Re: [microsound] Re: Alternative performance devices

["The pHarmanaut" <pharmanaut@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > motivation of multiple sites of consciousness. I think that
> > much of this discussion is overlooking the finer mysteries of
> > live performance to focus on technicalities of delivery.
>
> This is great, but what are the "finer mysteries" pray tell? Are you
> suggesting that a sufficiently adept performer can tune any audience
> into his/her musical aesthetic through the use of finer mysteries?

group-mind ... you know, Jim Morrison riffing on Jung, "I was doing fine in
a universal mind, I was feeling all right!" ... dead shows ... pink floyd at
mile high and six hits of acid ... working my way up from arachnid
consciousness in front of the stage-hive until the entirity of mile high
stadium rolled up into a big mirror ball and I began telepathically
communicating with folks on the other side of the stadium and our task was
to reassemble the fragmented nature of the mirror into a smooth surface by
rotating segments in vertical and horizontal patterns ... thinking I had
totally lost it until a big biker dude in front of me turned around, without
any prompting on my part, dropped his hand to my shoulder, looked me right
in the eye, and said, "You're going to be okay. It's all going to fit back
together." Similarly, thinking of De Quincey on laudanum, putting together
"life-review" arras mosaics while listening to the London opera.

Live musical performance of any sort serving as a vehicle for
mind-expansion, potentially to the point of attaining collective
consciousness experiences. It's not necessarily about tuning the audience
into the performer's "musical aesthetic" but using the musical aesthetic
among other factors to engineer cosmic or trance experiences. This can
happen via any musical genre.

> I'm saying that genre establishes a context for performance. The roles
> of audience and performer are acted out, in whatever manner, with
> respect to this context. I'm guessing your finer mysteries either keep
> the context vital, or a lack of them diminishes context, or provocation
> establishes a critical stance with repect to genre.

But really interesting performers upset context and genre-definitions. The
worst acts, in my opinion, are those stuck to their old schticks or worse,
having to group together to maintain their territory (e.g., we've got Iron
Maiden, Dio, and Motorhead in town on one bill; Journey, Styx, and REO
Speedwagon on another bill). I think it would be difficult to find these
bands not trading in the nostalgia-rush for the finer mysteries, though one
might be surprised.

> For example, genres form around the extreme unlikelyhood that Def
> Leppard will never be booked for a gig at the Village Vanguard and Fred
> Hersch will never play a one night solo gig at RFK Stadium.
>
> The commercial impossibility of either event seems hardly worth
> investigating, but the enumeration of the reasons lay bare a whole
> socio-cultural complex at work that's barely spoken about.
>
> I'm suggesting we take those insights and apply them to the situations
> that have been offered up, like "laptop performer in a blues bar." How
> did he/she get there in the first place? How much power does an
> individual artist have to alter that performance context?

Well, what I'm hearing is a laptopper disappointed that a show in a blues
bar didn't get the adequate reception. But did that performer do anything to
play off of the atmosphere of the space? Or were things too pre-programmed?
It would be interesting to see a laptopper spontaneously set up some
twelve-bar sequences and start laying down some "my woman done schlupped my
dog while I was out tilling the field with the hoe" routine.

I've been hosting a series of shows at Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art
over the past year, and I was really pleased with one act from our
"sonicPOP" series, which was exploring intersections of pop and art. This
act was george&caplin, who have a kind of electroclash thing going, with
affected brit-pop vocals, guitar (acoustic and electric), horns, sequenced
drums, and synths. After weeks of laptop and such, it totally threw the
usual crowd for a loop, even while george&caplin infused the space with
their own crowd of teeny-bopper followers. It was a great night of mixed
signals and redirected expectations.

> Sorry if I conveyed an academic slant here. I was simply trying to
> bracket the region of knowledge that might be sufficient for an audience
> member to suspend disbelief.

I don't mind the academic discourse, and I don't even mind some performances
with an academic angle. Hell, I'm an academic. Sometimes I grow weary,
though, of what I see as an over-academicizing of microsound and other
musics produced by members of this list, and I think it's not always the
best direction to go in by contextualizing everything in terms of lectures
and such. It speaks down to the potential audience, I think: "If you want to
get into my music/sound art/etc. then here's all this info you need to
understand first." Have you ever been contextualized? Did Coltrane lecture
before laying new jazz structures on folks? I doubt it. He was (apparently)
filing his teeth and then blowing like a motherfucker for the hippest cats
to dig. And if they didn't, he kept blowing.

> Somewhere along the continuum of knowledge, an audience member ceases to
> classify an experience and becomes open to its aesthetic values.

Absolutely. That's a finer mystery. That's when you start yelling "go cat
go!" No lecture's going to prepare someone for this moment, or get them
there any faster. Only the music is the vehicle for this opening of mind.

Cheers,
-=trace

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