Original image by There Stands the Glass.
Gearheads will want a report on the rigs used by the renowned outsider musician Mike Baggetta and the seasoned indie-rock guitarist Peter DiStefano at the Ship on Thursday, August 8. They won't get that information from me.
I paid $10 at the door hoping that the duo’s “improvised Punk Jazz music for 2 electric guitars” would succeed. No matter the setups employed by musicians, quixotic stabs at the illusory sound usually fail.
The most successful segments of the duo’s hour-long set for 15 people resembled swinging versions of the noise-rock associated with Glenn Branca. A few exquisite moments brought guitarist Marc Ribot to mind. Two or three conventional rock songs performed by Baggetta and DiStefano including the 1993 hit “Pets” by the latter’s band Porno for Pyros didn’t do much for me.
Mike Stover opened the show with 45 minutes of avant-garde pedal steel guitar exploration. I could barely hear him over the din made by the Ship’s regular patrons. Something tells me they weren’t discussing distortion pedals.