Ever since the demise of The Tourettes (Joanna’s girl-band brainchild and the best extracurricular experience in college by far) I have wanted to start a conceptual band. If conceptual art is a whole genre with entire PhD dissertations written on it, there should at least be a little more conceptual music.

Obviously the first step is to blog a lot about what the band will be like. So here we go. The band is essentially made of Speak, Peppery members.

The confirmed lineup so far is:
Marian: drums, dancing
Sam: vocals, banjo, violin, electric guitar
Dawn: keyboard, vocals, erhu, bass

Any one else in Speak Peppery is welcome to join.

Conceptual gestures to during performances:
— One song will have us singing while roasting meat on a stick (performed)
– Dawn will sing with an Emmy Lou Harris accent. This is to comment on the fact that many white people try to sing like black people and no one thinks it’s weird. Will anyone notice if an asiatic person sings like a southerner?
– Sam will sing in Chinese.
– Oh and a vocoder.
– Oh and an erhu.
– Marian will play the marimba
– There will be a song about our love for big business
– Every conceptual gesture will devolve cacophonously into just plain rocking out.

Doesn’t this band sound great? Our next three practices will be over group email.

Here’s a synopsis of the Speak Peppery party on Sunday. To understand the full force of the party, you have to realize that there is Sam and Marian’s apartment, which is on the fourth floor. Then, there’s a dark stairway that leads up to the roof. The roof has a view of manhattan, all glittery and stuff.
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8pm - Gabe and Sam move party equipment onto the roof, using a complex, highly-developed system of brains and muscles.
9pm - As guests arrive downstairs, they encounter three similar doors. One leads up four flights to Sam’s apartment. One leads to a paper mill. One leads to other apartments in which Sam doesn’t live. Everyone is confused.
9:30pm - Evans shows up with awesome new glasses. No one notices.
9:40pm - The entire Rutgers Philosophy department shows up, and though the IQ of the party doesn’t rise on average, the bell-curve becomes wider. That is to say, there are now both more geniuses and more dumb people.
9:42 - JUST KIDDING. Rutgers’s Philosophy Department is the best in the country.
9:45 - Rosco Kitty is one fat kitty. One FAT KITTY!
11pm - Dawn notices Evans’s new glasses. Thomas and Evans high-five. Thomas picked out the glasses.
11pm - Marian is away in Woodstock, doing an artists’ residency.
11pm - Kathryn is down in New Orleans, doing the cupid shuffle.
11:10pm - Ted leaves too early. Why, Ted?
11:20 - Dawn tells Thomas that Dawn was recently dating someone who marveled, “You need so little sleep!?” (”You” refers to Dawn.)
11:21 - Thomas almost falls off the roof, astonished by that characterization of Dawn
11:30 - Dawn’s disco nap commences on fourth floor. Absolutely no one is able to predict that it will become an epic all-night sleep-fest.
11:35 - The neighbors lodge a noise complaint, despite living under a Q-train that combines the sonic force of thunder and sonic force of special-effects-thunder. This noise complaint makes no sense, because we all know that every DUMBO resident is deaf by the age of five.
11:40pm - In response to the noise complaint, Gabe moves the crowd to a slightly different area of the roof.
2am - Only three contestants remain awake: Omar, Gabe, and Michael the linguistics guy from Rutgers.
2:10am - Dawn’s asleep on couch. It is discovered that Rosco Kitty is NOT hypo-allergenic. This promises to be a rough night.
2:30am - Actually, even if you’re allergic to kitties, if you’re really tired, you’ll have no trouble sleeping.
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Oddly enough, here’s a photo from a party at Sam’s place LAST year. It’s basically the same as what happened on Sunday.
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Imagine my delight when, while listening to Pandora radio at work, Sam’s song Another Man Done Gone came up! Having never heard the album, I was like, Jeez this sounds great, who is it? Nice work Sam! By the way, the song came up on my “John Prine” radio station.