Post by ankhst on May 4, 2010 21:20:40 GMT -5
Hi all:
I'm Joe, Ankhst, or tw1tterp8, depending on the context. I found Unwoman fairly randomly: I had discovered the far less prolific [than Unwoman] band Claire Voyant via a different Victoria-featuring band on a Hot Topic sample CD
and somehow, I thought to Google them one day in 2008 to find they were soon to play a concert in SF with a band called Stripmall Architecture [headliners], as well another band called Bloodwire. I first caught notice of Erica when she played cello and did backup vocals for SMA, especially on Eejit. I liked all 3 bands so much that I pretty much cleaned out the merch table, which included Unwoman's Blossoms CD and Trouble EP. The songs that grabbed me the quickest were Habit and Trouble. I was interested, but wouldn't say I was an actual fan just yet. A little while later, I saw her perform solo with Shadow Circus, and at that time she had 1 copy each of W&A and KS, so I snapped them up... though not as polished, the more electronic nature really resonated with me, and that's when I came to appreciate how impressive she is -- with both the keyboard programming, and the ability to play cello well and sing well at the same time... well, now I was a fan for sure.
Then Kickstarter came along, and I'd donated fairly heavily to SMA (for WWFK), so when Unwoman sought support for Casualties, I wanted to donate well there too, and the song poem kickback made that an easy choice. I'd recently started writing random-inspired poetry (pick 4 words with a random word generator and see where they take me), and a couple of them treated me well. My clear favorite was the untitled one that became Incantation -- it was already musically themed, so that made it an even more obvious choice for the song poem. I wasn't sure how well it would work as a song, but I figured since Unwoman had written several ESVM-inspired songs well, it was worth a shot. It helped that she liked my poem
but I wasn't prepared for the final product to be soooo good (I think it's hard to write songs for others' words). She sent me a draft MP3 which I listened to at work, and the world kind of condensed/went away for a short while. Then I thought, well, I'm probably biased; I wonder what others think? When I attended an Unstream for the first time, I got my answer. 
In addition to the above, I find the breadth of Unwoman's various covers very compelling -- my favorite experience there was when I "requested" Nick Cave's "Do You Love Me?", not having any idea that she'd not only already added it to her repertoire, but in fact played it a short time later in the show. More recently, I heard her cover of Front 242's "Crushed" on the Unbullet (not sure I can call it the Undildo lol) -- one of my favorite songs of theirs.
Add to this Erica's friendly/accessible nature (e.g. saying hi at shows, responding to emails, etc.), and well, in summary, I had several good reasons to be a fan already, but she keeps adding more.
I'm so glad AFP led more people to Unwoman's door, and I hope she is able to play professionally (i.e. as a sole source of income; no day job) for as long as she wants -- she's a talented artist!
I'm inspired to try and create some music of my own one day; the most I've done thus far is noodle around on a keyboard I no longer have. The wide assortment of music apps for iPhone/iTouch/iPad will certainly help with that. Musical skill would be nice
but I'll work around it.
I tend to ramble, so if anything above didn't make sense to you and you'd like clarification, fire away! If you think I've already said too much as it is, I can live with that.
Looking forward to Saturday's show
I'm Joe, Ankhst, or tw1tterp8, depending on the context. I found Unwoman fairly randomly: I had discovered the far less prolific [than Unwoman] band Claire Voyant via a different Victoria-featuring band on a Hot Topic sample CD
and somehow, I thought to Google them one day in 2008 to find they were soon to play a concert in SF with a band called Stripmall Architecture [headliners], as well another band called Bloodwire. I first caught notice of Erica when she played cello and did backup vocals for SMA, especially on Eejit. I liked all 3 bands so much that I pretty much cleaned out the merch table, which included Unwoman's Blossoms CD and Trouble EP. The songs that grabbed me the quickest were Habit and Trouble. I was interested, but wouldn't say I was an actual fan just yet. A little while later, I saw her perform solo with Shadow Circus, and at that time she had 1 copy each of W&A and KS, so I snapped them up... though not as polished, the more electronic nature really resonated with me, and that's when I came to appreciate how impressive she is -- with both the keyboard programming, and the ability to play cello well and sing well at the same time... well, now I was a fan for sure. Then Kickstarter came along, and I'd donated fairly heavily to SMA (for WWFK), so when Unwoman sought support for Casualties, I wanted to donate well there too, and the song poem kickback made that an easy choice. I'd recently started writing random-inspired poetry (pick 4 words with a random word generator and see where they take me), and a couple of them treated me well. My clear favorite was the untitled one that became Incantation -- it was already musically themed, so that made it an even more obvious choice for the song poem. I wasn't sure how well it would work as a song, but I figured since Unwoman had written several ESVM-inspired songs well, it was worth a shot. It helped that she liked my poem
but I wasn't prepared for the final product to be soooo good (I think it's hard to write songs for others' words). She sent me a draft MP3 which I listened to at work, and the world kind of condensed/went away for a short while. Then I thought, well, I'm probably biased; I wonder what others think? When I attended an Unstream for the first time, I got my answer. 
In addition to the above, I find the breadth of Unwoman's various covers very compelling -- my favorite experience there was when I "requested" Nick Cave's "Do You Love Me?", not having any idea that she'd not only already added it to her repertoire, but in fact played it a short time later in the show. More recently, I heard her cover of Front 242's "Crushed" on the Unbullet (not sure I can call it the Undildo lol) -- one of my favorite songs of theirs.
Add to this Erica's friendly/accessible nature (e.g. saying hi at shows, responding to emails, etc.), and well, in summary, I had several good reasons to be a fan already, but she keeps adding more.
I'm so glad AFP led more people to Unwoman's door, and I hope she is able to play professionally (i.e. as a sole source of income; no day job) for as long as she wants -- she's a talented artist!
I'm inspired to try and create some music of my own one day; the most I've done thus far is noodle around on a keyboard I no longer have. The wide assortment of music apps for iPhone/iTouch/iPad will certainly help with that. Musical skill would be nice
but I'll work around it.I tend to ramble, so if anything above didn't make sense to you and you'd like clarification, fire away! If you think I've already said too much as it is, I can live with that.
Looking forward to Saturday's show
