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Looper's Delight
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FRO DIDDLY asked about the Y2K-X International Live Looping Festival next year. *"last one? bummer-"* Yeah, at least for my foreseeable future. I hope you will plan on coming and performing so you don't miss out, Fro. Your are cordially and officially invited and I'm taking invitations now from everyone. I love this festival and it has had a huge impact on my live in the past ten years but each year it has taken longer and longer to produce and taken up more and more of my own artistic energy. I've been very ambitious in the past 3-5 years and have tried to do a lot of international touring, national touring and the festival and I've ended up exhausted and not finishing projects that I've had in the pipeline for literally years. Two years ago it took 6 months to do the festival This past year it took 7 1/2 months. I've been working a little bit every day less than a month after the festival this year for next years' festival so that will put it up at 11 months for this year. I just need to have a bit of a life for myself and I need to be a full time artist again. I figure I have worked my butt off to try and serve this community (and I've received immeasurable awards for doing it so I'm very grateful) so I think I've earned a break for a while at least. Some of this is my own fault as I've tried to make it more and more impressive; more and more inclusive, but, at the same time, it has not increased in attendance or in it's ability to create income so it has hurt me financially quite a bit (especially in the past 2 years because of this horrible recession that Northern California is not nearly out of yet). I love doing theme-oriented festivals so I'm sure I'll do other things, but I just need a break. I'm also curious to see whether this mode is sustainable and whether this community will pick up the ball in the United States and produce future looping festivals without me putting the lions share of energy into doing them. *"do you have dates lined up yet? or a general time frame?" *Yes, October 13th - October 18th, 2010 and, unlike past years, I think I'm going to make the entire thing be in Santa Cruz and expand the dates for the festival here. In past years I've always tried to create an event for traveling artists so that they have more than one date to come play but it has been tremendously draining for me to not only coordinate small festivals in other cities but it also consistently drained financial resources to do so. Next year I've decided to really make it a Festival/Convention and include multiple venues, coordinated clinics and basically turn my traveling artists onto the potential of producing shows in other cities on their own (or letting someone in the community step up to produce the shows that have typically been done in SF, San Jose, the East Bay, etc. in past years). Lastly, I'm going to recreate what I think was the first self conscious Live Digital Looping monthly gig in history at the site where it occurred (MOBO SUSHI) in 1995 and I'm going to bring GARY REGINA here from Arizona and together, with my brother, BILL WALKER, the three of us will celebrate that monthly gig we did for almost a year as THIRD WAVE. That will probably occur on Wednesday, October 13th. By the way, loop historians, I have not found anything online that indicates that such a thing existed before this date. In the spirit of our dearly departed loop historian, Dr. Richard Zvonar, I want to make sure that my claim about this is accurate. Please let me know if anyone knows of an advertised, regular and ongoing live looping performance existed before this time so I know that I'm not engaging in historic hyperbole. Later on, I will post some thoughts about the future as I see it and what will happen after this large festival stops under my direction. That's going to be a longer post and I"m really curious to hear what people think about the future at that point. It's been a true pleasure trying to serve this community and it has enriched my life immeasurably that this festival has occurred and that so many amazing artists have sacrificed so much to come to my home town and play their version of live looping music.