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i saw them at WOMAD seattle. brook gave a requisite apology, stating that this was their 1st ever live performance. the audience (which seemed to be made up of people entirely unfamiliar with either brook or gasparyan) did not seem to mind at all, and by and large i thought most reacted to brook as rather charming. it didn't come off as an apology at all. the set was excellent. and while i am a huge fan of brook's music and production, musically, the show entirely belonged to gasparyan. he was extraordinary. he and brook played at the wildly strange 'grande jam' encore at WOMAD's last night, and while gasparyan did look awkward (in fact everyone looked awkward... it was a really odd but wonderful attempt), gasparyan's presence, his playing, had me feel as if we were all in the presence of, simply, a master. --sky -----Original Message----- From: Lanpheer, James [mailto:James.Lanpheer@cai.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 1999 2:55 PM To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: More Brook/Gasparyan. Whoever published the third review of that show....THANKS! That's good to hear... I got the 4th show of the tour, someone else caught the second show. In what we saw, there was numerous comments from the band: "Its only our fourth show" "We didn't have much time to rehearse" "If you see 'strange' glances, you'll know why...." etc. At my show, there was only like 100 people there. I don't think it was lack of interest, it was BADLY advertised. Still the show that we saw on the West Coast doesn't even sound like the same BAND! I saw no "stunning guitar work". To me, Gasparyan didn't look uncomfortable (like he did in SF), but Brook did for sure! Certainly no encores were here (they also said "We've already PLAYED all our tunes!") and there was no standing O. The point? It just goes to show what rehearsing and going thru the material can do... It even applies to technology. Going thru the paces of your sequences from song-to-song and practicing that makes it even more seamless. My original question was: Is this technique really valid for live performance? At at least one answer is: YES. As my setup progresses from strictly acoustic sounds to adding some electronic manipulations, i'll need to remember to practice this too (doh! ANOTHER thing to practice...) Thanks for your input on that show... I wasn't really disappointed, its just hard to make mood music come off like the CD. Gasparyan was worth the price of admission and MORE!! If you need more encores, just let the man PLAY! Regards, Jim Lanpheer