Live Demonstrations of Technique

June 13th, the Knockout, w/Modular Set and Chords of Death.

I think from now on it will be "Chords of Death", not Chords Are Dead. And I like this club so much I'm weeping like a child.

June 2, O:RMF5, w/a ton of other bands.

Unreal goodtime fun. Highlights for us included San Kazakgaskar and Dead Western.

May 31st, Annie's Social Club, w/Chords are Dead and The Atomic Bomb Audition

The record release party for Pirate Flag at Half-Mast. Such fun! Thanks, all.

February 16th, Fort Oregon, w/Cartographer and Donny Hue and the Colors

For the love of god, do not miss Cartographer! Next time, anyway. Seems like there's 1 or 2 Cartographer shows a year. You should be at the next one.

Our part of the show? We had a maraca player sitting in with us. Not by choice, but, well, never turn the rhythmically-minded away. A good time was had by all.

December 19th, at Annie's Social Club, w/ Shinobu and Zero Mass.

You can watch some of the fun here, courtesy of Pacific Noise, who are great and should be thanked by everyone who likes music. We are marvellously inarticulate when the cameras are rolling, and they did a fine job editing us to seem cogent. Thanks guys!

November 3, at the 23 Club in Brisbane. We flew solo for this one. This is a great, great, club, with a huge dancefloor and a western theme from when it was a stop on the honky tonk highway. The idea was to do 2 sets, going through all of the material for our next record before actually digging in on recording it later in the month. However, as it turned out the club didn't actually have a PA, which ment no vocals. We did a shorter instrumental set, and had a damn fine time doing it. And, of course, emptying the bar.

October 1, at Fort Oregon, w/ The Swims, The Modular Set, Chords Are Dead. Best show ever. And it was Laurin's birthday. Go see The Swims. Go see The Modular Set. It was a huge honor to share a bill with them.

July 16th, at the Hemlock Tavern, w/The Swims. Tom Herman (Pere Ubu, Tripod Jimmie) sat in with us for the whole set. Lenny Bove (Tripod Jimmie) came up and sang a couple of songs with us. The sound was grand, the beer tasty, the people great. We had a blast. Some recordings from the show that begin with the letter D:

Duck is Down

Dinker Dance

Dykes & Dogs

May 25th, Kimo's, w/ Chords are Dead and Telomere Repair. Apparently, we were too loud. this revelation issued during a quick sound check. Most bands of our ilk take this as a compliment, but we actually try to play the room (as the musicians say), and weren't playing particularly loudly. The guitar goes through a 50w amp fer fuck's sake.. And we were relative church mice compared to the rest of the bill. Strange. I (colin) had my usual Kimo's-related tuning problems, but my playing's gotten so atonal at this point nobody really notices. Except for the pretty songs - gotta tune for the pretty songs. Laurin Askew made his world premiere as our bass player and did quite admirably. Mark rode a cymbal like a pony. It's good to be back.

November 15, Hotel Utah, w/Chords are Dead and The Darts. Ah, so sweet. Playing on a bill with 2 stellar bands, in a room that sounds great and is small enough that we didn't need to crank it. Such a beautiful thing. All 3 bands were at the top of their game. Twas great.

October 19, Thee Parkside, w/Turn Me on Deadman and Chinese Radio. There's nothing quite like the feeling of clearing one of your favorite rooms in the city. Not by choice, necessarily, but we were so clearly the odd men out at this gig it ain't even funny. Turn Me on Deadman are the worst example of recycled boredom we've come across in a long, long time. Every lame-ass wrock cliche you can think of, they pounded into the floorboards. The singer's 2 feet tall and bald. He was wearing leather pants and eyeliner. They have a keyboardist who looks like that guy from Spinal Tap. Their drummer's pretty good, though, and the bass player has perfected the junkie look. Chinese Radio are sorta Husker Du-ish, but without any of the sense for hooks or sonic mass. Hookless power-pop. This was their show - we were filling in for a band that bailed at the last minute - and not surprisingly, their fans weren't particularly into our sound. By the end of our set, there were maybe 5 people in the bar. That's counting the bartender and booker. One of the lhe people who stuck it out was wearing a tux and looked like Jandek. Turns out he's an Elk, and there was an election down at the Lodge, which requires formal attire. While it's always fun for us to play, even to nobody, he made the night special. Plus the ROCKALIZER got its first field test, and performed admirably.

Thurs, September 8th, Live on the radio at KDVS. This was fun. Deep in the bowels of Freeborn Hall, we sweated it out for an hour in a tiny little room (don't let the digital reverb fool ya). This is a great place - long live free-form radio. Here's an mp3:

Little Foamers

Saturday, August 27th, w/ 28 MINUTES OF NOISE, Chords Are Dead at Balazo Gallery.

28 MINUTES OF NOISE is (was?) Ben Adrian of Replicator and Colin of Ovipositor doing some loopy/droney bits, with a healthy dose of riff rockin' thrown in. Chords Are Dead just keep getting better, and delivered most mightily. See this band. Especially since we often seem to be playing with them. Here's an mp3 of "Dykes and Dogs", which will be on our new album.

Friday, August 12th, 2005, with The King Hen at the Stork.

Our Tour of Bay Area Dives with The King Hen concludes. We were fortunate enough to get to play 3 songs with Tom Herman of Pere Ubu and Tripod Jimmie fame. Life doesn't get any better. Here's an mp3 of us with Tom doing the Tripod Jimmie classic, "Autumn Leaves"

Thursday, August 11th, 2005, with Zero Mass and The King Hen at Balazo 18.

Day one of our Tour of Bay Area Dives with the King Hen. The new space for bands at Balazo is really just the dish washing room, and the sound is occasional. Plus the mic kept shocking me in the mouth. We had an absolute blast, and the whole thing was written up in the SF Bay Guardian.

Sunday, July 17th, with Federation X and The Swayback at the Stork. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Fed X is one of the best live bands you'll ever see. But you didn't see them at this show because pretty much nobody did. Except us and a few of their friends. And you are a bad person for missing it.

Thurs, June 2, with Chords Are Dead and The Lines at The Stork. Chords are dead are a genuine, high-quality rock band. Expect more shows with us and Chords Are Dead - we've got a little mutual admiration society going. You can see the Chantry-derivative flyer here.

Sun, April 24 with Partman Parthorse, So So Many White White Tigers Tigers, Speaker Speaker, at The Funhouse in Seattle, WA. It's the classic confrontation: on one side of the street, us; on the other, U2. History will record the results. (more)

Sat, April 23 with Motorama and The DTs, at the Stanwood Tavern in Stanwood, WA . This was, for my money, the best show of the tour. (more)

Friday, April 22 with 76 Charger and Scott Biram, at the 3B Tavern in Bellingham, WA. Bellingham is one of the greatest places on earth. (more)

Wednesday, April 20 Fells Acres, Precursor, Arroyo, and Laying Awake, at the Ash Street Saloon, in Portland, OR. 5 bands on a Wednesday night (more)

Wed, Feb 9, with The Drogues and The Warren Teagarden Band, at the Stork. Ah, the Stork -our home away from home. And it didn't rain this time. Once again, the Drogues delivered in a sonic way. You should see them if you haven't. I (Colin) don't know if I've ever been as pissed-off for as show as I was for this one, and as a result it went in some interesting directions. Maybe because of that it was probably our best show to date. We did our crude and inaccurate version of "More Than Good" by MX-80 Sound for the first time, and "Rockets & Monkeys" felt more solid than it ever has.

Saturday, October 23rd, 2004, The Stork Club. Why is it that almost every time we've played at the Stork there's been a huge rain storm? Black Ghost played first and... you really need to see this band. They are a duo, and have fingers in a lot of musical pies. Some solid jazz chordings, an undeniable love of the metal, and lots of loud. Commonwealth did their thing admirably (and again, LOUDLY), and then it was all us. As promised, this set had only 2 songs in common with the one on Thursday, and tended towards the noisy. A good time.

October 21st, 2004, The Edinburgh Castle. The Drogues, Commonwealth, then us. Good times. Definitely some range in the bands here - always a good thing. The Drogues are what the Minutemen would sound like - if they were the Drogues. It's an undeniable comparison, but there's enough of their own thing going on in there that they can't be written off as a cover band - especially their love of the Mersey Beat. Commonwealth did their (loud) thing as well. Definitely a dependable live band.

September 10th, 2004, Blake's. Y'know, Commonwealth is a fun band to see live. Ghengis Khan and Pidgeon played as well. A nice full house, good sound - a fine evening. There was a Very Old Man dancing around at the show, having a blast. Really made the evening complete.

August 28th, 2004, Stork Club, Oakland. Weird to be out playing again after spending so much time focussed on getting the record put together. This show was really like 2 separate shows that happened to be at the same venue. Up first was Montana, followed by their friends the Beautiful Engines, both very pretty bands, introspective and musicianly, with a hint of early 90's artschool. Then we got up and noised them and all of their friends out of the room. No monitors and the traditional Stork sound (horrible on stage, great in the house), but regardless this was a really fun evening for us.

May 11th, 2004, Kimo's, San Francisco. Being the 3rd day of the week, Kimo's puts on 2 bands for 2 bucks on Tuesday nights. Yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense to me either. Luckily enough for us, a 3rd band showed up, balancing out those cosmic scales. They were on the road, down from Washington, and their show had been cancelled, so onto our bill they went. Richard Bitch did their wig-clad thing first, then we played horribly. Then the boys from Washington got up and had at it. One wag was heard to comment, "there's something really weird about Washington state." And no, I didn't catch their name. Best of all, the show was sponsored by MGD. What this means exactly I don't know - we didn't get paid anything more than the door, nor were we offered promotional MGD merchandise. And the complimentary drink tickets were only good for Budweiser. Matter of fact, I'm not even sure MGD was on tap. Not a complaint, just an observation.

February 25th, 2004, the Stork Club, Oakland. Torrential rain and a major rock festival going on across the bay - the first show of Ovipositor: Deluxe Edition, with Mark Pino on the Drums, Matt Carter on the bass, and Colin still on the guitar. Iowa Snake, The Nervous Breakdowns, and Nasturtiums filled out the bill and a good time was had by all. Click for set list with mp3.

July 26st, 2003, John Patrick's Cinderblock Palaice, Alameda. Nathan Daly played the drums, Jeff played the bass, Colin played the guitar, making this Ovipositor 2.0. The show was Jeff's going away party, commonly referred to as Maggot Fest because maggots fell from the ceiling onto the crowd in a truly Biblical manner. Everyone switched from pints to bottles and the rock went on unabated. Grain USA and Giant Haystacks played, both doing a set of originals and then one of covers. Nasturtiums and Gentle Mike and the NO RAPE!issts (formerly Nasty Mike at the Daterapists) played as well. Thankfully, no documentation of this show exists except in the minds of the survivors.

November 8th, 2002, Garretson Residence. Xander Garretson's 4th birthday party. Jeff Kay and Colin Frangos did the acoustic guitar thing, Xander and other children ran around screaming. It's a long way to the top.
Click for MP3 of "Everything Goes Better with Ice-Cream (except cancer)", featuring guest vocal by the birthday boy himself.