phonophilia

An amazing show happened in north Portland. Over 30 bands played - for one minute each. Tons of people showed up, all smashed into a small, hot basement. I recorded the first 27 bands, and some other sounds. I found that I got pretty good recordings of some bands from outside, crouching down by the one window to the basement that could be opened. In this way I could avoid the moshing. Moshing with a minidisc recorder is not a good idea.

Free Geek is a Portland, Oregon based non-profit that recycles computers and provides computers and education.

On June 29, 2002, they had their first Geek Fair. I was involved with webcasting the event out to the world. During the webcast at various times I went out to record what was happening and interview people. Then I went back inside to the webcast setup and streamed these recordings out.

These recordings were made during the rally and march which began around 4:30 pm at West Burnside and Park and marched around northwest portland for a couple hours and back.

This page on the old site.

I made these recordings on the evening of Monday, April 22, 2002, at an event in a small warehouse space in inner southeast Portland, Oregon, featuring Colin Meloy, The Watery Graves, Tom Blood, and Curtis Knapp.

Some of these are slightly clipped (the loudest parts are a little crunchy), because I had the record level set just one notch or so too high. They still sound pretty good, though. I tried putting some compression on one of Colin's songs to see if that would help with the crunchiness. It makes it sound a little more "rock," but I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

The titles are just my guesses. If you know the actual names of any of the songs, let me know. (Also let me know if you're one of the artists and you don't feel comfortable with these being online. I believe that as long as I'm not selling these that I'm not doing anything wrong. But I respect your wishes if you'd rather not have your work displayed here.)

I guess the real name of this song is "The Wagoner's Lad"...