work is that fred shows instructions and then turns on lights which correspond to different players - if you're lights on, then you are.
it was another good night at the brain, afterwards i got some eats with berman, reed and shevitz at the golden apple over on belmont and lincoln. two egg breakfast followed by a sundae - perfect 2 am eating....