“Nonego” -- I think the first few versions of this one said “free music” and then “see music” and, when I removed that, leaving just “ee music,” the file name / title became “Nonego.” You can see some recycling with the Eagles Club placement, the date cube (5 straight!), and “Yourself as Present” which looks to be the Yasuaki Shimizu text rotated. Here’s another text passage block, this time credited to Viv. P. (the name of a 2nd grader I loved working with.) “Yourself as Present” was a hint at this being a holiday show and me having constructed a janky (if not elaborate) large Present costume with lid, inside of which I would (attempt to, lol) play the set. I’d also rigged up cardboard box clouds and threaded them through the Eagles drop ceiling which, when tugged, would sprinkle shredded snow onto me / the present lid / the stage / the keyboard, etc. I think I filled two of the boxes by hand-shredding paper and it took like 3 or 4 hours (or something equivalently time-consuming-feeling) to do before realizing I could buy “Fake Snow” (paper product) at Target. Nick Ryan took a photo of the carpeted stage at show’s end after removing a beer bottle which left a perfect ring where the snow had not fallen. He captioned it, “Someone smashed my friend’s mints and stole his beer.” O, right, I’d purchased a few bags of wintergreen (should that be capitalized?) mints which I tossed out before the performance of the solo “Wawaamix” keyboard tune … I do kind of recall it filling the room / heightening the pensive ambience of that track (inspired by Yoshimura’s Four Postcards and the Dire, Dire Docks tune) and holiday/snow ambience of the show and room. Justin Comer’s JC/JP duo played this show, too, and … there was likely another band but … due to the nature of this flyer, I have no idea ;). The Present costume turned out pretty well but it was extremely uncomfortable and made it kind of hard to play keyboard because, when I tried to look down at the keys / computer, the eyes in my head, which was sticking up through the top of the lid (a separate piece, like a gigantic 3-foot-by-3-foot collar), couldn’t really see past the edges of the lid. Still, I think I kept it on the whole show. The fact that I can’t remember too much about the performance, tho, leads me to believe I was uncomfortable enough to not be fully present. Lol. That said, I do recall the whole multimedia aspect of it working pretty well. There are some pictures of me wearing the lid in my parents’ basement where I was working on the thing, if you want to see. I think this might also be the first show I played “Dip” - a tune I love but never recorded with vocals (like a lot of what is featured on “Illustration of ? in Blue Music” -- ie. songs with vocals live that never saw their vocals recorded. Maybe someday.) I remember lightly soundchecking “Dip” through the Stick in my apartment before this show (which I never otherwise did) because I was hyped on it and wanted it to sound good.
