TLASILA Flood: The Complete 1999 American Tour

Hello Again,

To celebrate the recent (and much-belated) X+Z=0 / ugEXPLODE release of To Live and Shave in L.A. 2's The 300 Dollar Silk Shirt album (thereby reveling in the bludgeoning glory of To Live and Shave in L.A.'s PRE (r)October 99 tour), we gleefully present for your appraisal and edification the eight public performances from that hepatitis-salted adventure.



(We're aware that nine gigs were listed on the above poster; the Cambridge, Massachusetts concert fell through at the last minute.)

Each has been newly remastered for this upload offering by yours truly. The concerts were captured by Rat Bastard using a standard stereo cassette recorder; extraneous pre-show gurgling and post-gig palaver have been removed to reduce file size. No filler, all human flesh.

(Photography by Tom Smith, except where indicated.)

To Live and Shave in L.A. - The Complete 1999 American Tour

TLASILA:

Tom Smith - voice and texts
Rat Bastard - bass
Misty Martinez - backing vocals, provocation
Nandor Nevai - percussion, backing vocals
Weasel Walter - sax, guitar


--

01 October 19, 1999: Khyber Pass, Philadelphia


(Nandor, Rat and Weasel, cautiously beaming before the Khyber.)



(Breathless backstage thrills... L to R: Liz, WW, NN.)



(Mayhem ensues... L to R: WW, NN, TS. Photo by Liz Armstrong.)



(Rat and Misty, just before the body fell. This image - in cropped aspect - found its way onto the rear sleeve of the TLASILA 2 album.)

02 October 20, 1999: Speak in Tongues, Cleveland

(Sorry, no pix.)

03 October 21, 1999: Amnesia, Green Bay

(We again forgot to unpack our camera gear...)

04a October 22, 1999: WNUR-FM, Evanston


(No upload for the studio session, as it may be found - in somewhat digitally tweaked form - on the newly issued TLASILA 2 CD.)




From TLASILA's MySpace site:
Yes, the hatchet has indeed been buried, and with hearts a-flutter we are pleased to assist Mr. Weasel Walter in presenting the homage/bootleg/rebuke/hubris-pummeled freak-platter depicted above. Its latter half a WNUR-FM studio session from TLASILA's 1999 American tour, the majority of its sleeve acreage festooned with snaps from that same, blood-splattered trek, with an ever-so-slightly skewed central thesis (that Mark Morgan [Sightings], Elyse Perez [Costes, Cock ESP], and the late Gerard Klauder [dozens of warped aggregations] somehow lacked "distinction"), 300 Dollar fairly cries out for help. Despite and because of those determinedly contrary ironies it's a must-own recording and a bracing reminder that whatever you're listening to probably 1) sucks, and 2) desperately needs to be radically detourned, remixed, or immediately tossed into the nearest incinerator. Please, buy as many copies as you're able to afford, and keep these bug-eyed, Raid-huffing orphans off the mean streets of Yourtown, USA! You don't want this thug of an album wandering around your rose gardens at dusk... As for the mastermind behind TLASILA 2, well, Weasel is insane, sure, the very nonpareil of onanistic self-absorption. But he's also dead brilliant. We'll work with his crazy ass anytime, anywhere. Once in TLASILA, always in TLASILA 2...
--

TLASILA compositions performed at WNUR:

We ran through a four-song set. "I What Dampness Did" and "He-Farmer 'Nelson'" were written for our Commmiinnggg! and Practis'd the Black Art album; we performed them regularly from 1996 through 1999. "A Silk and Slip Plays Palest" was composed in Paris in February 1998 during our second European trek; the WNUR session marked its debut recording. The fourth song, "Ass 2 Marie Duo," was written in August 1998 for Jaws 3, the proposed duo project Weasel and I ultimately failed to bring to life. "Ass 2" was performed extensively throughout the (r)October 99 TLASILA tour.

Ever the vaudevillian, Weasel opted to sheathe the WNUR selections in period pleated hakama:

01 A Silk and Slip Plays Palest > Shub Ishmigarrab
02 I What Dampess Did > Ereshkigal
03 Ass 2 "Marie" Duo > Ustur
04 He-Farmer "Nelson" > Vermis Mysteriis

I like WW's refurbishments as much now as I did then. Both streams of thought flow into vast, turbid oceans of absurdity...

My song titles and lyrics from 1998-2000 derived from cut-ups of 75-cent porn paperbacks purchased at Chicago's Myopic Books and back issues of The Wire. (Gardens of War's "ECM the Money," actually a leftover lyric from the Jaws 3 project, was created using that admittedly grim technique.)

WW's attempts at divination (viz. "March "March" The Yoghurt, And") fail to resolve the paradigm, but are nonetheless hilarious...

--

WNUR Photos:



(The Rattus, in familiar repose.)



(Tom and Misty, planning a mutant family one half-lidded moue at a time... Photo by Frank Falestra.)




(Probably the best photo of the "old" Nandor you'll ever see. Madness and joy, adroitly conjoined.)



(Weepcore waning, free-glam rising, albeit semi-reluctantly...) 

04b October 22, 1999: 6 Odum, Chicago

(Photos by Richard Jaspering. We remain grateful, sir.)



(Ms. Martinez moves in for the kill...)



(Weasel... Yes.)



(A crazed fan chews through her jeans and collapses. Misty prepares the garrote as Rat sprays cover fire.)



(The horrifying spectre of free-glam. Its overt elements weren't intended as fond evocations of the bygone Roxy/Bolan/Bowie era. No, to the contrary. We wanted to damage eyeballs, to exude toxins which would render all such nostalgic associations inert...)

05 October 23, 1999: Contemporary Arts Center, Detroit

(No pix. Too bad, as it was an extraordinarily focused performance.)

06 October 24, 1999: Bug Jar, Rochester

(We didn't take photos. Apologies, etc.)

07 October 25, 1999: Fort Thunder, Providence



(Nandor, god-awful mural, SOD, aesthetic suffocation.)



(Misty, displaying the beauty of Jesus' creation, and...)




(...the little hippie RISD bitch who gave her grief for it afterwards.)

08 October 27, 1999: The Cooler, NYC



(Weasel and Tom, pumped for terminal mowdown. Photo by Liz Armstrong.)



(Rat, roaring past escape velocity. Photo by Jocelyn Shipley.)



(Classic Nandor. Snap by JS.)



(The colossi stride into the waste... My favorite photo of the tour. Image JS.)



(Free-glam apotheosis... Pic JS.)



(Misty rides the dying white rhino, as lensed by the legendary Bob Gruen. 'Nuff said.)



(Weasel, wasted, at tour's end...)

---

Downloads:

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

(461 MB, ripped at 320 kbps, compressed to six RAR files. Total time: 211 minutes.)

---

Hope everyone is well.

Cheers to Weasel, Liz, Nandor, Rat, the various shutterbugs, the folks who gave us places to sleep, the staff of WNUR, and everyone who attended the performances.

Best,

Tom

Comments

Anonymous said…
Ah, yes. Rocktober 99'. Wonderful. Caught two of these (Green Bay and Chicago). The show in Chicago was one of the best performances of any band I've ever seen. Leslie Q threw that bottle, and I still wonder if she took it from my my empty sixer of Berghoff Lager. And the Burt Reynolds Band... I wonder whatever happened to those kids.

Twas' fun and games for my band to open the show up in Green Bay, even though that one got weird due to time confusion.

Will download these shows in the coming days, hopefully...

Thanks,
Keith V.
Aluminum Knot Eye
Oh my ... the pix from the Cooler bring back a flood of memories, all of them weird and deeply disturbing.

Do you still have that retina-searing pullover?
ommyth said…
Hello Keith,

Apologies for the tardy reply - I've been on a recording bender in Atlanta for four days, eschewing the internet after our sessions ended for seaweed soup and multiple viewings of the Borat DVD (with the Russian-language option switched on)...

"Hy ochen!"

In all candor, I'd not returned to the tapes of the '99 gigs since the dust cleared eight years ago. I was grinning ear to ear during remastering...

Thanks for your very generous words, KV. Hope to see you soon.

Best to you and the AKE action team,

Tom
ommyth said…
Hello CG!

I was good to talk with you yesterday evening. Congrats again on recent developments!

We tracked nearly two hours of raw material for the MM box... Looking forward to throwing it on the wheel and glazing a septet of mutant vases...

Most of the clothing I barely squeezed into during the '99 tour was donated by the lovely Jocelyn Shipley. Free-glam was kick-started at her appliqué-slathered stoop... Whereabouts of pullover unknown. Everything was recycled into the Goodwill maw. (I'm not terribly sentimental when it comes to performance tack.)

See you in a few!

TS

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