From around 1998, I think? One of Van Christie's post-Die Warzau projects. Downloaded from a fan site at the time. Did anything else ever make it to tape?

Time (source unknown)

Part of his set from twenty-five years ago tonight, promoting the upcoming (at the time) Amethyst Rock Star. His band on the night consisted of a cellist, a DJ, and a drummer.

Penny for a Thought (2000.10.20 @ Lee's Palace, Toronto)

A light moment to see out the old year and welcome in the new. There's a version of this on the PBS YouTube channel that has some great video accompaniment, but it's also oddly edited and the audio's kind of muted, so I'm sticking this here to share it with a couple of people. Weird how almost every word still applies.

Declaration of Independence (2005.12.31 @ Bowery Ballroom)

Have you ever unearthed a disc of material that you clearly recorded, but also have no memory of doing? This feels like it was maybe put together as a sketch for something to use during a show, or maybe just improvised around a particular sample set, and it doesn't really go anywhere fascinating, but I've been meaning to use that John Peel bit for ages and a couple of other moments made me smile, too. No refunds for unsatisfactory experiences.

John's Sandwich

So I was once cajoled into doing a show, and about three days before said show, I realized that I didn't have a damn thing ready to play. Casting about for inspiration, a Bill Haley 45 that had just turned up in the mail seemed kind of promising... why not fire up the Micro, play along with the B-side, add some Altoids-tin percussion and a boatload of dumb samples and see how bad the results would sound? You may have heard worse.

Thirteen Edits

So the coerced show wasn't a total disaster, and I was somehow invited to play at a second one in another city the following month. "No goofy covers this time!", I told myself. "Only original material!" I was pretty happy with the finished tracks, too, though going on without a soundcheck when your entire sound depends on several machines working together correctly turned out to be a really dumb idea.

The titular saint, by the way, is Sebastian Rupley, whose contributions to tech-panel webcast Cranky Geeks were getting sampled an awful lot around that time. I miss that show.

Phav Nosnibor

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