Author Archives: isaacparis

Betty and the Babes

What a delight to catch Bettreena Jaeger’s band: they released recordings as “Betty and the Boy” but the other night at Old Nick’s it was Betty and the Babes.

Her voice sometimes could remind someone of Joanna Newsome and Beth Gibbons. There are beautiful arrangements of the strings played by Michelle and Nanci. Wearing costumes as ghouls made it especially fun for me to draw. I was entranced by the music and delighted by the “Nightmare Before Christmas” cover, “Sally’s Song.” Cool Inks, and fun to use grey as a color. 

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As a fun bonus, I was playing with an app that lets me make kaleidoscopes out of my drawings 🙂

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Trek theatre Pon Farr

Local Trekkies put on an original series episode “Amok Time” with original songs by Dr. Jason Heald. These are drawings I made of the cast and crew.

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They let me open the show, performing my Star Trek rap and playing the theremin for the audience. They also had local bell dancer sarina Dorie as an Orion slave girl!

And here are some photos of the production. It really was a great show!

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Royal Famille duCaniveaux

This drawing has been in my notebook awhile. I found a video of their performance from 2016 in YouTube! This troupe has many more performers that I didn’t draw, and I’m not sure about their costumes and hair color, and the page has some splotches on it because my markers were water based and I had it in the rain! It was a good show, full of laughs.

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Slime Girls

Slime Girls play hyper hyphy happy chiptune pop with some ska and some saccharine lullabye melodies. Pedro composes the music and says on his bandcamp, “listen while you are at a cute beach.”

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Comedians at Bumbershoot

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Of all the comics I saw at bumbershoot, Kate Berlant was my favorite. Her show was so utterly confusing and unique. She would threaten us that if we weren’t up for staying for the whole three hours we should just get up and leave right now! I also loved that she steals makeup as a radical feminist act.

Khadija Hassan was quite funny too! There were so many women and people of color at the shows, I really appreciated that.

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Sadiqua Iman

Sadiqua is a sex therapist, bulesque dancer performance artist I saw at Bumbershoot! Her show was compelling, about arousal and gender fluidity, with the occasional audience interaction. It was amazing hearing her sing the children’s songs she learned on the playground growing up in Seattle. They were highly sexualized. At the beginning of her show she was wearing a goatee, and by the end she had shed her clothes. She is on twitter!

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Era Coda, Saffron, Ghost Tour, Jor-Dan

I was invited to a private party where bands played inside a living room. These bands are so delightful. Era Coda plays accessible mathy rock. Its delightful.image1-1


Jor-Dan plays electro rock. It’s huge and loud and sounds shimmering!

Saffron plays heavy grungy rock. It’s catchy, but has a sharp edge.

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Ghost Tour plays pop with keyboards and sometimes horns. some songs are sung by Olive and some are sung by Andy.

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Trapper creek revival, the shoot dangs, the Avery wolves, harp daddy and the Jephries.

Every August for many years now I have trekked to trapper creek Alaska to perform for people in a muddy woods on a stage made of recycled pieces and a sound system run off a generator.

Look, it’s me! Photo by Kevin Morisky. Below is Riesa Rose.

I got to see some great acts, including…  Yeehaw, the Shoot Dangs!

And the Avery wolves

The Jephries! 

Harp Daddy and the Mojo

Plus lots of decoration, the natural kind and the kind arranged by humans.

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Great Alaskan Laser Tag Company

A friend reached out to me on Facebook and asked if I could email her a track I recorded way back in the day called “William H Macy.” It was a silly song, but some sort of a hit, and parts of it have been recycled into a performance piece I do today. Here is my 2006 album “Great Alaskan Laser Tag Company.” it has many songs on keyboard and many songs recorded by my friend and mentor Lester Smiley (the Moon Knights). I remember Planar Chaos  was coming out soon when we recorded it… sigh. I remember that his bunny would rub his scent glands on me in between recording tracks. Here you can find such hot tracks as “the anthropic principle lullabye” and “annabelle” as well as some awkward clunkers like “lies” and some that weren’t recorded very well. I also have two covers on this album, both songs recorded by Frank Sinatra and that appeared on the Muppets show “Slow boat to china” and “I Wont Dance.” William H Macy is a Bonus track not on the list below.

 

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I’m sorry, I dont have any video of me playing a song on this album, but here I am playing with The Bacuntry Bruthers, Bernie Bousa and Rebecca Menzia back in 2008.

 

Oh what am I talking about, here I am playing with Nessa on drums at the Marlin!

 

And here is one called “Leave Me Alone.” I didn’t put this song on an album. Not sure why… I do remember I played it in New York City at the Sidewalk Cafe. They didn’t like me.

And finally, performing “every time a credit card is maxed out…”

 

I don’t really expect you to listen to these old songs, but hey, if you do and if they put a smile on your face, maybe you could donate. The songs are pay what you want!

 

Sarah Mitchell’s piano palace!

Sarah had guest Kat Moore play with her at the palace! Kat goes by the name “the forest that never sleeps” she sings charming songs between her stage banter. ( I was trying to go for a, ” I like my sugar with coffee and cream” joke. Did it work?)


Sarah played songs by Jim bell, tom waits and from he’d wig and the angry inch!

Paul and Flyn played a beautiful collection of hobohemian cabaret songs, including Billy Holliday numbers!

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