The Wellspring:Gallery of Creations show at WestGate went off spledidly. It was nice to have a "relaxed" set up and sound check... for once not having to worry about being rushed off the stage for whatever reason. I say "relaxed" (with the quotation marks) only because it really didn't turn on exactly that way.

Load-in was peaceful enough. WestGate's stage is HUGE relative to our normal fare. Mark and Rich arrived a little later, roadie-less, and therefore a tad behind schedule. Still had plenty of time though. Its was only when I got everything situated and powered up that I realized my powerbook G4 wasn't charging up. Seeing how my pbook runs all the samples and synths for MI, we were going to be in quite a situation with only %50 power (and falling). Hmmm. No Time to go to the Apple store and pick up a new adapter, nor was there time to go home and grab a spare... Luckily, some fast dialing over to Design Reactor and I was able to catch my friend Jason before he left. He brought over his AC adapter and we were back in business.

The cool thing about this show was the fact that we got to use WestGate's Aviom monitoring and in-ear monitoring system.... And we quite possibly had the best mixes EVER. What a difference in-ears make. Too bad we can't count on IEMs for every show.

The SF Renegades invited us back for this year's installment of the Loud Music Symposium. Odd that we haven't played a gig since last years LMS... But we haven't been entirely lazy. We did do that soundtrack thing. Incidentally, Haunted Highway (what I hear is the new title, formerly Death Ride) is to come out on DVD on August 9th, and will also be released theatrically in Japan.

LMS 7 was held at the recently remodeled Campbell Heritage Theater, not quite as big or majestic as last year's Herbst, but very nice indeed. The sound system was far better (at least from our vantage point) and the same goes for the sound tech crew... Thanks Adam and Jeff! I suppose now we're getting slightly spoiled playing these nice theater venues. The loading areas leave a little bit to be desired... You have either the truck-level loading dock or the Stairs. No Ramps. Bummer.

Our set was short and sweet... 20 minutes. in and out. We debuted "Rendered to Chaos" (check out a short video clip here)... Which went over exceptionally well (with just a few glitches and mis-triggers here or there). The real train wreck came during "Ghost Curve" when Mark busted a string towards then end. Aarrrgh. Of course his backup guitar was the one tuned differently for "Rendered", so there was no easy way out. If we were smarter than we actually are, we would have launched into a bass solo or drum solo... Or something. But alas... Such was not the case.

After a brief pause for re-tuning, we launched into "Jack Palance the Ninja"... A nice way to end the set and take out a little frustration.

After shuffling our gear off stage and tucking it away in the corner, I hung out in the lobby during intermission and was finally able to say hello to some of the folks who actually came out to see us. (Doesn't really happen that often, as things shake out...) Nice to see some new faces, and to put faces to internet acquaintances...

Big thanks to everyone who made it out... Even it it was an abbreviated set. Next Stop: Wellsrping...

Set List:
Intercepted Entropy
Rendered to Chaos (new)
Ghost Curve
Jack Palance the Ninja

Saturday was LMS6... The 6th installment of the Renegades's Loud Music Symposium. With our particular knack for bad timing, this performance happened to be right smack in the middle of when we were supposed to finish up our music cues for Death Ride. We managed to squeeze in enough rehearsal time during the previous week, and when Saturday came around we set the
picture aside for a day and cruised up to San Francisco for a Festival of Decibels.

Rain was threatening, so the drive up to SF under interesting-looking cloud formations was sort of inspiring. Mark and I arrived at the Herbst Theater in plenty of time for load in... Rich was there already, having to perform triple duty at LMS with not only MI, but Mini Corps and the Renegades. The Herbst Theater is a wonderful 900-plus seat venue with an immense stage (or at least more immense than we ever get)... And after a few moments spent checking the place out, we were allowed the stage and began setting up. Sound check proved a little stressful... More bass rig problems (but no where near the problems I had back at the Edge a while back) but once I got those ironed out, everything ran quite smoothly. LMS marked the first performance I was using Reason as opposed to my hardware samplers, so I was a bit leery of that... But everything worked just as it should. The big draw back for the evening was having to strike everything after soundcheck. As big as the stage was, it wasn't going to be big enough for our stuff AND all the acts that needed the stage that evening, so down our rigs came.

We had several hours before we were due to hit the stage (our slot in the lineup was first after the intermission), so it was off to Chevy's for dinner... Then back again to catch the opening of LMS6 - specifically the Phenomenauts. Sci-Fi Rocket Roll indeed. I spent the rest of the first half of the show back stage in our dressing room, basking in the luxury of actually having some time to warm up and prepare - as opposed to our normal routine of hastily setting up, playing the set, then feverishly tearing down. As intermission came upon us, we readied our gear, rolling things into place behind the big red curtain... making the appropriate connections, loading the appropriate samples, and testing the appropriate instruments. Curtain up... We rolled.

The set went off great - no major train wrecks, at least. Though I did catch a drumstick to the head during JPTN. We'll have some video and photos to post soon... So check back shortly.

Set List:
Intercepted Entropy
Ghost Curve
Icarus Aspect (new)
Accidental LoFi
Jack Palance the Ninja

It was great to have a gig so close to home for once. This was our first gig at the Gaslighter Theater in downtown Campbell, appearing again with our shredding friends The Children of Umlaut (and a couple other bands thrown in there as well). The Gaslighter is a very cool western/vaudville style theater (home also to weekly melodrama shows) with a nice, spacious stage and convenient load-in area. We were up first, but we still had to set up like mad (in fact, I had to put together my pedal board and as much of my rack as I could outside in the alley before they opened the loading doors for us). Set up was going quite smoothly until we tried to lift Mark’s guitar rack up onto the stage… and proceeded to dump it on the stairs. No harm though – despite Mark’s worst fears. After coming to an understanding the with house sound tech (they always seem to freak out when we tell them what we’re running and what we need to hook up) we got our sound check… the advantage to playing first. The somewhat light attendance at last week’s show at the Time out was offset by the big show of support we got at the Gaslighter. It was great to see lots of folks from WestGate as well as Design Reactor – the latter being literally 20 feet away from the back door! The set went off swimmingly – no major mishaps… just a few missteps and miscues here and there. The response was great and we moved quite a bit a merchandise, so it was thumbs up all around. We had several folks on hand with camcorders in-hand, so as soon as I can sort through all that video, I’ll post some highlights. Stay tuned.

Update: Check out the spiffy multi-angle cip of Giedi Prime! Special thanks to Nathan Weins, Christopher Martin, Jason Beckwith, Steve Hill, and David Skuratowicz for the camera work.

Set List:
Intercepted Entropy
Jack Palance the Ninja
Ghost Curve
Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program
Beware the Glabyglop
Giedi Prime
Severe Annoyance
Accidental LoFi

Our second gig at the Time Out was slightly hampered by bad weather… It was raining mightily as we loaded out of our little practice studio, and the drive up to Concord was pretty much stop-and-go nearly half the way. We still arrived with plenty of time for set-up and a relaxed sound-check, which of course is never a bad thing. The set went of fairly well… little rough round the edges, perhaps. No songs were skipped due to samples misleading (Glabyglob actually made it into the show this time) though we did have to drop the last song due to time constraints. Funny how when they say “You guys get a set of 40-45 minutes” they always mean 40. Why not say, “You guys get a 40 minute set” and be done with it? Quotation of the evening: When I asked the audience which song they wanted to hear as our last one for the evening, Bad Mind or Accidental LoFi, an anonymous voice shouted out: “Which ever one’s longer!”. Thanks! Check out the video clip here.

Set List:
Intercepted Entropy
Jack Palance the Ninja
Ghost Curve
Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program
Glabyglop (made it this time!)
Botched Civillian
Severe Annoyance
Accidental LoFi

We played our first gig at the Pine Street Bar and Grill in Livermore last night… everything turned out pretty well. The threatening skies did not release their rains until after we had loaded in –so that was a relief. We arrived early with plenty of time to set up and, of course, we used every last available minute. Rich was running his new mixing setup, where he brought his own mics and mic’d up his kit himself… the idea being that we’d just send a stereo feed of the drums to the house. Simple enough, right? Well, we had things pretty much in hand and under control… until the sound guy showed up. I suppose because we were doing things differently that what he was used to it took a little longer to get to the point where we could do a sound check. Ultimately, everything worked out just fine, and the reports from the house were that things sounded great. Performance-wise, things felt pretty good too. Aside from the fact that the samples for Glabyglop were mysteriously absent from the sampler banks (actually… it never got loaded for some reason) everything else came together. We debuted Severe Annoyance… which didn’t really seem to annoy anybody. Hmmm. Have to try harder next time, I suppose. Anyway, if you missed out on the action, take a peek at a little video clip here.

Set List:
Accidental LoFi
Jack Palance the Ninja
Ghost Curve
Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program
Glabyglop(doh!)
Botched Civillian
Severe Annoyance (New)
Accidental LoFi
Bad Mind

The show at the Time Out in Concord went off pretty well. Despite getting lost just off the freeway, we arrived in plenty of time to have a leisurely set-up, which is usually quite rare. As an added bonus, my bass rig actually functioned properly this time (as opposed to the show with King’s X last year where it was throwing sparks in a highly uncooperative manner). Having the best stage manager/tech supreme Brian (Lamby) Lambert on hand once again was truly a delight. Here’s a clip from one of the new songs we debuted that evening… Ghost Curve (2.8 MB – Quicktime Required). Special thanks to Children of Umlaut for helping set up this killer show (and for playing killer set as well!).

Set List:
Jack Palance the Ninja
Ghost Curve (new)
Intercepted Entropy (new)
Accidental LoFi (new)
Botched Civillian
Bad Mind