The While You Were Sleeping gig went well. Julian started off amusing those of us who were there pre-gig with some movies he took by putting a video camera on a sushi train.
Pete DJ'd for a bit, occasionally intersposing some electronic 'raygun' noises over the top, to everyone's amusement. Then Tom did some oldskoolish stuff in Audiomulch. Moody, melodic and magnificent, so he was.
Paul and Dan did some beaty mixes and colourful video, all mixers and keyboards and pigtails.
Dan Smith keeps going from strength to strength, all the while bitterly complaining how badly it went. Then Hamish did a tour de force sequence of frog visuals and at 1:30 we packed up and went home.
A week and a half earlier I saw my boss's boyfriend's band the Hi Aces at the San Franciso Bathhouse (nee Indigo - when did that happen?). The Hi Aces do alt country, which was warm, friendly and immediate, unlike the terrible Thomas Koener gig we went to a couple of days prior.
After that I wandered over to Happy to see the second Bleep gig. This time it was just Damian and Emile doing circuit-bending (essentially inserting resistors into things that make noise, to make them make weirder noise). Small toys became ring-modulated crazies and all was really good. Hilarious even. It was the funniest gig I've been to and probably the most enjoyable. No sequencers, no beats, just a couple of geeks making silly noises.
This is the thing that gets me. The best musical experiences I've had have involved arsing around doing nothing of consequence. There was the 'session' with Michael and AL WILSON doing a track called 'Satan' ('ooh Satan, you're soo horny'). Then Michael and I semi-mixed TV show themes, the highlight of which was a supreme dubout of the Taxi theme. Andy and I made 'Satan's Vomit' out of the beat from 'We Will Rock You' and the sax riff to Jerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street'. What an amusing afternoon that was (shame I was misguided enough to put the result on a demo CD...).
And the list goes on. Thing is, these occasional moments have brought way more satisfaction than the thousands of hours I've spent trying to construct legitimate pieces of music. It kind of leaves me wondering why I bother...
Anyway at Bleep 2 Damian and Emile became my heroes. They managed to get their spontaneous hilarity out in front of an audience. Magic!
Posted by stuart at August 12, 2006 9:22 PM