Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Being in the deep South, where Lynyrd Syknyrd and Marshall Tucker still rule
and if you don't play guitar you're a commie or some sort, we don't get too
many "interesting" shows to go to. So, if somebody that plays "different"
music that you wish to see comes even remotely close, you better drive and
see them, or you won't get another chance.

Luck was on my side this week. My wife is in Asheville N.C. setting
choreography and giving master classes at a summer dance intensive there,
and had been given a nice apartment in the downtown area to stay in the
entire week. The apartment turned out to be only 1 block from Vincent's Ear,
where Robert Rich was playing. Since I figured I'd have a free place to
stay, I also figured the 3 hour drive through the mountains would be worth
it, since I may not get another chance to see him again anytime soon. I
hopped in the car and away I went.

Let's get the bad stuff out the way first.

1. Vincent's Ear is a rat hole. R.A.T.H.O.L.E. However, you have to give
them brownie points for booking an evening of experimental and ambient
electronic music. Not too many clubs anywhere in North or South Carolina are
going to bother with this. If you can't play "Freebird", don't even bother
sending a demo for the most part. Also, you couldn't sit any further away
from the stage than about 15 feet, since that was all the room there was.
So, maybe it was worth being in a rat hole to get up-close and personal

2. Audience, or, lack of. I think the crowd topped out at around 38 or so.
They knew nobody was playing "Sweet Home Alabama" that evening. It's a
shame that a great musician like Robert Rich can't get better support even
in an "art" town like Asheville.

3. Audience, or, a few of them. It only takes one or two inconsiderate jerks
to muck up a show. Some ass decided that talking loudly on his cell phone
was more important than anything else, and Robert actually had to "shush"
him from the stage before starting one of his delicate bamboo flute solos.
This happened more than one. I felt pretty bad for the lack of respect
shown.

4. I'm a stupid moron. Based on a previous posting about a venue not
allowing any pictures, I didn't take my camera. Nobody here cared. I could
have shot all night and gotten some amazing stuff, and I left my darned
camera at home. Dammit!

I can't tell you who the two opening acts were. They never bothered to say.
However….

First up was a percussionist. He had taken a regular beat-to-hell drum kit
and equipped it with contact mikes and "Frippertronics" delay units. He
never picked up a pair of sticks, but would slowly build a loop in the delay
units by rubbing the drum heads to generate a tone or softly hitting the
shells with objects, and then would solo off that for a few minutes (all run
through the delays) before moving on to building another loop. He never
actually "played" the drums as you'd expect, and the overall sound was
actually very delicate and textured. The audience didn't quite get what he
was doing, but I found the sound being generated to be quite interesting.

Next guy up was running Reason on a laptop along with a Korg N364. This was
basically a "drone" act. He'd get a very low bass note started in Reason,
then slowly light a cigarette, take a few puffs, look at the laptop, then
wiggle the mouse and start a second low bass drone, which would beat against
the first, take a few more puffs off the cigarette, put the cigarette down,
open a bottle of water, look at the laptop, taka a drink, put the water
down, hit a single note on the Korg, light another cigarette…. some vocal
samples of a female reading something would be triggered, that would play,
he'd puff on the cigarette for a few more minutes, then change something
else. I don't know what the sampled voices were saying. The beating bass
drones obscured it all. That was basically it. A large portion of the
audience walked out during this rubbing their ears.

After he was done, and audience member asked him "Have you thought about
taking a sandwich or something up there? You know, really 'live' with it on
stage?" He wasn't sure how to take this! I couldn't have performed the
piece he did. I don't smoke and I'm not capable of moving as slow on stage
as this.

I got to speak to Robert for a few minutes while the opening acts were
clearing the stage. He's an extremely nice guy to talk to and we spoke of
his MOTM and my Modcan and how he integrated the MOTM into into the system
for live performances. Wish there had been more time to talk to him.

Once Robert took the stage the majority of the audience gave him their rapt
attention the entire 85 minutes that he played. Robert is the absolute
master at what he does. The combination of bamboo flutes and steel guitar
being played over some of the most amazing synth textures was almost
hypnotic at times. There's not much I can say about Robert's music. If you
haven't heard it and you're on this list then you need to unsubscribe until
you're familiar. I'm not saying that everybody will like what Robert does,
but he has a very important place in the history of the ambient/space (and
glurp…) music genres and can't be ignored.

There were a number of sections during the performance that depended on the
MOTM, but at times it was tough to tell exactly what it was doing verses
what was coming from elsewhere. So, it was possible to be hearing live MOTM
along with sampled MOTM layered on top of yet another texture coming from
one of the other synths. Once again though, not a single falter or pause
reaching for the appropriate filter or EG knob. As I said previously, this
demonstrates a complete mastery of your instrument.

To me, the most amazing thing about Roberts show was the continual flow of
his program. He went from section to section smoothly with no breaks all the
while adjusting the MOTM, grabbing the correct flute, being sure the correct
settings were set up on his pedal board for the steel guitar, changing
balances on the mixer and adjusting synth presets. You have to be very
intimately acquainted with the system you're playing with to pull this off.
In fact, I'm not 100% how he did it all. I know there wasn't an 85 minute
long sequence on the laptop, as I watched him select different pieces/files
to play a number of times during the performance, so there were also bridges
coming from somewhere that "smoothed the gap" between different things being
sequenced on the laptop.

I'd love to be able to sit down with him and discuss the structure of the
show to get a better idea of how it was done. I'm slowly considering playing
live again some myself, and getting from one thing to the next without
breaks or long pauses has been one of my concerns.

I got back to the apartment building where my wife was staying, and realized
that she had given me her cell phone, so I couldn't call her to let me in
the building…so I had to stand around outside over 45 minutes waiting on
somebody else to come along and punch in the security code and trust me
enough to let me in along with them. Not something I wanted to do at
midnight, in Asheville, in the rain.... Jezz, am I an idiot or what?

Still, all in all, a very enjoyable evening! If you get a chance to see
Robert, don't pass it up.