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Baltimore musicians and art scene instigators Rahne Alexander and Kristen Anchor are the queer/tranny pop duo The Connie and Bonnie Show. (Rahne, voice, guitar; Kristen, drums). Anchor and Alexander perform funny rockabilly influenced pop songs preceded by a short curated video set including their work and other short underground/experimental videos, this tour, Films About Nothing. Spectacular films about un-spectacular events! The videos are abnormal, funny, strange– marginal videos made by people in the margins.

The Videos:Films About Nothing
Spectacular films about un-spectacular events! Connie and Bonnie show presents short punk rock/urban videos about life and nothing at all. The mundane is fun! It is everywhere! It is free! These small little short videos prove that the small little things, “the everyday,” is funny, important, political, and worth some investigation. Connie and Bonnie shorts include santa pez porno, dada poetry, bush love and Bush hate, teenage lesbian vegetarian zombies and the most over-used lines in Hollywood. Alexander and Anchor make videos about pop culture using pop culture appropriated images, found sound, animated objects, and live action playing off film and television tropes. Bryan Robinson’s short 100 Degrees is a short performance, at first glance seems like just mugging for the camera, but on second consideration, is a complicated dissection of city stoop/street culture and the huckster tradition. Mark Stansberry’s teenage ghetto grrrl anti-hero Puddin’ can’t stay outta trouble. Her adventures are funny, and reflect the often omitted voice of the urban kid. Nikc Miller’s Fat Kid Going to the Dentist is a goofy pop song video about a fat kid going to the dentist, a much undiscussed social-political position. Eric Dyer’s Kinetic Sandwich magnifies and dissects the everyday lunch sandwich with rhythm and grace not often attributed to lunch meat worship.

The Connie and Bonnie Show was a featured performance in the 2005 Transmodern Age Festival and is a mainstay of the underground cabaret scene in Baltimore. Connie and Bonnie videos have also screened in festivals around the U.S. Rahne released her first solo record in 2005 and is touring with the Tranny Road Show this spring. Rahne and Kristen produce video art together and also have an all-girl garage rock band called The Degenerettes, currently recording their first album. This Spring, Kristen and Rahne were the emcee’s for Transmodern Age 2006.

Kristen Anchor is a Baltimore media artist and musician. Anchor is Director of the Creative Alliance MovieMakers at the Creative Alliance, a grass roots nonprofit venue in Baltimore, where she develops and produces film/video programs, workshops and screenings. Her films have screened all over the U.S. and are included in several compilation DVDs. Anchor is also a founding member of the Charm City Kitty Club, a group of women who put on quarterly queer cabaret of that name (named Best Queer Event, Balt. City Paper, 2003; 2004 Curve Magazine Lesbian Theatre Award). She’s the drummer for The Degenerettes, Baltimore’s underground garage rock sensation.

Rahne Alexander is a songwriter & comedian from Baltimore. She is a frequent emcee of the Charm City Kitty Club and performs regularly with her garage rock band The Degenerettes. In 2005 she released her debut CD, Blonde on A Bum Trip. Her solo and collaborative performances have appeared across the US with the Tranny Roadshow, Transmodern Age, Baltimore Pride, Gender Crash, and Dark Odyssey. Alexander profiles artists for the Baltimore Gay Life newspaper.

Kristen’s CV – http://homepage.mac.com/kristen.anchor/keanchor.html
Sample videos:  http://homepage.mac.com/kristen.anchor/iMovieTheater9.html
Rahne’s website:  http://www.rahne.com/
Connie and Bonnie Show website: http://www.degenerettes.com/connie-bonnie-show.htm

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LASSO is an art collective consisting of six members:  Brendan Nakahara, Dave Singley, Jessie Wright-Jackson, Paul Wingert, Perry Lubin, and Gabe Castellanos. LASSO is a structure in which the individual and collaborative creative pursuits of six friends reside.  LASSO is loose, that’s how they like it.  They draw, paint, take photos, screenprint, make animations and movies, play music, write poems, and do everything in between. The common threads that run through all of these activities are: 1. the employment of a playful, exploritory approach to art making, and 2. the emphasis on humor as a means of communication. 

60 watt kid( former member of Dance Disaster Movement) Delivers experimental applications of inertwining finger picking,sci fi soundscaping, and dramatic presentations. Exploritory songwriting in a sea of psychedelic hypnotic beauty.   www.myspace.com/60wattkid  

Core of the CoalMan is a brief, nude flight through morphine drenched Bougainvillea just outside of your mind’s embassy to Habit. Scratched and feeling fine. Its the sound of a bow on a viola string, dawgg. Its feedback. positive feedback. Sounds You Might Eat. www.myspace.com/coreoggthecoalman
 

Chinatown Bakeries. www.myspace.com/chinatownbakeries

Guest Curated by Matt Davignon (Found Objects Festival, Sound/Shift)
Video by Sarah Lockhart (21 Grand)
Myrmyr (Laptop/violin/cello duo of Marielle Jakobsons & Agnes Szelag)
Luz Alibi/Mr. Maurader (trumpet/electronics duo)
Quartet (Moe! Staiano/Percussion, Kanoko Nishi/Koto, Lance
Grabmiller/Laptop, Matt Davignon/Turntable)

Project>Soundwave proudly presents the first show of the Soundwave>Series 2nd Season. “LIVE PLAY” is a different sort of audio-visual feast. Guest curator Matt Davignon assembles three groups of prominent electronic and acoustic musicians from Bay Area’s experimental music scene to improvise scores for an unusual array of  films selected and gathered by 21 Grand’s Sarah Lockhart. Like the audience, the musicians will be seeing the films for the first time as they perform, and must respond to elements of the videos.

The Soundwave>Series is an innovative Bay Area event series dedicated to the exploration of the nature of sound. The 2nd Season, with the theme of Surround>Sound, runs from June through July with performances at ATA, The LAB, Luggage Store Gallery and a special live session on KPFA radio. More info: www.projectsoundwave.com.

Produced by ME’D1.ATE Network (www.me-di-ate.net)

BIOS:

Guest Curator: MATT DAVIGNON
Oakland’s Matt Davignon is a experimental musician and curator that has developed a unique form of improvisation over the last 10 years, focusing on textures, arrhythmic patterns and musical imperfections. Matt is active in organizing experimental & unusual music performances in the San Francisco Bay Area and is responsible for such events as The San Francisco Found Objects Festival, Sound/Shift Oakland and helping to launch the Field Effects series. He is one of the curators for the Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series, the longest continuously running series for experimental and improvised music in San Francisco.

MYRMYR
Myrmyr is the collaboration by Marielle Jakobsons and Agnes Szelag to create an improvisational electroacoustic music.  myrmyr’s music rides on the tension between the slightly cacophonous to flowing melodies, using their instruments, voices, field recordings, live sampling and programming skills. Exploring many musical genres, they never play the same set.  With performances based on reaction and often invoking the element of surprise, the duo keeps themselves and the audience on their toes.

Agnes Szelag was given a microphone at age four and has been fascinated with all types of recording mediums since then. Her work includes songwriting, electronics, improvisation, cello, voice, dance, and visual mediums such as photography, sculpture and video. Over the last five years Agnes has performed in the Bay area as aggiflex, Comfort Food (w/ Abe Dichi), and most recently myrmyr (w/ Marielle Jakobsons) doing both live audio sets as well as being a VJ. She has worked with many kinds of artists and has produced music and video and performed for dance/performance companies such as Capacitor and more recently Double Vision.

Marielle Jakobsons aims to rebuild musical performance as a breathing system of sound, people, and space. Born in Cleveland in 1982, she received her B.A. in Music Performance and Biology from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her recent work deconstructs the violin as both performance interface and sound generator utilizing custom electronics and interactive computer programming. Recent solo work has been heard at Les Voutes (Paris) and the Luggage Store Gallery (SF).

LUZ ALIBI/MR. MAURADER
MR. MARAUDER was born in rural Ohio. In 1980 he was awarded the Copper Bishop For Chess Excellence. He has made appearances in a Eurythmics
video and on the television program “Let’s Make A Deal!”, as well as writing and acting in drunken performance art pieces at the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts and Highways in Los Angeles, CA. Currently residing in Oakland, Jason works as a substitute teacher and is affectionately known by students as “Mr. Hamburger.”  He currently performs with Le Flange du Mal, The Weegs and Earwicker.

LUZ ALIBI earned a silver trophy in the 1986 rowboat competition, despite being docked points for jumping out of the watercraft to push. She has since gone on to pursue other interests, among them a love of  trumpet and cheese. She currently performs with Le Flange du Mal, Diatric Puds, Rutro and the Logs, and Porest. She lives in Oakland.

AD-HOC QUARTET
Matt Davignon is an experimental musician living in Oakland, California. Since 1993, he has developed his own unique style of music, which focuses largely on textures, arrhythmic patterns and musical imperfections. His first experiments as a teenager were constructed using 2 boom boxes, combining household objects, CD/tape samples and heavily effected improvisation on a variety of “real instruments”. Since then, he has spent time studying (in a non-academic sense) bass guitar, live sound collage, consumer-grade electronics, prepared acoustic guitar, real-time sampling/looping, experimental turntablism, and field recordings on handheld cassette recorders.

Lance Grabmiller straddles the gap between the “avant-garde” and the “electronic”. He has played in improvisational groups and has also opened for such notable electronic acts as Kid606, Sagan, Wobbly, Uprock and Meg Lee Chin among others.

Moe! Staiano is a percussionist who usually uses found objects, but has moved to doing drumming on found objects on his trap set (i.e. prepared percussion). Moe! (yes, he includes the exclaimation mark in his name) has experimented through the years though solo percussion using pipes, food pans, pressure caps, sheet metals, nick-nacks & other stuff that has been found, given or stolen (mainly from Pizza Hut when he worked there including a nifty Spatula that he bows). One can expect to see Moe!’s show as a visual eye pleaser: running around throwing pipes on concrete, walking on pans with his feet to mute sounds or running amok, throwing his body into old cassette tapes or two dozen cymbals in any given performance.

Kanoko Nishi….coming soon