Improvised rock music that doesn't adhere to any rules or normal rock music expectations (beyond whatever the musicians themselves feel like making at that moment) can be experienced tomorrow night (Friday, March 12th) firsthand at the Idiomatic Improv Rock night at 21 Grand in Oakland, CA. Shudder, Lost Planet, and The Ava Mendoza Quartet are all playing live in an all ages, affordable night of entertainment.

The opening act Shudder, who is substituting for rock band PG13, is described as "less idiomatic" than the other two bands, but most intriguing, nonetheless, with a lineup that includes the two reed players Phillip Greenlief and Kyle Bruckmann, guest guitarist John Shiurba, and electronic instrumentation by Lance Grabmiller. They are expected to start playing sometime shortly after the 8pm showtime.

At 9pm Lost Planet, who "improvises compositions using a vocabulary of idioms," will take to the stage. Their line-up includes (Amoeba) Marc Weinstein on drums, David Slusser on sax, keys & electronics, Len Paterson and Steve Clarke on guitars, and all four artists sharing bass duties. Lost Planets' members have been playing together for 27 years now under various names. In the early 1990's they achieved brief notoriety as Pluto, with the 1994 CD Shoehorse Emerging (Rastascan).

Longtime self-described "experimental/psychedelic/freestyle" Bay Area group O-Type, featuring Bruce Anderson, Dale Sophiea, Jim Hrabetin, and Marc Weinstein (of Amoeba Music) are playing a very special and recommended mixed-media show titled "The Curse of the Fine Arts" this Sunday evening, Feb 24th @ 8PM at the Berkeley Arts Festival.  Additionally, tonight, Thursday Feb 21st, their music will be featured as the soundtrack to the short film High Heels (directed by founding member Sophiea) which will be screened at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco as a selection of the SF Indie Fest as part of the "Bay Area Shorts" segment at 7:15PM.

O-Type was born out of legendary band MX-80, which Sophiea and Anderson formed back in the mid seventies in Indiana before they moved west to Cali. MX-80, who defied categorization except maybe as "outsider" music, released several revered records on such labels as Island and Ralph (the Residents' label). Being hard to define doesn't sit well with labels, so Anderson and Sophiea started their own label, Quadruped, and busily cranked-out several diverse types of music under a slew of names, including O-Type, The Gizzards, Brutality, Half-Life, and of course MX-80. Marc Weinstein and Jim Hrabetin joined the fold in 1984 and have been part of the experimental musical family ever since.

This is part one in a series that will run over the next few days (up to and including New Years Day) featuring predictions for 2008 by folks somehow connected with Amoeba Music -- staff, owners, and Amoebloggers (including The Bay Area Crew, Whitmore, Gomez Comes Alive!, and Eric Brightwell), plus other individuals who are either fans of the Amoeblog (such as DJ ALF) or have been featured in some way in past Amoeblogs such as hip-hop author/journalist Michael A. Gonzales (interviewed months back in a report about the book Bronx Biannual). 

Each contributor was asked to make a prediction for 2008 on any topic -- music, film, technology, politics, sports, social trends, etc. Their prediction could be real or imagined (i.e., wished for) and they could be done in all seriousness or in jest or in half-jest. And the responses could be anywhere from a few words to a paragraph or longer in length. Very special thanks to those who took the time to share their predictions for 2008 including today's contributors: Eric Brightwell, Amoeba Marc, The Insomniac (Bay Area Crew), and DJ ALF -- all below:

                  
INCREASING OUTSIDE PRESSURE ON THE USA TO CHANGE ITS WAYS:

I predict that the biggest criminals in the history of humankind, literally having stolen the entire contents of the US Treasury several times over in the last decade, not to mention all the lives ruined or lost along the way, will continue their thieving virtually unabated in 2008.