From Chris Fahey Sent Wed, Sep 30th 1998, 22:30
From Chris Fahey Sent Wed, Sep 30th 1998, 22:30
>From: Che <xxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx> > >My guess is that your experience was more a product of venue & a "we're too >cool to dance" NYC audience. Yes! Both! But there's one other thing: Rudolph "Dickhead" Giuliani. You see, he has cracked down with some zoning and licensing laws from the 12th century which pertain to where you can and cannot dance. Basically, there are only a handful of nightclubs in NYC where, legally, you are permitted to dance. Most people have been dancing in all kinds of places for years whenever the groove hit them, but nowadays you can go to a bar and find the furniture arranged inconveniently to discourage dancing so that the club owner is not slapped with a $3000 fine. Or you may even be asked to stop dancing by a club employee. The rippling effect of this is that spontaneous dancing in bars is seriously curtailed throughout the city. Lameness reigns. (I hope all of you Americans on this list realize that every time you vote for a Republican you are voting in favor of stopping people from dancing. It's true.) >Personally, I don't understand how anyone >could listen to this music & NOT DANCE! I was boogieing off-n-on until my lady showed up. We had some drinks and puffnstuff and then we left. >You forgot 3) Give the artist some satisfaction in having reached & >entertained an audience. I take it you've never played a live show. No, but almost all of my friends do and I would say you're partly right - an artist might love performing live, and they might hate it. Either way, if you ask any non-artist in the record industry, they'll tell you the artists *have* to do it for reason #1 (promoting records). >I have to say that Amon Tobin's set is the >freshest thing I've seen & heard since the last time I caught Orbital. >What stopped you from dancing, anyway? Well, first of all I would have been the only one dancing had I chose to do so any time within the first 2 1/2 hours of the night. I like to tear it up, but I guess I wasn't in the mood to 'break the ice.' I explored a bit, had some drinks, returned to the main room and found that the scattered beginnings of a decent sized dance floor had formed so I joined in. >One thing that's obvious from the tour reviews posted is that the artists >have played different records from show to show. No artist I saw was >ignoring the audience, meaning that their record choice was based on >audience feedback. That makes it better than a mix tape done in a studio Agreed - a DJ plays for and to the crowd. But any good DJ would do the same. >Of course 99% of the audience can't >tell when a show is mimed to a DAT anyway. When the Bingo Boys, my 5-man-teen-idol-supergroup re-forms, we'll keep this in mind! >> I've got nothing against paying a hefty nightclub admission charge to >>listen to DJs spin dance music, get high/drunk/laid, watch cute people, and >>just have fun... > >I'm beginning to get the idea that you're into music for something besides >the music. No, no, no! I was only pointing out two of the many differences between listening to records at home ad going out to a concert... One difference is that the artist might do something spontaneous and improvisational live, something I would not ever be able to experience on a record. This show strongly lacked that element, so I was (with tongue-in-cheek) hoping it would make up for it with Difference #2, which is all the other things that happen at nightclubs except the music (people, architecture, freaks, drinks/drugs, visuals, food, clothes). The show didn't really even offer that stuff to any great spectacular degree. The music is the most important thing, but I'd be a liar if I said #2 was a non-issue to me - if the dance floor was full of flailing longhairs with tie dyed shirts, or fist pumping frat boys, or spastic first-time-jungle dancers, or all boys, I'd probably sit it out too. >> Amon Tobin could hire a real band to reproduce his electronic >>compositions and my bet is that it would sound fucking amazing. > >My bet is that it would betray the music. Tobin's music is for me the >pinnacle of postmodernist expression - to play it with a live band would be >a grotesque expression of nostalgia (and don't think for a minute that >recycling old music & recontextualizing is based on nostalgia). It's just an idea. I think you're right about what he does: his work is conceptually rooted in the history of *recorded* music - it's relationship to 'live' music is like that between a ghost and a rotting corpse. How's this for another option: he rehearses for months on his powerbook with a bunch of rack mounted decks and effects and samplers and all and learns how to create some awesome live sound manipulations in real time. Then he can go on tour and knobtwiddle for the crowds. If I were in his shoes, I think I might have a bit of an ethical problem with the whole concept of touring given his theoretical take on the studio nature of his own music. (I'm trying to make some tracks at home, but I can't imagine myself performing these in a million years, due to my lack of stage skill. I loved that when RDJ tours he sits there and the two dancing bears do the real show. Unlike RDJ himself, they were fun to while I was not dancing.) >> I feel like a sucker. I honestly want to support artists I like, but not >>if they're going to go on tour and just spin the same fucking records I can >>hear in about twenty other NYC bars on any night of the week for free. We >>fans of this music should really stop letting ourselves be suckered by these >>fake concerts/fake parties. > >Please, tell me which bars in NYC I can hear nothing but Amon Tobin & Funki >Porcini at, loud and for hours on end, on a Monday night and better yet for >free. Next time I visit I'd like to visit one of these mythical places. Well, okay, maybe they won't play "nothing but Amon Tobin & Funki Porcini"... they might actually mix in music from other artists, maybe even from other genres! And okay, maybe you might have to also pay $5 to get in at some joints. But, yes, on any given night of the week there are probably a dozen different bars open for free in which you will be able to hear decent drum and bass for some portion of the evening. And over the course of one week you'll find probably forty places for $5 or less that will play nonstop drum and bass for a (illegal) dance floor. >rock - rok (v.) - having a conventional and/or boring nature. ex: "Khakis >rock". "That Rolling Stones show rocked". syn: suck. I love this quote. - Chris ' - . _ . - ' ^ ' - . _ . - ' ^ ' - . _ . - c h r i s t ø p h e r f ª h e y . _ . - ' ^ ' - . _ . - ' ^ ' - . _ . - ' ^ xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx 2 1 2 - 6 3 4 - 6 9 5 0 x 2 5 8 http://www.raremedium.com - ' ^ ' - . _ . - ' ^ ' - . _ . - ' ^ ' - .