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Looper's Delight
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OB KimF disclaimer... hit that delete button now Kim! 8-> Laurie said... LH: Story time, girlz and boyz: I'm reminded of the first time I heard Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in concert, early 70's. (Oh gawd, that just about puts me in Grandmaville, doesn't it? @8^) MB: Since we're dating ourselves... I saw ELP at the Hollywood Bowl, I believe, in the middle slot with Edgar Winter closing... Rick Derringer on guitar. This had to be in the very early 70's? LH: I went to their first-of-tour warmup concert in a little college town, and they blew me away. It was flawless, intense, dynamic - big flashy show. Two nights later I saw them in the city. Clone concert, absolutely identical down to the note, nuance, rap, look-up-at-the-crowd-with-sexy-smile-on-this-measure, *everything*. I was really disillusioned...SNIP! It's not *their* fault I was disillusioned. They were playing their butts off, delighting their fans, and paying the bills. (I do wonder, though, if by the end of the tour, the repetition started to feel stifling, even with the adrenaline rush of playing for huge enthusiastic crowds.) The problem was only mine, in that my expectations were pretty naïve and idealistic. However, _I don't think that idealism was unfounded at all. It was a major turning point for me in terms of realizing that improvisation was a more satisfying direction for me personally...SNIP MB: I guess the music biz in those days was *very much* oriented to replicating the album for the record buying audience, with some noteworthy exceptions. The promotion of those tours was probably all handled by Label mgt. as well as band mgt. And maybe (just maybe) funds from those tours were repaying label advance promotional and recording budget recoups. The present doesn't seem to have changed that much for major pop artists. On the DIY and Indie front maybe we can harbor different expectations... My comment is this: Is the music being composed and preformed designed to be played or sold? I'm sure many seemingly canned, stale sounding renditions of addmittedly great songs, were originally a passionate attempt of the writer to somehow convey something important to them *at that time*. Time really changes everything though. I keep asking myself how to somehow integrate and present songs I've written over the years in some meaningful way to me. Very dark painful songs have a hard time living next to brighter, funnier material. Whatever was written most recently seems always to have more immediate value even though I still find deep meaning in many of my other songs. Hence my slow swing back to improvised music. It stands in the present for me, and comes without the obligation to go back to retrieve feelings long past. It holds a vast potential as well as the risk of falling into the void. Now it would seem, I have the responsibility to at least some of my songs, to somehow experiment with loose re-arrangements to seek their validity in the current moment. Hopefully with loops and all... There! LD relevance. (If this sort of discussion has totally lost relevance here, sorry... The discussion IS a result of a highly loop involved live performance.) LH: Which is why, at the very least, I admire the scope, vision, and risk of the ProjeKct tours, independent of the music itself. How Fripp, Gunn, and Belew -- and their fans -- will feel about their efforts and depth of experimentation when it's all over is anyone's guess. The music's evolution over the course of the tour will be very interesting. I'd love to hear an "after" cd juxtaposed with the pre-tour recording. (BTW, if you really are hopelessly pathological about this, Gunn's Road Diary has some entries about making the P2 cd, as well as the P1 performances: http://www.treygunn.com/road.html. Hearing about P1 & 2 from one of the participants is actually pretty revealing.) OK, off my soapbox. Thanks for everybody's perceptive, probing questions, and thoughtful ideas. laurie Off mine too... Cheers, -Miko