Turntable

I met up with Kip at the Concourse before the show last night. He's in Cloudland Canyon and is the guy who got me in touch with Shangri La about maybe helping out with the festival. He has an apartment there and wanted to talk about music and stuff and look at synths and show me some stuff. He recently moved back to Memphis some months ago. Found out he used to be one of the people who ran Odessa. That's cool. I used to really like that place. Had a pretty good time. He gave me a few lps of his/his label: Cloudland Canyon: An Arabesque, Cloudland Canyon: Fin Eaves, Psychic Reality: Chassis, Food Pyramid: Ecstasy & Refreshment, M. Geddes Gengras: Interior Architecture, and M. Geddes Gengras: Test Leads. Then we went down to meet Mary Beth and catch the Maria Chavez and Christina Carter show. They played together. Maria had a turntable and lots of broken records she built up very musique concrète sounds with lots of surface noise and bumps. Christina just did vocals. She started out on the staircase and eventually moved up through the room to the stage. They also had some speakers pointed out over the stairs, making use of the acoustic space of the atrium area. It was a really great show. Towards the end there was this short piece where Maria had two kids on stage putting the broken pieces of record onto the turntable with her. Seeing their utter joy while putting these records on and reacting to the sounds they made was one of the most delightful things I've seen at a show in a long time. And Christina wrapped up with a short solo voice piece. Talked to a bunch of people, had a good time. Kip left sometime in the middle 'cuz his kid was with him and was not so into the abstract turntable and vocals! Later I met up with a few stragglers at DKDC where Maria did a dj set. I was like an hour "late" but the band who played before was still taking down and it hadn't started yet. She played a pretty straight dj set (all laptop, not records) with lots of house, some nice synth tones in there. Some people danced. Just staying awake was a challenge for me. Now it's the next day and alright! Woke up a bit earlier than I should have given how late I got in, but whatever. I'm apparently playing a show tonight with Nonconnah at the P&H and Maria and Christina are playing too. Should be fun as hell.