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7bit
Greetings all,
My, my, the list is lively today. Interesting discussion... and I was there
at the Knitting Factory last night too. Right in the front row. So, let me
share with you my take on the evening.
I understand where Gary is coming from in his comments...
the substance of what he
wrote in both the 'original' post and the follow-up detailed description is
very accurate.
comments cogently summed up the evening, once you properly interpret the
emotionally-charged language. (And for the most part, even Steuart's own
comments are consistent with Gary's on the first two acts).
Given Gary's expectations, I don't think he was overly harsh.
There has been some discussion today about what is musical. The issue of
Gary's use of language aside, this is the crux of the matter, isn't it? A
person's reaction to "music" depends on what they think music is,
fundamentally... on how they DEFINE it. And, there are certainly many
different definitions of what constitutes music, aren't there? And therein
lies the rub...
So, in trying to understand Gary's comments, we should note that his (and in
fact, my own) expectations were that "music" would be heard last night...
and that the evening was primarily intended to be a "musical" evening.
Dictionary.com defines music as "The art of arranging sounds in time so as
to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through
melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."
expected a performance that would adhere to this definition, and with some
looping thrown in to boot.
felt merely continuous.
consisted of Steuart using various objects and effects to make sound
effect-type sounds on his bass, while occasionally fingering a few notes
here and there. For her part, Anna made her own sound effects using a
variety of common objects and toys, and occasionally sang words in tongues.
I am not overstating this! Really, folks, in all honesty and trying to give
Steuart every break I possibly can, you'd have to be using an extremely
loose definition of the term "music" for that performance to qualify!
I know that today Steuart has said that he did feel some structure there.
And there was that one rhythmic thing on G and C (or A and D I forget
which), where actual notes were played (and that was the best part of the
set for me too). But a great deal of time was spent, for lack of a better
descriptive phrase, merely making noises. And Anna, bless her heart, I think
she really needed something else from you last night, Steuart, because all
she could do was make goofy sound effects herself. You were the only one who
had their hands on a true musical instrument. She was the icing on the
cake - if you weren't making music, then music would not be had.
From the audience, the performance felt quite shy of being a musical event.
If I may offer constructive comments, I think that what was needed was more
rhythmic feel, a greater sense of structure, and much more looping. I know
that Steuart said there was looping, but it was not the kind of looping that
builds up a structure, that embellishes and enhances the notes and rhythms
that went before it. The fact is, there were few occasions when the music
felt like more than one person was playing it.
The AABA structure Steuart mentioned earlier was not discernable in the
audience because there was so LITTLE structure to the overall performance.
There were awkward pauses after each "song" and before people began to clap.
Why? Because people weren't sure the "song" was over. No one wanted to be
the first to clap if there was still more "song" to come. People did clap
though. Even I did. There's a courtesy factor involved in that though, and I
also think most of the folks there (perhaps everyone except for Gary and I)
were there to see performance art, not music.
I got something out of last night. However, I could see early on that this
performance, indeed the whole evening, was not about music. It was about
"performance art" as the flyers laid on each of the tables said. As a
result, I managed my expectations... changed them in fact. Looking at the
evening as an experience in performance art, rather than music or looping,
allowed me to get something from the experience. It was acceptable to me
because I was no longer kidding myself that it was, in fact, music (using
the definition given above).
That is not to say that I was not disappointed. I was. Ordinarily, I would
have gone up to a fellow looper like Steuart and introduced myself. Last
night, I just didn't feel like doing that. I honestly felt that I had been
misled about what was going to happen there,
headline act only played for 30 minutes... and this even included an onstage
discussion about whether or not to do one more "song" (which they did).
Steuart, I wish you had respected us as an audience a little more to be a
little better prepared than you two were, and to figure out how to make such
unusual instrumentation work together more effectively. The potential seemed
great, but the implementation fell flat, in my eyes. Perhaps you and Anna
just don't play together that well - I think we've probably all experienced
that phenomenon some time or other. I can tell from watching your hands that
you can play - I just wish that you had! And I grant that it is not easy to
MAKE music under all the conditions of last night. But still, even as
performance art, the evening fell a little bit short, I think... heck, even
Anna felt compelled at one point to tell the audience, in an arguably
apologetic way, that it was the first gig that she and Steuart had done
together.
Had I been riding herd on your rig last night, Steuart, I would have been
using loops to create rhythmic feels to give a tangible, solid foundation to
the "music" that Anna was creating
would have been adding things on top as well, to enhance feeling and provide
a counterpoint.
together" during the performance, using your "instruments"! I liked some of
those sound effects you did a lot, but my own opinion is that such effects
are a means to an end, not an end in itself. I would have wanted to create
enough of a solid sound canvas that both you and Anna could have painted on
it at the same time... and in a complementary, musically pleasing way. I
would have seen that as my responsibility, since I was the only one actually
using a traditional musical instrument. Of course, these are my opinions,
how I might have approached such an opportunity. Anyone else's mileage may
(and likely will) vary.
Beyond that, I think it would be useful if anyone posting gig ads to the
list made an extra effort to manage our respective expectations.
us to believe that a night of looping music is planned, then you should
expect that we'll be disappointed if we don't get that. And if we don't get
that, you shouldn't then be surprised if we use the same vehicle you used to
promote the event, to give back to the community our impressions of the
event, perhaps even using rather pointed language.
honest thing about Steuart's gig spam to this list was that he did, in fact,
correctly label it as "spam" when he sent it to the list. In fairness, I
know your intentions were good, Steuart, and I am not seeking a refund. It's
not that the evening didn't hold something of value for everyone who
attended, it's just that it was not the musical/looping event some of us
expected it would be.
Kevin