From Greg Earle Sent Mon, May 25th 1998, 01:55
From Greg Earle Sent Mon, May 25th 1998, 01:55
The Great GorGonzola opined:
> BTW, went to the Bjork show in LA last night, kind of sucked really.
> Overblown, bad sound; a bit like Karaoke now that I think about it. Ye=
t
> every track received screams from the fans. I was like, "where's the
> beef!?" mu-Ziq made up for it though, quite a nice guy.
Roger copy that, Houston.
I don't remember being in the Hollywood Palladium since a rave with The
Prodigy was held there back in 1992. I was instantly reminded of why I h=
ate
that place so much: a little sound system smaller than the one at most de=
cent
LA raves, and it of course sounded like absolute shit. Hello? Round Big=
Band
era ballroom buildings suck acoustically for modern music, promoters! Wh=
y
haven't they learned? Kraftwerk in there is gonna suck, I'm really glad =
I'm
going to SF as well ...
Doors opened at 6:30, by 7:15 there wasn't any music inside but the line =
to
get in went all the way around the block, resulting in us having to wait =
35
minutes before we finally got in, and of course by 7:50 Mike P. was alrea=
dy
full on into his set, goddamnit! Man that pissed me off. So we only saw=
20
minutes of Mike, and we had to move up to virtually speaker-hug to get aw=
ay
from all the Indie rockers who talked right through his set. That said, =
we at
least got to enjoy the last 15 minutes. I thought I recognized "Mr. Angr=
y"
but the rest didn't sound familiar; however the last two tracks were
interesting as he pulled out the old banging "Tango" era Aphex-isms only
overlaid with more recent mu-Ziq drill n' bass rhythms. This got a good =
roar
of approval from the (relatively small) raver contingent and he actually =
got a
good hand as he went off abruptly after. Short but sweet.
An hour-long wait for The Ice Princess apparently proved too much for the=
soundman's 45-minute interlude tape so we got to hear one of the "Ventoli=
n"
mixes twice :-P Gonzi's better at succinct judgements than I, but suffi=
ce it
to say that the audience going bonkers for every track and every time she=
did
her little shuffle dance was perplexing to say the least. The sound of c=
ourse
was louder and utter shite by now. My capsule summary: she had a string
quartet (erm, expanded to string septuplet more like) and Mark Bell gener=
ating
the music, and far too much of it was generated by the strings with far t=
oo
little beats. Gonzi left before it got semi-decent (i.e. from "Bachelore=
tte"
onwards) but overall IMHO there was far too much postmodern cabaret style=
strings-dominated balladry and not enough let-Mark-go-off shut up n' boog=
ie.
Oh well. Her audience ate it all up but I'm into the beats, not the ball=
ads.
I realized that I liked her for her remixes and that I hate anything that=
smells of "concert", so I think from now on I'll stick to her remixes and=
leave the live shows to the worshipping Indie kids ... (props to her for =
being
able to attract such a diverse audience range though, everything from Clu=
b
Kids to ravers to Indie kids to Goths to normals to a few old folk ... )
14 days 'til Kraftwerk,
- Greg
P.S. I'll take Thai food at Chan Dara over chicken n' waffles Gonzi :-P