showmanship?

[Steve Lawson <steve@steve-lawson.co.uk>]

>>>
Question, though: how have audiences reacted to loops in your experience?
Do they need to be educated?  "What I'm doing now is playing this figure,
and it runs into this little machine that repeats it indefiniely."  Does
the initial visual of you playing the first iteration of the loop
suffice--provided that you go onto other portions of the performance?  Are
there cases where you might have exagerated the effort in tweaking your
machines to effect a visual stimulus?  Waving your hands
conjurer/theremin-like when it really only required a quarter turn of one
knob?  Where does showmanship stop and charlatanry begin?<<<<

I've had a really good response - a few seriously dimwitted people have
asked if there's a backing tape, but noone who is actually listening is
under any illusions... I often explain a little of what I'm doing during 
the
gig as well, and that can add to the multi-sensory experience for those
watching, as they try to work out what's loop and what's me...

showmanship is cool - so long as it doesn't get in the way of the music, do
as much as you like - wear a cape, dress up as queen victoria, paint your
nails blue, install your rack in a trabant hanging from the lighting rig, 
or
just wear a fraggle rock t-shirt - whatever, make it into a show, try to
take it away from being an arcane muso environment and enjoy it. At my last
gig in LA, in a coffee house in Temple City, there were a few little kids
running around, which was great - there's nothing better to take the pickle
out the ass of an audience than a kid who as soon as the guy on stage puts
his bass down, jumps on his lap, mid song! :o) Loop music and electronica 
in
general can become such a male, middle class, white, intellectual exercise
(and hey, I'm all of those thinigs), but it doesn't need to be, if you make
the environment more inclusive...

so on with the theramin-like conjuring, and please video it, it sounds 
cool!
:o) 

cheers

Steve 
www.steve-lawson.co.uk