RE: Thomas Dolby: LIVE LOOPING

[Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>]

Thanks for the report. I'm going to see if I can get tix to one of the NYC
dates.

Best wishes,
Warren Sirota
 
Come hear *The Sandbox* at The Monkey in NYC, April 23rd, 8PM  - details at
www.warrensirota.com/sandbox


> -----Original Message-----
> From: loop.pool [mailto:looppool@cruzio.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2006 5:41 AM
> To: LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)
> Subject: Thomas Dolby: LIVE LOOPING
> 
> 
> Wow,  I just got from a very stimulating show,  watching 
> Thomas Dolby hit 
> the
> stage for the first time in 15 years (except for a short tune 
> up gig two 
> weeks ago in SF).
> 
> Not only was it a wonderful show in a wonderful venue (The 
> Independent is 
> now hands down,
> my favorite music venue in San Francisco after having seen 
> Elbow and now Mr. 
> Dolby there).
> 
> What was very exciting is that every act on the bill used 
> live looping 
> techniques extensively.
> 
> Genie (who had such a wonderfully creative show at Y2K5)  
> opened up and was 
> really well
> recieved with his mixture of psychedelic delay drenched 
> guitar,  human 
> beatboxing and
> amazing manipulation of 2 DL4 Line 
> 6s...................sometimes while 
> multitasking with
> playing slide guitar........while 
> beatboxing................while using his 
> fingers on one DL4
> in his lap and his toes with a 2nd one on the floor.
> 
> The the excellent group LoopStation performed with, again, 
> Line 6 DL4s and 
> what looked
> from my vantage point to be a Boss gigadelay.
> 
> The group is a cellist and a singer and they were really 
> wonderful and 
> amazingly full spectrum
> in their passionate pop songs.    They were very, very well 
> recieved by the 
> crowd and I was lucky enough
> that their cellist gave me one of their CDs to listen to , 
> which I can't 
> wait to put on my hard drive right away.
> 
> I asked them to come play Y2K6 and he seemed interested so cross your 
> fingers.  This was one of the more
> interesting live looping acts that I've seen and both the 
> cellist and the 
> vocalist used liberal usage of looping
> in the set.
> 
> Dolby's set was just sublime replete with wonderful visuals.  
>    He had 
> several cameras on his person and there were
> frequent images from one of them in black and white on the 
> large screen. 
> The cameras were fish eye lens and it
> was really cool to see him manipulate his gear on the big 
> screen.   He also 
> had beautiful looped images
> accompanying his songs...........including some very powerful 
> emotional 
> imagery of submaries, torpedoes and the ocean
> during his song,  "One of our Submarines".
> 
> I'm not entirely sure of his setup except to say that I know 
> it's well 
> documented as of yesterday on his website and that
> he was basically looping inside of LOGIC on a Mac.
> 
> He seemed to have a nice blend of actually playing parts on 
> keyboards; 
> singing;  looping occasional keyboard parts (which I realize 
> could have been 
> real time midi looping or an internally run VST live looping 
> pluging) and 
> then some obviously sequenced
> parts.
> 
> The canned-ness of it didn't bother me in the slightest 
> because he really 
> was multi-tasking and playing a lot.
> He was in fine voice and my only complaint was that I wish 
> his show had been 
> longer than the slightly less than an hour that it was.
> 
> His equipment failed him twice during the show but he was 
> very entertaining 
> and called attention to the fact.............Every time it 
> screwed up he 
> promised the crowd that he would throw t-shirts to the 
> audience and he did.
> 
> At one point he dedicated a song to his wife (the reason he 
> moved to L.A. 
> apparently) and she just coincidentally happened to be 
> standing right next 
> to us.    I was graciously taken to the show by Glenn 
> Javaheri and his 
> girlfriend who also gave me some video that he shot at the 
> 1st Bass Looping 
> Festival at the San Jose Museum of Art, years ago with Steve 
> Lawson and 
> Michael Manring.
> 
> It was a wonderful concert and I felt so proud to be in this 
> community and 
> see how high profile some of what we do is getting.
> This is the first 'normal' show I"ve seen where everyone on 
> the bill was 
> live looping extensively. 
>