Re: live looping, etc.

[Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

On Sunday, June 1, 2003, at 07:43 PM, <dennis@mail.worldserver.com> 
wrote:

> So relax, maybe we can decide what STYLE, GENRE, LOOPING, LIVE LOOPING 
> is.
> And tomorrow it will be different.

I have a question: Why do any of you think that you can form a scene or 
define a term?  These things happen organically over time, like any 
element of language.  Try and invent a word.  You might get some 
friends to use it, but it will probably take decades for it to gain any 
widespread usage.

My wife said something really insightful this evening.  She said, "how 
can you create a scene when you don't share a common location?"  Sure, 
we have the internet, but I think a scene that has any real momentum 
starts when a bunch of people living in the same city or region develop 
an art form or style and all gather together to support each other.  
Part of a scene is that there's support, and I don't see much of that 
here.  One SF area list member here has come to one of my shows in all 
the years on the list (No Will, you don't count!) and it's Jon El 
Bizri.  Most of the people who do come to my shows are people who know 
me and/or have heard my mp3s.  I'm not complaining, I'm not here for 
promotion.  I'm hear for the conversation, which I don't invest in 
emotionally so when one of you disagrees with me I say, "welcome to my 
United States of whatever."

When I was 5 I had a Welch's Grape Jelly Jar that had an Archie's 
cartoon on it.  It was Reggie playing a guitar in a totally Funkadelic 
outfit complete with Bootsie glasses.  Distorted notes flew from the 
guitar as the other characters stood around with their fingers in their 
ears.  The caption read, "Reggie makes the scene."  At that point I 
realized that you can't make a scene.  Scene's form from hard work, a 
common interest and mutual support.  It's totally possible that 
something does come out of all this, but typing about it isn't going to 
make it happen any faster.  What Larry O wrote about in his article was 
true, but artificial.  That event happens once a year.  It's cool, but 
that scene is very transitory.  When people go home it disappears.  If 
things like that started happening every weekend (on a smaller scale of 
course) in SLO, or even better yet, in a bigger city like what happens 
in Open Loop in NYC, then we might have a scene.

but I'd still want to call the scene "N.E.W."

Mark Sottilaro