Jackson, TN

Made the drive up to Jackson yesterday. I left a lot later than I'd initially intended but it was definitely for the best as I ended up getting there only a little bit before the music started. The "start" time listed was a couple hours before the music started. It's basically a big two-day house show. At the very first it's a little awkward 'cuz I don't know the people, but Zachary and Denny showed up not too much after me. The first person to play was The Corrupting Sea and his stuff was really good. Electronic, ambient, lots of field recordings. I even got a t-shirt and a couple cds off him: Samatta and Symphony of a Radical. When I bought all that he said I'd broken a record 'cuz previously the most number of things anyone bought at a show before was one, now shattered by three! Next was Ostri which was an improv jam thing of a bunch of the Jackson people in a bunch of the other bands. Seems like there's a lot of the same few people reconfiguring themselves for different projects. Some of their stuff was pretty good and borderline krauty but they have a bit of a silly streak that didn't appeal to me as much and sometimes the krauty went back to just straight blues rock. Next was Uncle Crawfish which was one of those guys and it was him on solo guitar with prerecorded laptop backing. His stuff was kinda like a math rock Big Black. A lot of it was really good but he could get pretty wanky and there were parts I definitely wasn't into. Nonconnah was next (Zachary solo) and he was good as always. Next was Lemur, more of those same Jackson folks into more of a rock band with silly songs. There were three more acts but it was 11:30 and I had close to an hour and a half drive so I left. The idea of a schedule was pretty laissez-faire and things didn't run super-smoothly so there were indeterminate setup and takedown lags between the artists. Looks like I'm second to last tonight so I have no idea when I'll be going on! It's supposed to start an hour earlier so maybe that'll help. Everyone seemed nice up there and I can't wait to go back. There'll be more Memphis people tonight. I didn't get a chance to talk to too many people 'cuz I'm a shy dork but that's okay, we'll see how tonight goes.

Oh and I forgot to mention in my last post that I finished reading Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow at work yesterday and it was a good book! Uh, that's about all I've got I think.