The Lothars

Terrastock UK, August 28 & 29, 1999, in London, England

Lots to say about this one. Ramona and Dean couldn't make it over to England, so we decided to perform as a theremin trio. Jon B. had recently bought a sampler, so we sampled some of Ramona's guitar parts, as well as some other stuff, and worked out a 50 minute set, some of which was brand new material.

We were pretty nervous about this show. If you've read the other reviews above, you know that we hadn't been happy with either of our other two Terrastock appearances. In addition, we were scheduled to play early Friday afternoon on the first day of this three day festival, and to be honest, we weren't too psyched about the time slot.

Providence intervened. As soon as we plugged our gear into the venue-supplied voltage converters, our power strips started smoking! We were the first US band scheduled to play, so everyone was frantic. By the time we and the stage managers had figured out the problem (the converter didn't like the surge suppresser circuitry in our power strips; ordinary strips worked fine), it was too late for us to play. To make up for it, we were given a new time slot, replacing a late cancellation --- on Saturday night, right before the headlining Bevis Frond! Woo-hoo. It was worth losing a $40 power strip to get a choice slot like that (luckily none of our gear was damaged).

Our set went over really well. Probably better than any other set we've played ever. Then, on Sunday, we played an impromptu 30 minute jam with Carl Hultgren of Windy & Carl that went over even better than our proper set the day before. Several folks told us that it was their favorite moment of the entire festival! [Note: You can now hear this jam on the "& Windy & Carl & The Lothars" CD] The audience put their money where their mouth was --- we sold ten times as much stuff as we've sold at any other gig. I am not embellishing.

The festival was also fun just as an audience member. Thirty bands played, with too many highlights to mention. A list of bands can be found at the Ptolemaic Terrascope website.