RE: Adrian Belew's Loops -- Review of show in Cambridge, MA -- June 10, 1999

[David Kirkdorffer <DKirkdorffer@exapps.com>]

I saw the Adrian Belew Show last night at The Middle East rock club in
Cambridge, MA.

To me the night displayed well Adrian's 
Hendix-meets-McCartney-on-Vaudeville
persona.  He's like an incandescant smile in a dark room.  Good lord he can
play guitar like no-one else.  When he solo's he's got all manner of
facility to what he plays.  

His peppy, chatty manner was very much in contrast to the standard fare
heard at The Middle East.  Sonically, the room is a hard one to balance and
to make sound good.  Indeed, every act I see that brings its own sound
person to this club sounds from bad to worse.  Last night was one of the
worst.  No low-end, soupy and WAY BRITE!  

Adrian had three guitar set-ups on stage.  Two acoustic (a dobro, and a
taylor) and one electric. Two Johnson Millennium amps, each with an
extension 2x12 cabinet, were arranged in a semi-circle behind Mr. B and on
top of a new black rug to keep Andrian's stuff clean and separated from
beaten stage-boards that will have seem all manner of wetness and wear.

Belewps were evidenced as Adrian played songs from his 20 years in Rock.
Belewps were not ambient at all, but rather riffs and chords which Adrian
could add to and use to support the songs he played.  No floaty tinklings
here.  I couldn't run down all the tunes, as many were unfamilar to me.  
But
I can say the tunes from his first two records are dear to me and took me
back to a different time.  He also played Krimson songs including Neal &
Jack and Me and Dinosaur (which started on acoustic and ended on electric).
Pre-recorded drums supported a few tunes.

Adrian chatted between tunes.  He asked if anyone had questions. Unlike the
decorous assemblys at Robert Fripp's solo shows, this was a more rock and
rowdy crowd.  Adrian mentioned that he's involved in five different solo
projects, which when you think about it makes one smile.  The Bears will
have a new album.  Also, he promises that when Robert visits him next, they
will write a song together.  He mentioned his next big tour will be with
Krimson.

When asked, Adrian said his favorite guitarists in clude Hendrix and Jeff
Beck and Robert Fripp -- and that when he met Jeff Beck recently, Jeff
complimented him on his playing.  

The encore was a bit staged, as some of the room had started to clear out,
when lo! he was back and playing again.  

A few times we were reminded of the consession table and that he'd be out
after the show to chat and sign stuff.  

I was happy to shake his hand and ask if he would like to endorse the EDP.
He said yes.  I'll be following up on that with Stan, his management.

Overall, a unique and entertaining evening from a unique and entertaining
man.  

David Kirkdorffer
UNDO


-----Original Message-----
From: ld thomson [mailto:heatshrink@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 1999 4:58 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
Subject: Adrian Belew's Loops


I pulled this off the Adrian Belew web site, thought it might be of some 
interest to you all.

Q- So the sound inspires a musical counterpoint, as opposed to you writing 
a

song and then searching for some sounds to make it work.

Belew - "Actually, I do both things. But it's very convenient for me if, 
when I find a new sound, generally I'm playing something and think "This 
is 
cool, I ought to write a song with this." But if I've already written a 
song

and I know I want to take the guitar in a certain direction, then I can 
sit 
down and design that sound for it.

Right now, I'm using a new amplifier called the Johnson Millennium. It has 
wonderful built-in effects, which are going to be very helpful for me to 
create the next generation of guitar sounds I'll work from. A recent 
discovery that I made, which is really helping me a lot, is ways to use 
loops, which I comically call "Belewps." And the loops systems I've been 
doing have been ones that are not static. Normally you think of a loop and 
you play something into it and it plays that back internally. I've been 
trying to work with loops you can interact with-add to, interrupt, and 
constantly change-while you're playing. This is all done with an 
expression 
pedal: Every time you bring the expression pedal in, you're tapping into 
the

loop, turning it on or off, or adding to it."

Q - Do you ever do something where you might use some kind of distortion 
or 
other modulation effects into the loop and play over the loop with a 
different kind of sound?

Belew - "That's what I am doing. The Johnson Millennium comes with a 
pedalboard, and you can determine whether or nor something is being turned 
on or off by manner of a normal footswitch, by manner of a momentary 
switch,

so that it's just being turned on as you're stepping on it, or by hooking 
it

to an expression pedal. Now, the loop is already on the expression pedal. 
On

the other footswitches, I usually have something like another delay, 
distortion, and perhaps a very interesting-sounding chorus. Because I've 
found it helps to separate. Once you have a loop you want to play 
something 
to, you can either sound like you're doubling it, or you can play against 
it, almost like Robert Fripp and I play sometimes-the same lines a little 
out of synch with each other-or you can choose a sound that's so different 
from it that it really does sound like two completely independent guitar 
players."

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