MOTM

hello all,
i think this is such a personal subject for many
i feel very lucky to have worked with the orb from 89 to 95 (on and off
towards the end) at their label / management / tour management, i think the
thing that got them going was the ability to translate their (originally)
sample based material into a full live band (not forgetting the great
projections) , while many other artists (with the exception of late 80's
meat beat manifesto) were still trying to find ways of making keyboard
playing look sexy.
it really all depends on your outlook - i mean, a gig i went to in the mid
90's involved a local chap and 3 dats machines of noise, obviously that was
'acceptable' and 'experimental' to him, but not to me who did laugh out loud
when the tripping 'decor' person pulled the plug on the p.a. while mucking
around with some crap lights - but to me it was still a worthy experienc,
and moved me to utter 'we'll show em' to my partner in crime, the result
being our own no midi gig about six months later - you must remember though
that i can'y play keyboards, we resolved to have no backing track, and this
was pre-modular, so i had a big heap of signal generators. un-suprisingly
the gig turned out like early cabaret voltaire - which for me was a bonus...
...however, this brings me onto my personal bug bear - wanting to play music
live, means i have to do it properly, which means i gig on average once a
year. i saw a now famous 'retro synth' band a couple of years ago - the
bastrds mimed the whole way through - the reason i worked this out is that
they had the gall to mime filter sweeps on a korg ms20 which obviously
wasn't plugged in - we'll show em sprang to mind again, and so we planned
another gig (post modular this time) the whole thing was unrehearsed except
that it was in 'c' as i'd also resolved to leave not only any sequencers at
home, but also my keyboard - that was a fun, but very scary show, and the
crowd loved it
so where does this leave us - i think there's a genuine place for knob
twiddlers, after all, where would we hear them that loud, and how would they
satisfy their urge to play 'live' - i think at the end of the day it's a
matter of how cynically the music is presented...
well, they were my thoughts anyway

cheers
paul b
sheffield / uk
planning the next stars on 23 show as we speak...