El Alto played last night 3-29-07 at Magnetic Fields over in Brooklyn. H and I took the Jackie Robinson right over to Atlantic Ave. I saw a truck that said Gypsum Express on it. It was a sweet early spring late day drive. We were rocking Kriedler and this sick Reggae band called Clint Eastwood and General Saint. S.l.e.e.p deprivation headaches nagged at me, but when we passed the obdurately named Interboro Pizza…i broke from that vapid making soma-squeeze-crush. My friend Evan told me a joke about Sicilians and the SAT exam. I in turn told the joke to the packed audience. This place ‘Magnetic Field’ by the by…is a great place to play and see music… friendly workers, and not too crowd-gabby while the music is going on.
We sounded ok. There was some bullshit technical problems with our machines…sampler..drum….the sound was fucked up….sometimes way too loud…other times way too quiet. As my friend Evan pointed out over cigs out in front of the joint….the sound mix sounded soo out of whack and vertiginous…for the primary reason that all the sound elements..instruments….were not anchoring elements…it was all color no picture…no imaginary lines were forming helping the sound guy project our songs in a pleasing or compromised way to the listeners. Our lack of more practice time, and the fact that it is mainly MQ and I that know songs well, does not help. Anyway, with all that said, we sounded alright…we even kicked the places ass with a song we never performed before…and that we played a simpler and not better truncated version of: GRIPPO SMOKES OUT THE ROOM! This was the last show of the gig. MQ and maybe H had serious reservations about doing this one. Tim Tam and I were more into it. At that point, there were some disappointing things that sort of lessened the joy of this set for me, and i thought that with a kick ass Grippo…there would be this sort of ‘redemption’…this sort of antidote to some of the bad taste on the band’s tongue from this set. I’m really hung over..so I’ll leave it like that. I’ve been changing old people’s homepages that I know to this dumb site about pickles. I find this very funny. Why? Balthrop ALabamba is great….i really enjoyed what they were doign…
