I continue to SHOUTcast it from the rooftops every Tuesday night on Dementia Radio with “Power Salad’s Cream Cheese Library”, 2 hours of nuggets from my collection each week…also I’ve been working on the railr—-er, my recording booth and I do believe all the kinks are worked out (not to mention some yardbirds and dave clark fives.)

I-CON was a lot of fun back in April, having dinner with ShoEboX of Worm Quartet while a lounge band pumped out the cheezy hits, late night snackies and weirdness with Devo Spice and his dad, trotting out the dementia for new friends, and a whole mess of seeing family and old friends. Mrs Salad and the crouton joined me at the end of the weekend and we spent the remainder of the week “doing” Lawn Guyland as well as a glorious day in Manhattan, during which we took in a Disney show on Broadway and had pizza at the *first* pizzeria in the US, Lombardi’s in Little Italy. Yo.

So now my sights are set on Iron City, as I will be performing at the Mensa Annual Gathering in Pittsburgh on July 4th at 730pm. Wanna thank W Randy Hoffman for hipping me to the opportunity, because it means not only will I be once again performing alongside my demented buds Rob Balder and ShoEboX (Worm Quartet), but I will be ending my show just in time to catch the weekend’s keynote presentation by the one and only Dr. Demento!! I haven’t seen the good Doctor in person since 2000 at ALCON 2000 in Chicago, so this should prove to be a great weekend. Then later in July I will be back in the Pittsburgh area for CONfluence, with many other performers including the geek-rock of Toyboat, with Eric Coleman, who inspired me to go ahead and buy a Roland Handsonic drumpad – teehee….

The next Power Salad FuMP is scheduled for the end of July, so I will be frantically writing and recording in the meantime – what’ll it be? Who knows….there are a couple of idears on the drawring bawd, but now that my equipment scenario appears to be settled, recording should be easier and sound better. Stay tuned!!

So then to recap: I-CON win, Mensa Yikes!, CONfluence soon, DementiaRadio Ridiculous, and Salad BUY!!!!!!

Thanks for reading and catch you all soon!

wow that was pathetic….

Regardless, it should be an uber-fun time this weekend up in Long Island for this year’s I-CON, I will be performing as part of the FuMP round robin concert on Friday night at 7pm along with Devo Spice, Worm Quartet, and Marc Gunn, then while I do not have a timeslot of my own on Friday, I will be on hand to assist with Devo’s and ShoEboX’s sets if need be. Then on Saturday I’ll have a mini-set as part of the Cabaret starting at 8pm and I go on shortly after 10. This is all going on at the Holiday Inn Ronkonkoma, in the Islip Ballroom.

Of course there’s other programming going on also at the Marriott Islandia and at Suffolk County Community College Brentwood campus, including groovy guests such as Sean Aston from Lord of the Rings, and Tory Bellici from Mythbusters.  Check it all out at the I-CON website.

Hope to see lots of you there! We’ll stop at a Roach Coach for a “butt’id roll n cawfee”!

I traveled to Minneapolis on Friday and arrived in the mid-afternoon, so there was plenty of time to say hi to those whom I ran into on the way up, before depositing my schtuff in the “musician’s lounge” where I stayed with Rob Balder and sometimes Marc Gunn (they had moved the sleeper sofa out of the room in the last year and did not bring up rollaways as in previous years, so space was at a premium). Also met up with many from the Dementia Radio crew, meeting a few for the first time.

We all converged on the deer-in-the-headlights hotel restaurant, which was not open when we arrived despite its sign saying Open For Dinner At 430!! Our unfortunate server was quite harried, having basically a table of 36 or whatever, and seemed at times to be regarding us with a bit of WTF? but I acted my usual “normal” self (yeah, there’s one in every crowd) and tried to assuage her and smooth things out. Dunno if it worked. The food, however, was quite excellent.

I am glad I brought my DV cam (at the request of Devo Spice, who is collecting footage for a new promo video), and carried 3 DV tapes with me, so I was able to capture nearly all of the Friday night and Saturday afternoon shenanigans. This included the debut of Euro techno “artist” Hot Snack Time, who proceeded to get on stage and start simultaneously being all charming and nice, and dissing dementia music!!! It became clear once he brought his musical robots out on stage to play his tracks, that something was not right. In a nutshell, he was exposed as a fraud and as the real reason for the earlier disappearance of Dr Ted Nelson of The Nick Atoms, who made a miraculous re-appearance during all of this, and managed to reprogram his robots just before they completed Hot Snack Time’s command to kill Dr Nelson onstage. The disgraced techno-boy ran offstage and has not been seen since, save for a quick post on LJ, and we were all treated to the long-awaited reunion of the legendary Nick Atoms for a short performance. You can see the video on YouTube under my username powersalad.

Performances by many of my demented friends followed, including Rob Balder, Devo Spice, Possible Oscar and Worm Quartet on Friday night, the great Luke Ski, MC Lars and Music GoH Wally Pleasant on Saturday afternoon, and Carrie Dahlby, Marc Gunn, and lots of folks participating in the FuMP Sideshow and Dementia Smackdown segments. Tons and tons of funny music this past weekend.

A lot of new CDs were debuted at the con this time (as has become usual), including new pairup Baldbox (ShoEboX of Worm Quartet and Rob Balder) with their “The Dumb Album”, the 3rd album from Soggy Potato Chips called “I Accidentally The Entire Album”, Carrie Dahlby’s new one “Giant Kitten” (on which our Steely Dan parody “A19″ appears), Insane Ian’s “n3rds0ngs” (containing the Dr D hit “Guitar Hero” – Ian is a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming workd of dementia), and others – oh, not to mention the NEW EP FROM POWER SALAD!!! “The Food Show” is now available for purchase in CD and download form over there on the right. A little more to the right. No, down.  Little more. Back to- – uh, no, up now….There it is. BUY!!!

Much more went on than can be encapsulated here, but I want to thank everyone who has made me feel very welcome and really nearly a family member in this whole big world o’dementia. Can’t wait til next year!!

And now it’s on to I-CON, April 3-5 at the Suffolk County Community College Brentwood Campus (hey hey, I went to the original Selden Campus!!!), along with Devo Spice, Worm Quartet and Marc Gunn, FuMP representin’. We’ll have a round-robin FuMP Showcase concert Friday night, I have graciously been given a few minutes of Devo and ShoEboX’s sets that night too owing to a scheduling mixup, then we will all be performing in the Cabaret on Saturday night. Go to www.iconsf.org for info and to purchase badges. Badges??? We – - – - – no, yes you do. Come on out!

Not only that, but plans are now underway for yet another comedy music explosion, this time at Penguicon in Detroit, in May. I will most likely be performing there too, so stay tuned!!

And please pick up some CDs or tracks in the Shop. Thanks again and love to all, especially those who believe enough in funny music to let this be “our” place! Luke and Earl, you guys put on the best Marscon Dementia Track ever, many thanks. And cucumber Mozart.

I will be full of epicness, but shall it be win or fail?? Stay tuned!

Following that, I will be part of a FuMPtastic weekend at I-CON in Brentwood, Noo Yawk (close to my old home area of Selden/Centereach/Port Jefferson/Coram) – GoHs include Sean Astin (LoTR), Tory Bellici from Mythbusters, and some FuMPalicious comedy music from yours truly, Devo Spice, Worm Quartet, and Marc Gunn! Hit up I-CON for updated info, and hope to see you there!!

• Ville de Veal
• The Floppies
• The Hackers
• Ten Down The Throat
• The Hacking Crustaceans
• Honest Food
• The Back-ups
• Welcome to Medina
• Warning Tracks
• E.L.O. (this is then crossed-out, in the style of fIREHOSE, moe., joe, “the symbol guy”, and other typeface fun)
• Scooby du
• The Blame
• Hypocritters
• Dr. Slud (this was a character in Zot Theater shows)
• Salad Dance
• The Power Surges

Did we make the right decision??? Who knows……
Zinnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggggggggggg……

The comedy musicians we have performing this year in the Dementia Track at MarsCon 2009 include Music Guest Of Honor Wally Pleasant, nerdcore mega-star MC Lars, Positive Attitude, Devo Spice, the great Luke Ski, Worm Quartet, Possible Oscar, Carrie Dahlby, Rob Balder, Power Salad, Marc Gunn, The Feng Shui Ninjas, DJ Particle, Insane Ian, Soggy Potato Chips, along with our Host and track Co-chair Wyngarde! There will be room parties hosted by Dementia Radio and filker Beth Kinderman, as well as the Dementia Fan Showcase, the infamous Dementia Smackdown, and much more! For details, visit MarsCon Dementia Dot Com! http://www.marscondementia.com

PRE-REGISTRATION ENDS ON JANUARY 31ST!
If you pre-register now, you can get a weekend badge for $45.00, until the end of the day on this Saturday, January 31st. After that, you will need to purchase your badge at the door when you arrive for $55.00. http://marscon.org/2009/registration/index.php

THE MARSCON 2009 DEMENTIA TRACK FUND RAISER CD/MP3 sets
With the exception of the Music Guest Of Honor, MarsCon can’t afford cover the travel and hotel costs for the dozen or so comedy music acts that come from all across the country to perform at MarsCon. That is why for the past few years we have released a Fund Raiser CD set to help raise money to cover the lodging costs of our other out-of-town main stage dementia concert performers.

This year’s collection are all live recordings from the concerts performed at MarsCon 2008, featuring last year’s Music Guests of Honor Hot Waffles, Paul & Storm, and many of the acts returning in 2009. There are 2 sets available in 2 different ways. There’s the regular 2 CD set for $20 (which is 2 hours and 40 minutes of music, and comes with an instant MP3 download of the collection), and the DELUXE 3 CD set for $30 (which is 4 hours of music, and also comes with an instant MP3 download of the collection). We also have both albums available in MP3-download-only form as well, for $15 for the regular and $25 for the deluxe.

Sales of this year’s collection have been much slower than the past two year’s collections, and we are still quite a ways away from our goal amount. Picking up a copy of this collection will help us pay for these act’s hotel rooms, making it easier for them to come out to the Twin Cities and give it all for the MarsCon audience. So if you can afford it, please pick up a copy today. For track listings and to order, please go here: http://marscondementia.com/products-page/2009-cds/

Our webmistress Sara has also added a ‘Donate’ button to our website, in case anyone wanted to chip in any smaller amounts to help out the Dementia Track. Anything is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=2722928

MARSCON DEMENTIA EMAILING LIST
Yes, it exists. All of 6 people have signed up for it. Go here and sign up to get updates in your greasy little inbox: http://www.thegreatlukeski.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=3

Thanks for reading everyone, I’ll see you there. Because…
…YOU’RE GOING TO MARSCON!

~ the great Luke Ski, co-chair of the MarsCon Dementia Track
http://www.marscondementia.com