Alternate poster design, which I think came sooner, because I remember the Positive Ensemble were supposed to play. This was a group of kids that called us up from Goleta, CA and explained that they were putting 11 people in a van and driving around American all summer to spread positivity. They didn't play any music, but they would jump around and try to make people happy and they had t-shirts. The whole thing sounded amazingly stupid but kinda funny, especially if you lived in a world where HeartAttack and Punk Planet were your major sources of media. Anyway, they had to cancel their tour -- how positive is that ? -- so we made the other poster, which was actually much less readable than this one.

Now that I am thinking about it, I think I remember Three Penny Opera a little bit - they were fast and fun but not too aggressive, and I liked them, though not as much as I liked Shotmaker. Who I also can't remember much about.

i feel like such an amateur historian doing this - documenting a slice of the Pittsburgh independent music scene from 13 years ago - and the one thing that is "complete" about this poster archive would be for the shows at the Stevenson Theatre, a short-lived venue in East Liberty that I had a hand in running. I have every poster from every Stevenson Theatre event that Doug Mousrak and myself organised, which were the majority of the shows there. Besides us, I remember Manny booking Overhang Party and Primordial Undermind there once (which was AMAZING -- a weird Luke-less lineup of Land opened up and Overhang Party were totally amazing; all stayed at my parents' house); I remember Shawn Brackbill organising Texas is the Reason there. And I also saw Ida and solo Warn Defever, when I asked Warn if he would record the Land album. That's about it though, but perhaps I am forgetting some.

The Stevenson Theatre was a pretty large space - I'd say maybe 150m2 - underneath the Artists and Craftsman's Supply shop on the corner. For some reason, the owners of the property - a couple named Ted and Debbie who also owned a yacht club and had no apparent interest in art or music - were super enthusiastic about our proposal to organise independent rock shows that only 25-50 people would come to. I think we paid them $50 to rent the space each night, but only when the shows did well. There was hardly anything in it for them; it seemed like they were genuinely just into it. (And they went above and beyond the call of duty for a band called Lowercase, which I'll explain when I get around to that poster).

I forget exactly how we approached them - a friend worked at the art store above, and everyone knew it was a great and extremely nice space that was mostly unused. Doug and I had this partnership that summer where we organised a lot of things, and we were always in this push/pull frustration with Manny and Millvale Industrial Theatre. (I've since recanted my negative feelings). 

I remember nothing about these bands except the locals. Amusing though that I'm still slapping my phone number on the flyers, and the stuff about the hardware store, which i think referred to Tru-Value Hardware on Forbes Ave in Oakland. An alternate design of this show will follow.

Another Elephant 6 related concert - I'm going to get all of these out of the way. This tour came through before either band had really hit; I think Elf Power just had a 7" out, and Of Montreal were something I had only heard of. Both would later go on to modest success, particularly Of Montreal who managed to separate themselves from the E6-identification and probably still put out records today (I don't follow them).

Manny organised this and asked me if I wanted to be the opening act since he knew of my E6 love and (and website). It was kind that he asked, but Land wasn't ready to play live yet (I think we were just starting to practice) so I formed a quickie band with John Lancia. We called ourselves the Auspice Band, though we were only billed as Auspice here. This was (in retrospect) one of the more fun and quirky things I had ever tried to put together. This was, for better or worse, my singer-songwriter project as of autumn 1998. I have some photos of this show, where I am a lanky 18-year old playing the Mosrite electric guitar that I still own and John visible in the background on drums.

This must have been one of the earliest Millvale Industrial Theatre shows I went to. I can't remember when it opened exactly - I want to say summer 1998, and I think the first show there was for a Tim Berne project, maybe Bloodcount? I didn't go, and I was actually not fond of MIT because of it's practical limitations - I didn't have a car and I found it difficult and inaccessible. Now I look back on it as my favourite venue of all-time, disregarding Ptarmigan.

Auspice Band was pretty auspicious,  I guess. The songs are hit and miss.  At the time I was really into Mission of Burma and Olivia Tremor Control. I wanted to simultaneously be the singer-songwriter and Martin Swope. I worked out all of these layered noisy 4-track tapes, which were thought out and not just random, with various sound-effects, delay-pedal drones, and noise. I played this with the 4-track hooked up to a volume pedal which I used, at times, to bring the tapes into the mix. John also played keyboards a bit while he drummed. I think we were terrible this show. We played one more time at the first ADD fest the following month. Someone told me that the songs were similar to Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth but that wasn't much of an influence --probably just a result of the weird guitar tuning I was using.

John took all the 4-track demos we had recorded during the 2 months of the Auspice Band and put out a tape on his Home-Aid label without my permission, called Improvement, modeled after the cover art for New Order's Movement. I'll post it here eventually, as I think there are some charming gems that I still enjoy hearing, like my ode to orange juice and some tender teenage emo tunes. The following year, when I was fully obsessed with Dead C and This Heat, we hung out Thanksgiving night and recorded four really experimental tracks that John also put out as the second Auspice Band CDr. There is nothing I would like more than to reunite the band after 13 years.

Sonic Rob & Ollie were I think a song-based trio of students who went to Pitt with me but I don't remember them. I actually don't remember much about the other bands, except that I enjoyed it. Elf Power covered Eno's 'Needles in the Camel's Eye' and Of Montreal were pretty dainty but I was into that at the time. They all stayed at my apartment in Shadyside but I don't think I ever saw any of them again. I was in touch with Bryan from Elf Power for awhile because of the whole E6 website thing.

The show was fairly poorly-attended, though I also realise now that any show with less than 50 people felt that way at MIT.

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).

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.

I seem to have saved a large concentration of posters from 1997 and 1999 especially right after I started University which was September '97.  I think at the time I was affixing these to the wall of my bedroom to make a tapestry of musical memories.

Run On played at CMU in the spring of '97, I think around May.  I remember this being one of the best bands I had ever seen - totally tight, focused and driving.  After the show my friend A. and I went to Squirrel Hill's Eat and Park and just gushed about how amazing they were. I was 17, about to graduate from high school, and poised to take over the world through the power of indie-art-rock.

This return show, so soon after they were absolutely devastating, was hotly anticipated.  I felt like there were a lot of good shows to go to in those first few weeks of freshman year, and Manny was organising a lot of them at the Beehive right then - MIT had not yet opened, so it was a weird in-between period.  The Beehive was actually the perfect venue then - all ages, centrally located, and just the right size.  It's hard to pick my all-time favourite Pittsburgh venues - MIT would have to win out, and then it's probably a tossup between the Beehive and Luciano's.

This was the only time I ever saw the Low Numbers, who later moved to Philly, renamed themselves just the Numbers, and sank into obscurity.  They put out one single that I know of, released by the WPTS in-house label, which I still play all the time, especially when I DJ.  They were a really tight, slightly aggressive mod-pop band with a very edgy post-punk influence, yet rooted in the indiepop sounds of that time.  Five Ball were a local band best forgotten; they played a lot of more pop-focused shows at the time and I never enjoyed them at all.

Run On were really bad this night.  They were slow and meandering, clearly a bit stoned and not clicking at all as a band.  I think they were improvising a bit - there weren't many of the hits and certianly not the same sense of euphoria I felt in the spring, when they played 'Xmas Trip' and the whole room was shaking.

Run On are sort of forgotten now, especially among their bigger name Matador peers from the same time like Pavement and Yo La Tengo, but I still think Start Packing is a high-water mark for the whole genre.

I don't know why I'm gravitating so much towards the CMU-based posters (or why I have so many of them), but certainly the CMU shows were something special and central to my young music-devouring appetite.  'Tainted Candy' was slightly overhyped amongst my friends - a festival on Halloween to be held in the studio union gymnasium, this was a can't-miss event on my calendar, even though I didn't know that many of the bands. 

What I found was a too-long mess that made me realise why rock bands don't play inside gynmasiums: acoustics.  I remember distinct elements of many sets, but most artists just struggled with the sound in some way.  The 1985 were telling everyone jokingly that they were planning to blow up a goat on stage, which of course didn't happen, but I remember my young vegan friend being angry at the idea.  This was an introduction to hardcore music for me, though I didn't realise it and only Four Hundred Years made any impact - they were possibly the best band overall.  The Impossible Five did a spy music-influenced rock which I liked enough to pick up their CD; Operation Re-Information were the most enjoyable act as I had never seen them before, and their crisp electronica actually worked in the reverberating wooden space.

Don Caballero and Hurl were two mainstays of PIttsburgh music that were both a bit before my time, or I should say I was never really interested in them.  This was the first time I had seen Don Cab and they were notably terrible, angering the audience and at one point throwing a mic stand at a friend of mine.  I left the show completely despising them and never wanting to see them again.  I did twice though - once at the Beehive with Mike Banfield in the lineup, and once in Paris when they had completely changed members apart from Che.

I came dressed as Ric Ocasek, which involved nothing more than sunglasses and a blazer.  Doug, who did a good job organising this despite my griping, dressed as Michael Douglas from Falling Down and it was fabulous. I remember being really disappointed overall with the show, but a friend later pointed out that I still had fun, and I guess this was true.  This was the first big event of my freshman year of college and I saw a handful of people from the local college radio station here.  The woodcut here in the flyer was by Randy Costanza, who I saw the last time I was in New York and was casual friends with for much of my time in Pittsburgh.  I don't remember the games or horror films promised on the handbill, but I'm sure Doug can refresh my memory.

Some experiences really stay with you.  This show happened almost fifteen years ago but I remember a lot about it; it's got a pretty high place in the "formative shows" list for me.  This was officially the local record release party for the Storm and Stress album on Touch and Go.  i never heard Storm & Stress before - I just knew they were the new band by one of the Don Caballero guys and it was more experimental than my 17-year old self was ready for.  Meisha, I knew; we had played together with my first band and I knew Mike a little bit - i think maybe we had hung out socially once or twice by this point.  They were advertised on the flyer as Che recording artists but I don't think their record ever came out on Che; this was the CD release for the self-titled first Meisha CD on Mike's own GingKoba records.

This was the first time I ever attended the Brew House, a long-running Pittsburgh artist-in-residency centre that functions semi-collectively, I think.  It was pretty rare to see music there, though it was ideal - a huge open reverbatory space, a great industrial feel, and a fantastic location right in the middle of Pittsburgh's South Side.

For whatever reason, Storm & Stress drummer Kevin Shea couldn't be there so Don Caballero's Damon Che sat in, making this a strange Don Cab/S&S hybrid.  I was pretty blown away by the power of Che's drumming, even though I've never liked Don Cab (if anything, I resented them for their overbearing legacy on PIttsburgh music) I grudgingly admitted this was something powerful.

Meisha's performance was perfect - this was the apex of their early sound, which was made of delicately intertwining guitar arpeggios.  Shale were probably great - I don't think I ever saw them not great - but I don't remember too much about it.

I was a young, fresh-faced kid on the scene; about a week away from starting college, and at that point going to shows and getting into the indie music scene was my raison d'être. At this show I was still an outsider, especially among these 'heavyweights', but inevitably on the horizon. Manny put this together and his phone number adorns the flyer; also note the great tagline which attacked the stodgy, boring Market Square summer concert series organised by the city.

I later bought Storm & Stress's CD, I think purchasing it from Jim Storch at Border's in Upper St. Clair.  I no longer have it - it probably got sold off in some post-rock cleansing CD purge, but I remember it fondly; it never exactly influenced me but was one more step towards appreciating 'out' musics.