Yesterday I caught a set by John Vanderslice at Amoeba. I got there a few minutes late. It was pretty full but I think JV hadn’t played any songs, starting, I believe his first song, “Numbered Lithograph” shortly after I got there.

For a big chunk of the set, it was the duo version of Vanderslice, with JV on guitar and vocals and Dave Douglas on drums, moog source keyboard and triggering the sampler. That guy is super talented. For instance, during “Exodus Damage”, he was playing the bass line on the Moog with his right hand while playing a fairly complex beat and triggering the sampler with his left hand. I asked him about it afterwards and I wish I had a video if him explaining how he builds up to that—it was a very entertaining explanation with full sound effects. Ian Bjornstad joined them on keyboards for about half the songs.

I’ve seen John Vanderslice a lot of times at this point, so it gets to be a bit difficult to say new things about his shows. He put together a good set of his new tunes (”Numbered Lithograph”, “Time to Go”, “White Dove”, “Kookaburra”, “The Tower”) along with older favorites (”Pale Horse”, “Up Above the Sea”, “Angela”, “Exodus Damage”, “Trance Manual”, “Time Travel is Lonely”). He was in good spirits, laughing and smiling plenty throughout the set. He had a couple of gaffs (e.g. his guitar going out of tune in the middle of a song and stopping to tune) that he played off well, in ways that made it just even more charming.

(photos continued after the jump, below)

John Vanderslice has been doing this video blog tour, where he releases high quality live videos of each song on his new album to blogs. I’ve been following it here, but it’s now complete so I’ll reprint the list:

Emerald City live to tape/ video:

1. Kookaburra (at stereogum)
2. Time To Go (at my old kentucky blog)
3. The Parade (at youaintnopicasso)
4. White Dove (at Gorilla v Bear)
5. Tablespoon Of Codeine (at aquarium drunkard)
6. The Tower (at brooklynvegan)
7. The Minaret (at chromewaves)
8. Numbered Lithograph (at six eyes)
9. Central Booking (at catbirdseat)

Aquarium Drunkard also had JV play a show at the LA river basin and put up the videos.

John Vanderslice also played a goofy gig for Three Imaginary Girls, at the Fremont (Seattle) draw bridge, playing a song (”Kookaburra” I believe) along to the bell that sounds as the bridge goes up. I haven’t see a video posted on TIG yet, so I’ll keep checking back.

View my full photo album.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 9:29 am Posted by adrian in SF bay area, blogs, live review, photos. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.