Bikes del Pueblo is a community bike repair space in City Heights whose wide purview includes repair, refinement and — most importantly — riding. Humble Servant of the Worm is a composting co-op who have set up a community garden in the back of Bikes del Pueblo’s lot, focused primarily on local herbs but also recently incorporating drought-resistant watermelons brought over from Palestine. The two have taken to putting on shows at their spot on El Cajon right off the 15, which means massive potential for passersby.

Sam asked me to play this show after one band dropped out. I didn’t have much time to come up with a real set per se but I knew given the location I had to do something special.

I spend all day working on bikes. Knowing their ins and outs meant I had all sorts of ideas for turning one into a musical instrument: steel cable run along the chain through a high-gain pickup, changing pitch with derailleur shifts, or perhaps magnetic tape run across the same area and into a tape head, playing distorted loops varying in pitch with the rider’s pedal power; spoke kalimbas; holes drilled down the length of the seat tube and a saxophone mouthpiece soldered to the top; strumming or bowing the brake and shift cables; even an optical theremin controlling a synth’s LFO rate through chain length. (The bulk of my ideas were derailleur-centric. I figured I’d have my hands full, and making the most of the pedals seemed like the easiest way to maximize the rest of the bike’s potential.)

I took an old Schwinn Crisscross hybrid — one of a pair of dumpster finds I had picked up and repaired at my first bike shop job before I realized Hannah doesn’t really care about riding bikes — and set to work. I had originally planned to circle my pedalboard on the bike but Sam wanted me to play onstage (whoa!) so I ended up kind of saddling the frame around my neck and shoulders and wearing it like a cross.

One aspect I adore about shows in unconventional locations is the opportunity to play before people who would otherwise never be exposed to whatever the hell it is I do. Case in point:

Up next was Abysmii, a new project from Chris of Quarter Bake Sale. I knew his set would be sick when I saw he, too, had my beloved CSIDMAN at the end of his chain, to say nothing of the rest of his setup, which included a Soma Labs Enner and a Trogotronic ms669. But my geeking out on gear shouldn’t distract from Chris’s music, a nightmarish swirl of suffocating dark ambient incorporating choral samples, drum loops and all manner of synth fuckery. Turns out dude lives just over in El Cajon, so it’s likely this will not be our last meeting. Also, guy has a Zaat tattoo. Come on!

Up next, Angel Guts delivered a set of ripping powerviolence punctuated by a blistering song about cows. I don’t mean to continue commenting on everything but the music, but their drummer had a forearm tat of the Spooky Island skull disco ball from the first live-action Scooby-Doo. Where my Raja Gosnell heads at?

Animals on LSD came all the way from Des Moines on what was supposed to be a tour with Sacramento’s Nooseburn, who apparently broke up. Of course I’m never going to complain about four acts instead of five, and the fact the bill consisted entirely of noise and powerviolence meant the longest set was only twenty minutes or so, which combined meant that even with daylight savings we were out of there before the sun was down. After the show Animals on LSD mentioned they wanted to see the beach and planned on cruising out to La Jolla; in her capacity as Bird Rock concierge, Hannah recommended Windansea (the best-lit beach ’round these parts) and Rigoberto’s. I warned them the weather might be brutal — temps dropped to the thirties Thursday night! — but of course to anyone from Iowa this is prime beach weather.

Driving to the show playlist:

• Trippie Redd — “Topanga“
• Autechre — Incunabula
  • I mean, obviously…

Probably my last show for the year; as of now the calendar is clear, though of course I didn’t even see this one coming. See you whenever!