A lot of these Stevenson Theater posters have more than one version, sometimes with different information, suggesting we jumped the gun a bit on making them.  I have no idea why we put black militants on this one; I think Doug made these as they are too well-done to be my own work.

I also financed the 53rd State CD which came out this night; not sure why it says the "real" CD release party; maybe there was a fake one before?  Also notable is our URL had moved to cenotaph.org now, though I had that domain before I had actually started the label; no phone number is present either.

If one thing is complete about this scattered 'archive' of Pittsburgh indie music posters, it's the ones from shows I booked myself at the Stevenson Theater in Shadyside/East Liberty.  Doug Mosura and I booked a bunch of things together during our brief partnership of 1999 and because we made the posters ourselves, I had a lot left over so I'm pretty sure they are complete.

This one was the biggest shows we ever did - I think something like 120 people came, if I remember correctly - obviously capitalising on Atom and His Package's popularity, we packed the house and I don't remember much about the show, except that after paying all of the artists well, and paying the Nypavers who ran the space, we still had a chunk of cash left over so we took $200 for ourselves.  Which to this day I think is the only time I actually kept money for myself from organising a show.  I think everyone got paid $200, maybe Atom got $300.  I really don't remember.

More to come about the short-lived Stevenson Theater in future posts.

This is the one that blew it wide open for me.

Maybe I've said that before.  I went to this show the summer between 11th and 12th grade, excited to see Butterglory.  My friend Amy had dubbed me Are You Building a Temple in Heaven? and it's twee-ish indierock harmonies rocked my world.  Karl Hendricks Trio were about all I knew of "local music" at the time - I had seen them at Lollapalooza '93 and knew they had been signed to Merge records.

Neutral Milk Hotel, who played first, I knew nothing about.

And of course, we all know what happened.  Boy sees band, band rocks boy, boy is never quite the same.  NMH erupted with complete and total joy, with the fuzzy 60s pop influences I loved at age 16, but also the flair for the experimental, the eclectic - singing saw, trumpet (played by Scott Spillane who climbed on top of the PA at times); the manic drummer. Songs that just seemed so rich and inviting - and this was music being played as a way of life, a calling.

I wrote a much more gushing and absurd recollection a decade ago on my 'farewell' page, when I shut down my Elephant 6 site, which thankfully archive.org still has a copy of, if you can deal with the font/margins.

I don't remember much though - Karl's set I don't even know if I watched cause I think I was outside being excited.  I met my friend Christie that night (where are you now?).  I remember being flabbergasted by the 'I love you Jesus Christ' line but not being bothered by it, even though religion in music was total anathema to me.  I remember B. Chad outside asking me if they were serious.  I remember Butterglory were good but I was already losing interest (though that song 'Rivers' was amazing and I distinctly remember the drummer banging away on the floor tom).  I don't remember if they played 'Alexander Bends' which they were (justifiably) known for.

I remember my mom picking me up and my friends (Brian and Nick and Dawn I think were with me) and just being so incredibly excited about this band.  I remember buying On Avery Island a few days later at Randy's Alternative Music on the South Side.  I remember getting the Apples in Stereo's Fun Trick Noisemaker and soon after the Olivias entered my life.  I don't remember at what point I made an Elephant 6 website, but this music became the centre of my word for the next few years.

Of all the posters I found in my parents' basement, I was most happy to find this one mostly intact.  This feels like a real beginning for me, even 15 years later; it's part of the holy trinity of formative live music experiences (along with the Mountain Goats at Laga and Chisel at the Beehive).

This show actually took place in Baltimore. Dan, who I was living with at the time, was a big Six Finger Satellite fan and also loved Moss Icon, who I was just getting into.  He found out somehow (as I don't think the Internet was involved) that Tonie Joy's new band The Convocation Of were playing, so we drove down to it.

I remember the Ottobar being a fairly cool place and that Convocation Of were absolutely incredible.  The record they finally put out was disappointing though; I think I listened to it once.  Six Finger Satellite were in a fully different mode than The Pigeon is the Most Popular Bird album - much more influenced by sci-fi sounds like Chrome.  I didn't like it.  

I don't remember where we stayed or if we drove back that night, but I do remember seeing the guys from Oxes and their friends who called themselves the Baltimore Rowdy Collective.  In the upstairs part of Ottobar they all decided to get naked and sit around the pool table, and I was impressed.  We set up a few shows for Oxes and Goliath over the next year or two.

The first real Land show with me in it.  I guess we were insisting on a lowercase L then, and the full stop/period at the end.  EAR was a mess of circuit-bent speak and spells; Sonic Boom dug our messy set and wrote down his address for us to send him stuff, but I couldn't read his writing.  He smelled like a walking pot plant.  Land was a trio that night, or maybe a bassist.  I have no memory of Bobby Conn's set.  The Johnsons were probably great.

The first pasta night was a hit; it was the first (or second?) show for the Saint Syndicate, a short-lived Pittsburgh band that was heavy on the organ, and boasted a strong influence of mod 60's pop.  They were fronted by an artist who later moved to NYC and was tragically murdered, and I don't think the few recordings they made ever surfaced.  A friend from high school was playing bass in the band, though we weren't friends anymore by this time, and I'm not entirely sure if he was still in the lineup then.

53rd State were a young, energetic punk band with a strong emo influence.  They were still in high school, and I loved them; there was something accessible and crossover about their songs, and I ended up financing their CD on a pre-Cenotaph venture along with Randy Costanza.  

It was only a dollar, and tons of people came including some faces I was surprised to see.  We started cooking pasta at 4PM and made a giant vat of it, with cheap supermarket sauce, but people were totally into it and I don't remember the cleanup being that painful.

I don't know why I was so against uppercase letters back then.  I guess if you look at the current sidebars of icewhistle.com I'm still not so fond of them.  It's almost like my own flyer design style was influenced by Manny's, though I certainly wasn't thinking consciously of "design". 

I started going to see independent/"underground" music at a very early age - I somehow convinced my parents to drive me to CMU in 1993 to see a couple of shows; even though i had to leave before the final acts, I'm pretty sure I saw Guided by Voices on the Vampire on Titus tour, though I don't remember anything of it.

Most of my high school years I dreamed of being able to go to things like this regularly. There was an odd smattering of live shows I was able to attend when I was 14-15 years old, but just a few, which I have no posters saved from.  (Number One Cup and Shale at Luciano's was a big one; also I saw J Church there one summer). 

By my senior year, I was just waiting to get high school over with.  I started to attend gigs more regularly, and even started playing in a band called The Blazing Bulkheads with Weird Paul. This Melt-Banana concert was something I look back on as a major turning point - the transition from high schooler looking in, to person actually being part of the music scene.

I'm not sure actually why I regard this so fondly.  I didn't stay to see Melt-Banana and I didn't like the Monorchid at all.  But I saw The 1985 for the first time, who I only knew of as being a new band by Jeff who used to be in Vehicle Flips, a local pop-based band whom I loved (and still do).  The 1985 blew my mind.  I didn't recognise their influences at the time (Nation of Ulysses, Six Finger Sattellite) so to me, this was a radical approach to rock music.  I was instantly a massive fan.  I went to every one of their shows that I possibly could, probably seeing them 20+ times.  I bought their t-shirt that night, with semi-functional glow-in-the-dark ink, which I still have (though it's pretty ratty now).

And to make it better, their drummer approached me after they played because he recognised me from Weird Paul's band the previous month.  I met a bunch of people that night - I think that was the first time I met Luke who I later played with as Land.  And, I saw Arab on Radar for the first of maybe ten times, who dismantled rock music even further - this was their earliest lineup, with the heavy farting bass sound and the most wild, aggressive stage show I had ever seen (or at least tied with Xerobot, who I had seen at Luciano's the previous summer).

Todd from Shale gave me a copy of their Truth/Lie 12' after the show (for free!  just because he was nice and I had met him before through a friend) and I went home feeling like a whole new world was opening up.  As soon as I finished high school.

It's astounding how many of these posters are from 1999 - I don't know how I managed to work and study at the same time. I think this one was the pinnacle of my concert-organising work in Pittsburgh, and I'm amazed that it was 1999, as I swore this happened in 2000.  Despite all of the indie rock and post-hardcore shows I was organising, I was playing minimalist/experimental music myself in Land, and my main interest was in drone, psychedelia and outer sounds.

Getting a chance to book No Neck was special - I was only vaguely familiar with them as they were hot off the NYC avant scene at the time, and the tour booker (I forget who it was, maybe John Allen?  His email address was germanoak@ something) said they would prefer to play in art galleries or outdoor spaces instead of clubs.

I arranged with Manny to use the parking lot outside of MIT, which provided some problems in terms of amplification and how to make people actually pay, but as it was a nice summer night, it turned out to be magical. MIT's car park was filled with old, broken vending machines and other junk, and NNCK's frontman (the guy who later went on to start Excepter) was climbing all over everything while the band banged away.  It was total madness.

We were already looking to leave behind our minimal, guitar-based drone, and we performed a largely improvised set (I think) that culminated in us using electric razors near the pickups of our guitars to create a harsh, Merzbow-like dissonance. I feel like we lost some of our friends from the rock-based music scene that night and never quite got them back.  Meisha were glorious, probably their best performance (or tied with the one at the Brew House, which had projections -- this one had the night sky which was even better).

NNCK's Japanese cellist didn't make it on this tour so it was a slightly smaller group.  I had a guarantee for the first time and I was worried about making it; I also had to buy them all food, which we got from Tram's kitchen in Lawrenceville.  I think we just covered the guarantee or I only lost a little bit.  They stayed at my place and I took them to Giant Eagle the next morning before they headed off.

I saw them again in 2005 in Louisville, hanging out at Kris Abplanalp's place in the afternoon when they arrived and later in a full-fledged freakout of a show, and then I think at All Tomorrow's Parties that Thurston organised -- though I honestly can't remember if I saw their set that night or not.

Outside concerts should happen more.  This poster was made by B. Chad, with his hand-set moveable type; a design that I think is beautiful and perfect.

I actually thought I would have more flyers from other promoters here, when digging through these piles of 13-year old US letter-sized sheets.  Most of them are shows that I organised myself, or with Dan or Doug, which makes sense cause I would have Xeroxed these myself and had some left over.

Pasta Nights!  This was an idea Ailecia and I had to organise at REA Coffeehouse, which is the first place I ever set up shows.  It's kinda funny actually that I started booking shows at an all-women's college, but Ailecia was able to grease the bureaucracy and things were good for a few months.

The premise of pasta nights was that would could only charge $1 and cook a ton of cheap pasta and then provide people with free food, and only two bands, which would showcase new and local talent.  The idea was new and it was a (relative) hit.  This is the first flyer I made, to advertise all of them.  Note my phone number, which is on almost every single one of these - pretty crazy that I would plaster it all over town, and even crazier to think that someone would call for info (it happened once or twice).  Also note my wonderfully succint University web address!  Archive.org unfortunately only has a few snapshots of this page, but none from February 1999 when this was made.  (The earliest we can get is October).

To be completely serious, I think the pasta nights were the only shows I ever set up that had some spirit which still remains in what I do now at Ptarmigan, Tiib, etc.  It wasn't a big deal to have local bands and free food, but it was social and easy, and certainly a predecessor to all of the sushi-based events we did in Helsinki Ptarmigan at Nilsiänkatu.

I doubt anyone remembers these shows now, but preparing pasta in such bulk amounts every two weeks left me with a real aversion to the stuff which remains to this day.  I also think that Ailecia got some flack about my involvement since I was not a student at Chatham.

I doubt there are still shows in REA coffeehouse - I don't know as I haven't lived in Pittsburgh in years, but I think they had stopped before I left- which is a real shame, as it should be a legendary place in PIttsburgh's musical history.

This has the distinction of being the first show I ever organised, though to be completely honest my flatmate at the time, Dan, actually organised and executed this.  But we were setting up the show 'together' - I think I worked the door - and it showed me how easy it actually is to make things happen.  I felt like things had changed after this; for the next 2 years I was pretty actively involved in setting up shows while at the same time playing music myself in 1-2 bands and somehow getting through Uni intact.

I think all of these bands are somewhat forgotten now.  Shale were an aggressive post-hardcore band, locals who I saw quite a few times and always enjoyed even though that 'wasn't my thing'.  Faraquet were on their first tour here but later developed a bit of a following with a slightly proggy/post-rock take on the DC sound.  Also from DC were the Better Automatic, who did a sharp mod-pop that reminded me a bit of Chisel but yet completely different.  I still have their 7" which I play every few years.

This was poorly attended, a rainy Sunday night if I remember correctly.  Dan designed this poster.