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Looper's Delight
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Kris wrote, about Juana Molina "You should bring her to Y2K9, Rick." Oh, I wish, Kris, but she just sold out Yoshi's in San Francisco at $20 ahead and the next time she comes she'll sell it out at $30 ahead after the buzz from the audience (who gave her a standing ovation at the end of the show). She is a very well known international artist in the hispanic world and flies all over the world making good money so she's well out of our league. She's also in a funny position that an urban center (which draws on 3 million people) can bring her to play for 500 people but, in a town like Santa Cruz, she is not known in the slightest and we could not get enough people to come to her show to make it financially worth her while to come play the festival. I've produced new wave, experimental, avante garde, world music and looping shows for over 25 years now, and I have a very strong sense of what works and what doesn't in this odd little town: one that is very culturally strong and sophisticated but still can only draw from a pool of about 50,000 people. The fact is that, for better or worse, this festival loses money generally speaking and I"m only able to barely cover a couple of headlining artists' transportation costs with the generous donations we've received from the Looping Software people. This year, the economy is so bad that I don't have nearly the yearly donation funds to put the festival on as I did last year. LOL, is anyone rolling in enough dough in their lives that they might want to contribute a thousand bucks or two to the festival this year? We could really use it. Last year I actually paid my staff for the very first time in our history, and we're STILL asking people to both come to the festival and play on their own dime. It's testimony to how strong and involved our community is that this festival is so strong and creative every year. We run it on fumes, trust me!! yours, Rick