Conor McGuigan's closing the doors of Test Pattern and bracing for the open road
He did build it, and they did come. But unlike the fabled Field of popcorn lore, this was not hacked from Iowan farm land and ordered up by a ghost, this was scraped and etched and cobbled from the streets of downtown Scranton and graced with the better angels of art's nature. No, it was not about baseball, it was about ideas the bigger and brighter and bolder the better and the revealing and sharing and showing of those ideas, in whatever color they cared to, dared to come. An infinitely more sporting proposition than mere pastime. That Costner weepy feel-good may not be the hippest analogy to apply to a hipster like Conor McGuigan and his ever-hip Test Pattern, but it is squarely apt. McGuigan struck from scratch a world where none existed, built some swell something from a null and void of nothing at all, and did so against the odds and the sods and the myopic mods of convenience. Now the time has come to close the door on that world and swing open the gates on the vast horizon of possibilities it helped to create. Test Pattern.If you've been anywhere in Northeast PA over the last 16 months you've been there. So has everyone else. Everyone else who mattered. Everybody who had a matter at hand. Untellable numbers of painters and poets and actors and musicians bared their wares for the great appreciators, through some 14 art shows, over a dozen nights of live music, a staggering slew of dance parties and a deft palmful of performance pieces. Test Pattern. The little space that could, and did, and just may someday do so again. McGuigan marked the spot and put up a shingle "just to show people how easy it is" to do something striking, to do it oneself. Despite it all, for all it can be worth. Like the grand visionists behind the scenes of New York's East Village in the '80s, Chicago's Wicker Park in the '90s, and Miami's Wynwood of right now, McGuigan took it upon himself to create a stir. The time was September of '04, and the place was Adams Ave, between a copy shop and a counseling center, three palettes and a hunch away from Courthouse Square, and a whole wild world beyond the yesterday that stood there before. And what a wild world it was. From the drunk who pissed on one of Jonathan Slingloff's paintings at the Punk Rock Holocaust aftershow to Mayor Doherty's attending the very same opening where he was paired with a Slug in many a walled photograph, from the long and involved days of installing, through the nights and the early mornings of release, the wild was palpably inherent in everything that went on. And the crowds came on and on. By the score. For the score. Conor, still unable to speak in the past tense, says the "audiences [he] get[s]are completely open, thrilled to have something different to look at."This, of course, only provoked a more openness, incited ever larger thrills, from the town that he proudly calls home. Sweet, stirful home. Conor, schooled for a time at Pitt, reared on a diet of Big Comic Fortnightly (a British comic collection that featured the likes of the one-fanged Sweeney Toddler), and raised to rule right here, forecasts a time when "[a] lotta kids are not afraid to stay in or come back to Scranton;" sees a place where there's "[a] lotta people hangin' around, tryin' new things 'cause they can." "My hope is that people would see how easy it is" to open, to show, to be, and "go for it" themselves. So, like the gentleman that he is, Conor's stepping aside so that others may nab the limelight. On his agenda is a vast undertaking: A year or two shooting Wal-Mart Supercenters throughout this increasingly shrinking vastness. Not the simple stores, mind you, nor the Sam's Clubs, but the Supercenters, all 1800 of 'em. "Every shot will look about the same." But there'll be strength and beauty in their obscene numbers. If you can call strong and beautiful a phenomena that's "environmentally, socially, [and] economically negative on all fronts." It's a work that springs from McGuigan's many-sided civic-mindedness. The stopping of the Courthouse expansion, the greening of an old mine town, and, yes, the creation of Test Pattern. Conor's of that peculiarly American ilk that refuse to sit idly by when something bugs them, when something needs to be done, so he's duly bound to get on with it. As December ends and Test Pattern shutters a town will mourn the loss by rejoicing in the gain that came about. There'll be tears, of course, but there too shall be smiles, a fond knowing that they'd might not know now what they would've known otherwise if not for that glorious space. And Conor McGuigan, well, he may have hung his Last Show, but it's a bet that we haven't heard the last of that cat. Not even close.
The Kid stays in the picture Indie bands playing Test Pattern one last time
Like Conor McGuigan, Eric Schlittler follows the age-old indie tradition: If you want something done, you Do It Yourself. When he heard things in his head, he formed a band; when he wanted others to hear his hearings, he started a label; and when he found a contingent of likewisedly-inclined, he put their hearings out there too. Way Out There. Kid Icarus is, of course, his band, and Summersteps is his label. The band's moniker's nicked from a classic NES game; the label's named for the seasonal stairway of Eric's old Moscow abode. Initially Kid Icarus was Eric and a revolving door of revealers, now it's morphed into a ready, steady foursome rounded soundly by guitarist Justin Marchegiani, bassist Ted Baird, and drummer Thad Moyer. Summersteps began as the stamp under which to press the issuances of Eric's Kid; it too has evolved, and now serves both as a refuge for some of Scranton's swellest soundslingers Marshmallow Staircase, Lewis and Clarke and Psychatrone Rhonedakk, among them as well as a forum for the tributary musings to Outsider legend Jandek. But it is to the Kid that we must first turn. Like indie-alt poster boy Jeff Tweedy, Schlittler's a foremost a fan. And he goes well outta his way to be so, scouring the racks and the stacks and the facts of our melodic existence. Currently purring on his decks are '70s forgottens Judee Sill (an Asylum alum) and Bill Fay (Time of the Last Persecution), Lousiana's-own Quintron (who reportedly come off like a cross between Denny and Jonze), his old pal and hero, Brother JT (he of the very Original Sins), and, yes, Neil Diamond's Rubinified 12 Songs. The fandemonium is evident in his My Spacing (citings range from Syd Barrett to Sedadoh), it is evident in his hype sheets (nods to Robyn Hitchcock and John Cale), and it is evident in the now-then sound of his playfully acute Kid. Kid Ic's latest, The Metal West which btw is hyperimaginatively imaged by a Finstered Miss Cassie Rose Kobeski high-fidelically follows the lo-fi charm of Summersteps slabs Maps of the Saints (1999) and Be My Echo (2002). Lyrically cast with characters that'd make a Crews man proud, and sinned in enough self-soak to keep Cormac McCarthy an outward-bound solipsist, The Metal West is about as incongruous an offering as beautiful incongruity can beget without whiling away the pure pop sheenery of it all. Bear witness: "Beekeepers on the Edge of Town" is like The Amboy Duking it out with some psych-screened Gang of Bloc Partiers, trippy, pithy, proto-post neo; the seasonally apropos "A Retail Hell" is a Badly Drawn Belle & Sebastian done to Minutemen proportion; "My Anthracite Headache" is so wondrously Guided By Voices that one would swear it must come from above and could well be Scranton's theme song, though the exalted Chamber might not get the nod of it all; "White Church Road" (this hack'sutmost fave) travels down and breaks up as if Elliot Smith were in the very head of the songster; as does "Field Song and Record," though the latter does so even more melancholically (if that's possible), while the Flamingly-titled "Her Song for Beth and The Sideshow" is like a loopy Liplock around a Moogwamp by Mogwai. Then there's the tributations. Down In A Mirror (which could well be titled Down in A Minor), like it's predecessor, Naked in the Afternoon, boasts some of indie's most cred-worthies Moore, Bright Eyes Low, then; Tweedy, Brother JT, the Mountain Goats now in addition to some of Scranton's finest. Spooky and sad and as far inside the Outside as Daniel Johnston or Roky Ericson (Is it a coincidence that Texas makes for such great inner shakes?), the Jandek tribute is a tribute to a world well beyond just about everything there is to be beyond about. And a tribute to the fortitude of the man known as Kid. Schlittler's come a long, long way since the heydays when he and his muse-accomplice Miss Cassie Rose left cassette tapes on the floor of New York City record stores. Kid Icarus nabbed Spins Band of the Day back on August 12; where they were plugfully compared to the likes of Pavement and Beck, and scores upon scores of the rabid and ribald are slingin Kids praises. Best: Not only is his stuff now officially available in the racks of the same stores he once floored, but he and his cohorts have been hitting that some of that same big town's most exalted stages. And of course Kid Icarus does Scranton. If you've seen 'em once, you know enough to see 'em twice, thrice, more. If you haven't yet had the pleasure, well now's the high time. Summersteps Sound Series continues apace this Saturday the 17th at the space soon-to-be formerly known as Test Pattern.On the bill: Doses, Yer Sweet Chimneys, and, slipping in for the incredibly auspicious occasion, the inimitable Brother JT. Whether you come to celebrate the Sound of Scranton or you come to mourn the loss of Scranton's indie friendliest venue, you simply must come. 'Cause if you don't do it yourself, no one else is gonna do it for you.
