well i went to sf to go record shopping yesterday,
and the orb just happened to be in town...
actually i couldn't decide whether i wanted to go or not
after all the negative or mixed reactions i've read.
i kept remembering my first concert that relied heavily
on synths & taped music:new order at the time that
'blue monday' was just released. it was in some
dive bar in new jersey and i was bored stiff
watching some brits standing relatively motionless in front
of a few machines,
at one point they left their machines and the
music was still playing....i had vowed never to go
to another synth concert..and hadn't until yesterday.
so was it worth the $20? i guess so. even after having
spent quite a lot that day shopping, it was good to
finally see them after having missed them several times.
on the good side: some of the particular lighting effects
were pretty good (esp. those white-light sticks that
kept bouncing all over the screen at a faster pace, the
bouncing colored rings & the colored circles that moved
in alternate directions and grew bigger, and when
the single white or colored lights were spinning around
in complete circles), the mixes were great (the long
ambient intro to little fluffy clouds was my favorite
version of this song-which i never liked much because
i always found the sample to be annoying, probably
because live 105 overplayed this song when it came out, -
this version did not make much use of riki's voice
& when it did it usually wasn't the complete sample; all the
versions of tracks from orbvs t. were much better than
the album versions; the warfield theater seemed to a have
a fitting ambience for the theme of orbvs terrarvm;
we got to hear "Theme from Shaft" by Isaac Hayes
(this and Donna Summer's "love to love you baby" were
the first records i ever bought) instead
of Cameo's "word up," alex didn't get his hair caught
in the console ( i was worried for a while that he might),
on the bad side: i thought the quality of the sound system
was not very good, it was too loud at times ( i was in
the balcony for much of it, and during times everyone
around me and myself had to hold our hands over our ears-
esp.. during high pitch shrieking noises like the time that
the women screamed. they had large speakers set up at the left and
right edge of the stage, i was very disappointed with this
because i was expecting more of a sensurround sound type
of thing (with quadrophonic sound :) to get that bouncing
back & forth between channels thing , but there was none of that
it was completely mono because of how they positioned the
speakers & that they had to then get the volume so loud
to fill the place with sound; this problem with the sound system also
obscured the subtleties in many of the mixes for me so
that it did sound like a prog rock band.
they also stopped after most songs (the light show ended
for each song to) which made it seem more like a rock
concert, i was expecting one long continuous mix. some
of the lighting effects didn't work well or were just
b oring (i liked many of the things projected on the back
screen, but you had to sit and stare at them and with all of
the equipment and stuff in the way it detracted from the effect.
a few of the projection things were just plain boring: the
spinning maps were a bore, "orb" spelled out in the insignia
of orbvs t. was cheezy. & except for the spinning lights
there wasn't much "interactive" lighting, it was all from
the stage & projected on to the stage with the exception
of the harsh white lights that they kept flashing
at a different intervals at the audience (my eyes are
still red from these). i was expecting to overwhelmed by the
lighting (ie. different colors coming from every direction) rather
than either assaulted by it or having to stare at it happen
on the stage. also, the t-shirts sucked, they were the dullest
looking concert t-shirts i've ever seen. and my final
gripe was that a friend told me to go to the party after
wards but couldn't get in w/out an invitation & the
bouncer was a prick.
overall i guess it was a mixed bag, i did enjoy myself.
it was certainly much better than when i went to see
new order in 1982.
oh yeah in addition to the songs someone listed, they did
play one of the FFWD tracks for a bit (the one that
begins with the "and now it's time for that old
familiar favorite.." or however the sample goes.
they also played "beams of light" but without pato banton's
vocals.