465. "The Ticket that Exploded @ Art Rat"
- Ralph Eaton's Art Rat Studio, Roanoke, VA, us@
- Saturday, April 4, 2026E.V.
- When I was 15 years old I 1st heard the band The Soft Machine on the radio with their song "Hope for Happiness". I loved it, I was also a bit astounded because the rock radio station I was listening to at a friend's house wasn't one that I expected quality music from. It wasn't until something like 5 years later that I saw William S. Burroughs's novel "The Soft Machine" in a chain bookstore & realized that that was where the band took its name from. I bought the book & read it & found its subversiveness extraordinary. I was 'hooked' on Burroughs. To this day, 57 years later, I stil enjoy te band & listen to the many recordings I have of them from time-to-time. It's probably been decades that I've daydreamed about starting a band called The Ticket that Exploded both in homage to the band The Soft Machine & to the Burroughs novel that came after "The Soft Machine" novel.
At the beginning of 2020, I finally started the project with a band that consisted of myself (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE( on ekectronics & percussion, Ben Opie of Alto Sax, Roger Dannenberg on trumpet, & Jeff Weston on contrabass. I lined up a paying gig for us at the Music Department of the Carnegie Public Library & TWO paying gigs for us the Children's Museum. Things were looking good. I made a movie of our 1st & only rehearsal:
611. "The Ticket that Exploded Who Unit? rehearsal January 18, 2020"
- featuring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: Ben Opie; Roger Dannenberg; Jeff Weston
- 1:06:37
- 1080p HD 29.97, Stereo
- edit finished January 30, 2020
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/612.-ticket-rehearsal
& of the library event:
612. "The Ticket that Exploded @ the library"
- featuring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: Ben Opie; Roger Dannenberg; Jeff Weston
- 1:05:59
- 1080p HD 29.97, Stereo
- edit finished February 1, 2020
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/613.-ticket-library
& then the QUARANTYRANNY hit & our gigs at the Children's Museum were cancelled. The 2 weeks rhar rhe lockdown was announced to be dragged on for years & The Ticket that Exploded ceased to exist.
SO, finally, I decided to try to regain a little momentum & I arranged this gig to happen at Art Rat Studios in Roanoke, a place that welcomes the avant-gard more than anywhere else I know of. In the past, I've rejected the label of avant-garde for various reasons: 1. I didn't want to refer to the military, 2. I wantd to be newere than the avant-garde. Now, for better or worse, I accept the label - largely because people who like the avant-garde (an increasingly rare sunculture) like what I do & I'm happy to have their company.
SOO, The Ticket that Exploded as reborn with members in Pittsburgh: myself (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE):electronics, moviemaking, violin, etc; Eric Lipsky: violin; Roger Dannenberg: trumpet & computer; &, In Roanoke, Richard Dannenberg: electric violin, cello - with a special guest appearance from Olchar E. Lindsann: voice.
See the info below about where my movie of this gig can be witnessed & where Ralph Eaton's movie of it can be found on his YouTube channeL:
793. "The Ticket that Exploded @ Art Rat"
- finished April 7, 2026
- 1920 X 1440, 30fps, Stereo
- 1:36:26
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/793.-ticket-art-rat
- Ralph Eaton's footage: https://youtu.be/eIjA5mU2m-E
In addition to the main purpose of this UNCERT being to revive The Ticket that Exploded, ir was alos my desire to premier 5 new pieces of mine + one of Roger's. Hence, the program consisted of:
"THE TICKET", a movie of mine presented with its own soundtrack & no additional live element
The original movie is here:
609. "The Ticket"
- the 'theme song' for the Usical Group "The Ticket That Exploded"
- 10:00
- 960 X 720 / 60fps
- edit finished December 10, 2019
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/theticket10min
A 'costume change'
"mud", my interabilities violin quartet presented, alas, as a trio
My solo realization of "mud" is in movie form here:
776. "mud"
- an interabilities violin quartet performed by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 1080p, 29.97fps, Sereo
- realization made December 11-13, 2025
- 6:16
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/776.-mud
"ELECTRONICS", a movie of mine giving 88 examples of my ELECTRONICS work from 1976-2024 with its doundtrack turned off & a live soundtracked provided solo
The original ELECTRONICS movie is here:
734. "Electronics"
- 4K 30p Stereo
- 44:14
- edit finished February 8, 2024
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/electronics-final
"Pointillsm", a piece of mine intended for a minimum 0f5 players but presented here with only 4
"Inflection Reflection", a piece of Toger's for trumpet echoed & accompanied by sounds produced by Roger's software
"11 Minute Ticket", a piece of mine with a 4 minute section originally composed by me to be played by Ben, Roger, & Jeff but now played only by Roger
The original movie can be found herez:
614. b. "11 minute Ticket (revised)"
- edit finished April, 2020
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/615b.-11-minute-ticket-revised
An additional element, not called attention to, were a sign I posted & costume changes. I'd recently purchased a t-shirt, some hoodless sweatshirts, & some hooded sweatshirts. They all have flashy designs. I wore those & a kimono & took one element off at a time to expose something equally as flashy underneath until I got to the t-shirt for a bowling league. The kimono was hung over the back of a sign that read: No Loose Clohting While Operating Machinery but, thanks to my collaging, the "machinery" is a theremin. I'm not sure anyone in the audience noticed.
- April 13, 2025E.V. recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
466 "Rasps"
-AterMAF, Ralph Eaton's Art Rat Studio, Roanoke, VA, us@
- Friday, June 26, 2026E.V.
"Rasps" @ AfterMAF 2026" - 1920X1440, 30fps, Stereo - 13:57
https://archive.org/details/803.-rasps-after-maf-2026
"Rasps" @ AfterMAF 2026": Approximately 15 years ago I became aware of a hollow wooden percussion instrument sculpted to look like a frog with ridges on its back played by rolling a stick over them. I call them "Frog Rasps". I liked them so I acquired 6 differently sized ones. It was probably in 2012 that I then made a movies called "Rasps" in which I used all the frog scenes from a horror movie (credited at the end). I edited in animated footage of my frog rasps, going to the trouble of placing them on black fabric that I shook to give a vague impression of a watery surface. I also added excerpts from a record by Charles M. Bogert about frogs & an audio session that my collaborator Michael Pestel & I played around a small pond lively with frogs. The result mingles my enthusiasm for frogs with the intention of having my frog rasps played at the same time. I conceived of this performance & then never enacted it - partially because I was thinking of a specific venue that was somewhat unavailable.
14 years later I was working on getting closure by presenting pieces of mine that've waned in obscurity. "Rasps" was one of them. For this, I erected 2 front/rear screens to somewhat close off the performance area so that both are for projecting the movie onto & to project shadows of me playing nature-related percussion.
Warren Fry wore an outfit that he made/had of a vaguely authoritarian nature & directed a flashlight at me as if he were a policemen investigating strange goings-on in the woods. I wore astro-turf slippers, sculpted camouflage pants with 3D leaves, a somewhat psychedelic sweatshirt with a tree image, a camou vest with a seat cushion on its back, & a hat shaped & otherwise made to look like broccoli. I played an Envirascape device that has a waterfall & various nature recordings, the 6 rasps, a turkey call, a duck call, a whistle, a crow call, another whistle similar to the crow call, an 'Aztec Death Whistle' (shaped like an animal skull), an ocsrins, & a Peruvian Whistling Vessel (with a bird sculpture on its end), & a device that I got from the National Aviary that plays bird recordings.
Warren aimed the flashlight at me & himself that created our shadows, mainly highlighting my playing. When the movie ended, we continued this for a short while & then I signalled Olchar & Tom to slowly tilt the front screen back. This gradually revealed Warren & myself as we continued our actions. When the screen landed on the ground we continued under a blue-tinted light & a green-tinted one that we'd just turned on. I ended with the Peruvian Whistling Vessel.
This edit gives a sort of 'ideal' vision of the action, showing both front screen (shot by Art Rat (the space we were in) proprietor Ralph Eaton) & 'back-stage' views (shot by myself, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE). I'm very fond of this performance as a sort of gentle quirky bit of evocative nature-positive nonsense.
- July 3, 2026E.V. notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
Tags: tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, frogs, frog rasps, Art Rat Studios, AfterMAF 2026, percussion, Warren Fry, Tomislav Butkovic, Olchar E Lindsann, Ralph Eaton
466 "SEE-SAW"
-AterMAF, Ralph Eaton's Art Rat Studio, Roanoke, VA, us@
- Sarurday, June 27, 2026E.V.
"SEE-SAW @ AfterMAF 2026" - 1920X1440, 30fps, Stereo
https://archive.org/details/804.-see-saw-after-maf-2026
"SEE-SAW @ AfterMAF 2026": In the summer of 1985, my girlfriend Joan D'Art made a see-saw that both went up & down & also went around. This went on exhibit as part of an Ad Hoc Fiasco, an alternative to the more mainstream arts festival, ArtScape. I made sandwich board signs for riders of the see-saw to wear. On the front was a stylized image of ocean waves with the word "see" on the front. On the back was an inversion of the stylized waves image, this time intended to look like saw blade teeth. Inside that image was the word "saw". I shot a movie fo the see-saw in action by shooting regular-8 film in a 16mm camera. I then had that processed split as 8mm film. The visual result is an alternation of the top left of the original 16mm image followed alternately by the bottom left. After that side's done the laternation takes place between the top right & bottom right. Thanks to persistence of vision the tops & bottom seem overlapped but they aren't. I'm the only person I've ever seen to use this technique. This is not to be confused with shooting 8mm & having it processed unsplit & projected as 16mm. That's a technique I, & many others, have used commonly.
I wrote the script hereby performed to be the soundtrack for the film but I wasn't satisfied with it so I just used sea sounds & sawing sounds - with the sound of wood falling at the end of each of the 4 sections. 41 years later I decided to finally perform this piece at AfterMAF 2026 with assistance of Warren Fry, Olchar E. Lindsann, & Tomislav Butkovic. It's a sortof tongue-twister round in 26 languages. At the time I wrote it I had just acquired "The Concise Dictionary of Twenty-Six Languages in Simultanous Translation" compiled by Peter M. Bergman. For this performance we tried rehearsing but there were many problems nonetheless.
I neglected to emphasise to the performers that we wouldn't start until after at least a minute had elapsed in the projection. I neglected completely to tell the people at the Art Rat Studio where we performed that the performance wasn't over until the film had finished projecting. Because of this, the houselights were turned on after the performers went backstage. As such, I've edited this movie in a way that improves on some of the live mistakes.
- July 3, 2026E.V. note from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
Tags: Joan D'Art, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, SEE-SAW, AfterMAF 2026, Art Rat Studios, Warren Fry, Olchar E Lindsann, Tomislave Butkovic, Ralph Eaton, round
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