It has been over a year of pulling out my personal patch cords from the rave
scene in the U.S. I returned to San Francisco only to witness muZiq play.
The idea of the whole show being on a boat leant a certain excitement to the
event. In addition, I looked forward to seeing many old friends again and
raping the local record shops.
Riding from the airport on the rental-car bus I suddenly realized that
something was wrong. I frantically searched through my baggage to find that,
yes, indeed, I had left the concert tickets back in Salt Lake City. My friend
Miles and I had to rush from the airport to the nearest available telephone to
get someone in Salt Lake to break into my house and FedEx them to us. I was
happy to hear that FedEx could deliver to a park bench (Hi Drukman!), but to
make a long story short, we managed to get the tickets the next morning.
Thanks to Brian Behlendorf and all the fine people at Organic for putting up
with us.
Although nobody in San Francisco could tell us where the Perry building was
(it turned out to be a ticket typo, designed to confuse out-of-towners), we
found the Ferry building on Saturday night. Much to my amazement, there were
still a lot of tickets left. This really set the tone for the entire evening.
Two women in line talked to us and showed their surprise that we'd come from
Salt Lake. "Why are you here, vacation?" "No, we're here to see muZiq."
They gave us a blank stare in return. It seemed that about 10% of the crowd
(which numbered around 400) was there to see muZiq perform. The rest was
there for the "party on a boat". A definite bleak outline of the American
music scene, since it would almost be impossible to justify a muZiq tour of
the states.
The boat was really nice. Miles and I both felt that it was worth the cost of
the ticket alone. Floating underneath the Golden Gate bridge in the middle of
a clear night is an experience that few will have, and was most spectacular to
boot. Having some decent ambient music in the background made it even nicer.
It also brought back a lot of memories from a certain "Liquid Air" that
happened on a beach in the distance.
Jonah Sharp spun on the second deck for the first part of the night. Finally,
Michael Paradinas took the controls and started up with Sonic Fox. I walked
across the room and sat on a table behind him. Soon, I was joined by a girl
who brightly asked, "What's going on?" She was in apparent ignorance that
someone was playing live next to us. I told her that muZiq was playing and
she said, "Oh," jumped off the table and left the room.
Michael was positioned on the side of the deck with three keyboards
surrounding him and an Atari ST. He twiddled on the DX-11 in front of him,
and adjusted a mixer on the side, while dragging the ST's mouse to and fro.
On the side and rear, the Roland D-50 and Casio (!) sampler were barely
touched. I'd imagine that these did most of the sequences. He had an
assistant that regularly plugged floppies into the Casio. The sound quality
left something to be desired at times. It was apparent that there was a short
somewhere that was causing problems. The sound however, was a minor
distraction in comparison to the performance. The whole thing did not seem as
polished as most shows I've seen. Michael visibily cursed the sound system
and then seemed to blame all other problems on it as well. Sitting 15 feet
behind him revealed the fact that his ST crashed twice during the show. I
could only assume that the currently playing track was on a tape in the mixer.
Definite insurance for the problems of playing live. On the bright side,
there was some very cool stuff played that I hadn't heard before. A track
with a guitar sample was my favorite. We can only hope that the new deal with
Virgin will allow more access to this music.
As we were unloading into the harbor, I had a brief chance to talk to Michael.
The one question, "When are we going to see Bluff Limbo?" He reacted
instantly. Apparently he isn't very pleased over the situation and is on the
verge of trying to get the rights back from Rephlex. It was apparent that the
1000 promo-only release wasn't his idea and that Rephlex has dropped the ball
on this one. He did mention the fact that he and Richard James had just
recorded a joint release that would be released soon on Rephlex, but this was
only happening because Richard was the money-maker for the label.
When we left the boat, we noticed Michael and his girlfriend ripping apart the
promoter over the sound system. It really didn't reflect very well upon them.
I can imagine that getting sound on a boat is a problem enough, but they were
making this enormous scene in front of several onlookers who weren't impressed
in the least. What good did all this do after the fact? It only appeared to
be extending the verbal blaming of the sound system for problems in the
performance. The "star quality" (and I don't mean good) of the grumpy couple
was only enhanced when we saw them forced to crawl into the back of a Subaru
hatchback because the rest of the car was full. This was an extreme pleasure
to see from the three Internet denizens who watched it happen, myself, Miles,
and Greg Earle. Michael is brilliant when it comes to music, but he's got a
lot to learn about dealing with people.