Then about a year later, they began again with a member change and I was unable to see them at their debut Cairo show due to regularly occurring scheduling conflicts (I’m hosting events, working events, or knocking items off of my constant “to do” list). On the night that they played at Cairo in February, a great opprotunity to see them, I had to skip out because Earth was playing at the Highline blocks away and I was running their merch table for most of the night. I had fun doing that; I love working merch.

I knew Half Gift wasn’t going to break up again and I would be able to see them again. What a great feeling.

My friend Besh from Greenbelt / Loose Tights was coming into Seattle this night so that she could go to a IWW organizer training event the following day. We were checking in with each other as to where her Greyhound bus was as the evening progressed. Besh had informed me that she was going to be at the station at 11pm. Half-Gift went 3rd at this Funny Button show and I only was able to catch their first three songs before I had to bolt.

When I’ve taken the bus to Canada, I’ve taken the Amtrak. Sure, it’s more money to spend on the trip but I’m really uncomfortable in the Greyhound station, just waiting. I’ve done that before and it’s weird. So, my natural inclination was to go to one of my favorite parts of Seattle: the King Street Station. When Besh sent me an SMS saying that, “I’m outside” and I couldn’t find her, l realized that I’m dumb and needed to speed over to the Greyhound station because late at night, that shit is sketch-y. When I picked Besh up to head back to Funny Button, we were both talking about how we’re both sick, we caught up on what’s been going on in our lives recently, and she mentioned that just waiting outside the Greyhound for 10 minutes, she was propositioned about “5 different times. That’s never happened to me before.”

Weird!

Anyway, point of this story: I need to see Half Gift, still. This recording is my teaser. Shout out to Will Anderson of Weed for being a great feeling human, who, when asking for the rush of this recording said, “[...] I do wanna hear it really bad! I almost cried during their last song.”

That’s how you know a band is a great band. I will bring a handkerchief with me the next chance I have to see Half Gift.

*Look out for a recording of them soon

Plans, plans, and more plans!

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April will bring about some great things! It’s spring and the world is beautiful!

I have a deep appreciation and love for this human.

We met in September 2009, a few months after I moved to Seattle from Bellingham, after he opened for YACHT when they began treading into their current cult-grunge thing. I think the only friends of mine who witnessed this path to the future were Jenny Williams and Rich Jensen. YACHT (then Jona & Claire) I don’t think were even in the building to witness this cool figure on stage with long hair and dressed in all-white clothes. I don’t remember at all what the early Punishment set sound was but I remember being into it. I was working the Hollow Earth Radio table watching the mostly empty show room of the Vera Project while a prophet spoke into a microphone and played beats that should have been danced to. We exchanged emails afterwards and bounced infrequent emails back and forth for quite some time before William Statler began his role as a pivotal individual in my life.

- – -

Punishment seems kind of like comedy, as if that’s the entire thing- a big joke. It isn’t really one though. Imagine that you have a friend that you always hang out with (maybe your best friend) and they’re carrying around a car-load of MIDI controlled instruments soundtracking a commentary track, that is imposed over a film, that is our lives. What they’re saying is really funny but it’s because it has a lot of truth and depth to it, so is life. Punishment is what I consider to be serious but fun music. Vital, if you will.

This night at Funny Button was one of the best shows that have been there, right next to the Don’t Talk to the Cops!, Cold Lake, Police Teeth, TacocaT event. Like most shows at the Funny Button, I was wondering where the rest of musical DIY Seattle was doing missing this great evening. Everyone here seemed to know that this was the right place to be.

It should be noted that this was one of the many best Punishment shows that there have been and that we are very fortunate that the audio was salvageable and not completely shredded. Shout out to the audio recorder that crashed during this set; shout out to the alternate audio source for not being completely ruined.

When I first saw Haunted Horses after they reassembled as a band (unknown knowledge to me prior) I had to escape to the back room from the show room of Healthy Times Fun Club. I’m super into music extending it’s reach from the ears to other areas of physical experience and despite the need to leave the room, I appreciated this. I just couldn’t deal with how uncomfortably loud it was physically. My eyes were vibrating and drifting to the left- it was a overly consious effort to look in one direction. This has happened before to me all due to low-end frequencies typically being emitted from a bass-amp. Whether or not this back area pinned me down into a game of Magic the Gathering soundtracked by Haunted Horses can be debated by who was there at the time. I can say with 100% certainty that there were defintiely cards set up.

This experience at the Seasick Halfshell Embassy was much more comfortable for me since my eyes weren’t being sonically rattled. Much like every Haunted Horses performance I’ve seen up to this particular show, the sound engulfs you. It kind of shocks you at first and it feels weird but and then you adjust to it. Like swimming in the summer when it’s hot weather and Lake Washington is much cooler. You feel better.

I listened to some old recordings (studio, live sets, a few videos) of this band that I have sitting around and realized that I had forgotten the evolution of Erin’s music. I’ve seen not every show, but a lot of non-tour Mega Bog shows since it started. The cast of performers have ranged from 1 to a swelling 7 member band but has more consistently in the past year and a half been a trio of Erin, Zach Burba (iji) and Shelby Turner (Sundance Kids). In this presentation, it includes Jacob Jaffe of Younger Shoulder.

It’s really cool to see a band or musician develop over the course of their existence. It is not unlike watching a person grow up, except bands grow at a much faster pace, which either dies in a couple of years (sometimes less) or continues on as a long-lived entity to the world. Though, even after bands discontinue there existence, they may remain in the mind of those that they have touched and experienced that, in a way, transcends certain physical limitations that time imposes. Mega Bog is a bands that exists in that space which defies time altogether.

We hopped into our friend Jacob Jaffe’s van, left the University District after picking up a couple other cats, then accelerated at a modest speed to the Black Lodge. Not too long after our caravan had crossed the Roosevelt Bridge, we realized that we forgot our friend Erin Tanner who had expressed wanting to go, but we had been so antsy to leave Funny Button that we had forgotten him. So, we turned around, picked him up, then reset our journey to Black Lodge. Parking was a steal.

Arrington de Dionyso has been at this music thing for a while. I first saw his former band Old Time Relijun at the 321 Art Space in my home-city maybe a year before it closed it’s great and wondrous doors. It was a cool band, they played with Pine Hill Haints, and I was stoked, especially the fact that OTR’s bari-sax player. I’m still always excited when a band doesn’t stick to traditional rock music instruments. Not so long later, I would travel to the 2007 edition of K’s  annual Helsing Junction’s sleepover and ask Arrington a weird question about what he thought that Pitchfork had given the recent OTR record a low rating. I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about, really, I had just started glancing at that site and not doing a great job at understanding it. Glancing at Pitchfork is a long-standing tradition when I’m exceptionally bored. The thumbnails are more pretty now than they were. Anyway, Arrington’s response to my poor quality small talk was met with a shrugged response and something I don’t remember. He soon got up (we were sitting on the grass) and distracted himself to someone else. I was stoked because I didn’t know what else to talk about.

At the 2009 edition of What the Heck? Fest, Arrington premiered Malaikat dan Singa. It was also cool band and everyone was bump’n in a new way. One woman took her top off, and she was later interviewed by Jenny Asarnow for our Hollow Earth Radio coverage of the event. I think her response was that she was just feeling like it was a necessary thing.

Since that time, the lineup has changed a bit. It has a different casts of members depending on if Arrington decides to go on tour or play in the NW. I remember there was one particular show that happened at the Greenhouse in 2010 when I felt like underground-music Seattle was beginning to recognize this now year and a half old band. We were standing outside on the sidewalk and the band said that they feel good about Seattle. That it feels the place to be.

I had rushed to the IN worrying that I was going to be late despite knowing that shows there do start closer to 21h or 21:30 than the advertised 20h. I always get tripped up on this: I show up for an event earlier than what is considered early, then I have to figure out what to do with my extra time there. Fortunately, there’s a co-op very close to the IN that I was able to grab some snacks from. I had caught up with a few folks that I don’t see regularly enough, like Justin who co-curates Bad for Jazz.

This was the first time I had been there for a show and not just hanging around in the basement. I didn’t want to bug Tori & Lily (the Creakies) while they were setting up but it didn’t take that long for them to finish that. Overall, in the room there was a soft and comfortable chatty atmosphere in the show space before the show. It’s more settling than what is the constant distraction of trying to engage anyone who is already in conversation or is looking to be distracted by someone else that wants to talk with them.

The Creakies are one of those bands that has that same system of keeping things short and seemingly business casual. It’s very much “here are our songs, we’re going to play them for you, thank you.” Very to the point, sincere and with not much for in-between song banter. It provides a mystery to the band and a kind of desire to ask them questions afterwards and ponder what the song you just heard is about. It’s, like, totally making you think more or something.

About two years after that show, Motorbikes played this show at Funny Button on tour with Eli & Ashley (LAKE) who were Paul’s backing band (Paul playing by himself with a loop pedal). This show was, I believe, the second on Eli & Ashley’s honeymoon tour after having become recently married.

There’s definitely Deep west coast appreciation for Motorbikes a “How to Execute?” in certain pods of friends is a record I’ll hear in the background or talked about with the upmost appreciation. At one point I heard it was on heavy rotation at KDVS-FM. It leads me to wonder if anyone who see’s this music live is moved in a way that one may have not before. The songs presented are heavy with refined thought, internal dialogue and pervasive questions about life and our interactions within. At least when I think of this music as that, I confine it to a spectrum of folks who are still searching for answers, figuring out what we’re all doing and what it means to be and interact with one another.

Mostly though, it seems like it’s just Paul communicating what’s on his mind.

I hadn’t seen them in several months prior to this night. It took place at Hollow Earth Radio and Luke (bass) was outside not moving so well. He apparently was a bit out of it too. I asked how he was doing and told me that he threw out his back by “making toast and talking on my cell phone” amd that he was on pain killers in the meantime. But because Pony Time is punk-as-fuck, the didn’t cancel that show.

This night, at the IN, was great. The room had filled up quite a bit between when the Creakies finished playing and Pony Time had set up. Tori and Lily (of the Creakies) and I have our own Pony Time club that we started. It seemed the most appropriate thing to do since we get super-giddy when we talk about them. You can become a member of this club but we only have three membership plaques. We don’t do “membership cards” because that trash is for chumps. The Pony Time Stable uses plaques, because we’re for real. Etched bronze seated on a florescent pink salt-rock.

This show was packed. It was crazy how many people were there and how posi-mosh everyone was. It’s the most smiles I’ve seen in a mosh pit in a while. Troy (bassist / singer, also in Stickers) is singing whatever it is that he’s singing. I can’t understand much of it but I think a couple songs are about eating that 13 egg omelet at Beth’s Café on Aurora. I haven’t eaten that particular entrée yet but when I can get my hands on whatever recorded material White Coward puts out in the future, I’ll look for the songs that are reviewing the experience of that meal.

I remember on the trip back home, the van I was busy with talking about how great White Coward was and how great the show was overall. How much shredding and kind shoving occurred. How some of us in the car who live together, werne’t vocalizing how we weren’t so excited to leave a figuratively and literally warm space and enter into our house, which was literally cold. 50º F or something. How I was incredibly displeased with myself over the audio being blasted out from Heavy Flow‘s set. How it was okay, because they’ll tour up to the NW again and White Coward played a killer set.