Let me just remind you of one thing: the Sugar Shack is a coffee shop. And not a very large one, either. Couches on one side of the shop, a bookshelf on the other, paintings from local artists on the walls. There was no stage or PA, so everyone had to set up on tables on one half of the room, while hippie-chick patrons sipping lattes from paper cups milled around in the opposite half. Everyone used a keyboard amp to play through, and even this was apparently too loud for the shopkeepers.

So how the fuck did a couple of noise acts play there? My theory is that it was a confluence of two basic things:

1. Lowell is fucking boring and has no place for people to play.
2. Deftly D will set up a show anywhere he can get away with it, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.

So when D heard that the Sugar Shack was occasionally having bands there, he jumped at the chance to put something together. Of course, those bands were all folk acts, but that shouldn't stop you, right?
The end result was very much like a "Behind The Music" special. The four or five confused patrons left after the first set, and those that remained were either employees or bands and their freinds. Bringing the total number of people to about ten.
Whenever I play out, I usually buy a record from whatever act is opening, and destroy it on the turntable.

This time it was "Johnny Cage and the Stockhausen Five", which is from a limited edition of five hundred.

The record is completely gouged and unplayable, so I would list it in "fair" condition.

It's signed by the artist. Will trade for anything with four wheels and six cylinders.

As for the performances: "Emil Beaulieau" (Ron Lesarde from RRRecords) went on first with his MiniDisc player and four-armed turntable. He's always pretty entertaining, wearing a suit and tie and hopping about chaotically. Iso_Staticon played next, and I would swear it's not the same person I played with at WJUL. His performance consisted of an old radio broadcast of "Sorry, Wrong Number" (you know, the one that finishes with "The call is coming from inside the house!") run through a couple delay boxes and distortion pedals. The old broadcast had the crippled protagonist behave with such histrionics that the story ended up being funny rather than scary, and the abrasive noises just added to the effect.

Negative Time ended up cancelling, and apparently Ross Hamlin got lost somewhere on the way, so I went up next. It took me about twenty minutes to set up my shit, and about fifteen minutes to destroy it. I had rented a UHaul to schlepp all my crap up to Lowell, and I ended up leaving the synths in the van because there was not enough room to set them up. This left the turntable and effects pedalboard on one keyboard stand, all going into my mixer and effects. The keyboard stand was not particularly reliable, and after a while the pedalboard slipped and fell off. This seemed like a good time to throw the rest of my equipment to the ground. I've done this before, and usually my shit turns out surviving; but this time the turntable truly is DOA, having broken squarely into two pieces.

And that's it. The show was over by 10:30. I had enough time to load out, drive back to Boston, unload, return the UHaul, and still make it to the Middle East in time to catch last call.

Which I took advantage of, believe me.

Because when all was said and done, the show was basically a waste of time. It's not that it was a bad experience; I enjoyed playing, and those people that were there were nice enough. But I can sit around with ten people and shoot the shit at home, without driving an hour out of my way and spending a hundred bucks doing it. There's also something pathetic about one person performing in front of a group of freinds, who patiently play the role of the audience to support his fragile ego. I'm not a big fan of mutual admiration societies. I could get the same results by staying at home and jerking off. Perhaps I should have known this was coming; this was in a coffee shop after all, which are breeding grounds for this type of ludicrous behavior.

Unfortunately, this doesn't leave a whole lot of options. Noise music is probably the least popular of all forms of music. It doesn't have the easy popularity or commodifiable solidarity of, say, black metal or punk rock. Noise musicians think it's because noise is too "extreme" or "weird" for people to take, but the truth is that most of it is terribly boring. And when mixed with infantile artistic sentiments, it's just too pretentious and annoying to take. Which means pathetic crowd sizes. Gigs in art galleries, coffee shops, and record stores - but never bars or clubs. Audiences that would rather sit motionless in chairs than get drunk. And, ultimately, performers who just sit motionless, twiddling knobs on their delays as pre-recorded music blasts from the speakers - DJ's playing music nobody will dance to.

This was not why I got into music. It is not what I want to do with my life. Perhaps this is the rock-n-roller in me speaking, but this sort of shit just seems pathetic. Just like the self-important lesbos who play acoustic guitars to other dykes who just want to fuck them. Just like the dumb-ass European disc jockeys who are so pathetic that they need to spin other peoples' generic music to appear important enough to drug up underage rave bimbos. Just like the expressive "artistic" types who think that their infantile music will be interesting so long as everyone performs in costumes and brings enough props.

Pathetic.

I'm not here to support these types. I'm here to destroy them. I don't want to support their actions or venues. I want to burn them down.

In truth, I wouldn't mind these guys so much if I weren't lumped in with them. Because I play grating music that doesn't have any melodies, I'm lumped in with the "avante-garde." But I don't want to be part of the avante-garde. I'd rather play with Slayer than Laurie Anderson any day of the week.

Unfortunately, there's not much to do about it.

Except complain.

Which I can do quite a bit, judging from this article.

One thing's for sure, though: next time I play somewhere, it had better have a goddamn stage.