Memory Select: Journeys in Creative Music
Creative music in the Bay Area and beyond
It looks like prog band Reconnaissance Fly picked up a few new fans Wednesday night. The audience was sparse, sure. It was a Wednesday night and the Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland doesn’t look like it has room for much of a crowd anyway. But the people there were open to the music and happy about what … Continue reading Reconnaissance Fly at the Octopus
Reconnaissance Fly — Off by One (self-released, 2016) The lighthearted and consciously nerdy prog group Reconnaissance Fly is back with an EP (available at Bandcamp) and a couple of shows: Oct. 15 at the Berkeley Arts Festival space and Oct. 26 at the the Octopus literary salon in Oakland. The core elements are still there: … Continue reading Reconnaissance Fly Flies Again (II)
Local prog band Reconnaissance Fly is going to play on KZSU this Wednesday, Jan. 7, at 9:00 p.m. KZSU hosts a band (usually a local one) every Wednesday at 9:00. It’s a show called Wednesday Night Live that’s been running for a very long time. The show hosted bands like Primus and Green Day long … Continue reading Reconnaissance Fly on KZSU, January 7
The past year has been really busy for me, in non-musical terms, and I’ve never caught up on a few of the things I’ve done since the fall. Most of them found their way onto these pages, but a few slipped past. Here’s the speed diary.
Reconnaissance Fly — Flower Futures (Edgetone, 2014) Polly Moller’s experiements with spoetry — poetry made from the babble of spam emails — has come to a fruition in the band Reconnaissance Fly, which adds prog-rock and avant-garde musical backings for a new kind of songwriting. Now they’ve got their newest album out, called Flower Futures … Continue reading Reconnaissance Fly Turns Spam Into Prog Rock
UPDATE: It looks like Westbrook will be playing first, followed by Grex and then Reconnaissance Fly. Plan your lives accordingly. Having written so much about our local Cardiacs tribute band, I should probably mention it when those musicians get together with their own band. Did that make sense? What I meant is: The seed of … Continue reading Reconnaissance Fly Flies Again
Usufruct — Windfall (VF Industrial, 2018) Usufruct performs at the Luggage Store Gallery (1007 Market St., San Francisco) on Thursday, January 10. From the joyous prog rock of Reconnaissance Fly, Polly Moller and Tim Walters have staked new turf in the realm of pensive electronics and austere set pieces. Windfall paints a spare landscape where silence … Continue reading Usufruct, a Harvest of Sound
A bit of stream-of-consciousness on a day off from work … Lisa Mezzacappa’s latest big project, ORGANELLE, has a gig at the Exploratorium in San Francisco on Thursday night, March 9. I wrote a little bit about it last fall, but Jeff Kaliss of San Francisco Classical Voice has done a comprehensive interview with Mezzacappa, going … Continue reading Nature & Music / Music & Tech
(UPDATE 11/15: Amanda at the Catsynth blog has posted a review of the show. Sounds like it was a great time.) Sun Ra turned 100 this past spring, and Bay Area musicians don’t want to let the moment pass without doing something big around it. So, there’s going to be a celebratory concert at the … Continue reading Celebrating Sun Ra at 100
Cool avant-rock show happening Sat. Feb. 23 at The Starry Plough in Berkeley: Moe! Staiano‘s Surplus 1980 is the headliner, and he’ll be preceded by ReCardiacs Fly, the Cardiacs tribute band make up of members of Reconnaissance Fly (plus others such as Moe!). They’ve done a good job using Facebook as a promo hub for … Continue reading Surplus 1980 and ReCardiacs Fly: Raucous Musicks Coming Saturday
