From:idm-owner@techno.Stanford.EDU
From: Terre Thaemlitz <Terre_Thaemlitz@qmcumc.mail.cornell.edu>
Subject: Irresistible Force - 4/4/94 NYC - The Painful Truth
The following is a synopsis of the Irresistible Force/Prototype 909/[me] show
from the other day.
Doors opened at 11:00, as I was struggling to get the majorly screwed sound
system going. Certain line feeds were working on the mixer, while others were
not. The speakers were ill-placed, and I'm not even sure if all of them were
working. Whoever was in charge of sound majorly fucked up, as I was to have a
double cd player, 2 turntables, a mixer that handles effect units, and my DAT &
FX. When I got there they had two turntables with a dinky 2 channel Gemini "
Scratchmaster" mixer - that's it. :| Someone else affiliated with the
sound people brought in a 4 channel Gemini mixer which was sitting unwired in
the corner. No cables. No cd-player. I ended up doing a crap hash wiring job
on my own as people came in, which wasn't too successful to say the least. I
eventually got my DAT on a good channel, so it sounded okay. I never got my FX
working, and the tables were fucked. People said my set went okay for the
circumstances, but that's kinda like saying an undigested corn nugget in a
piece of shit would taste okay for the circumstances.
Around 1am Prototype909 came on. Their sound was way better. They ruled, as
usual, and really picked up the crowd! They did about a 30min. set, which I
taped for them on DAT, so it might become available.
After P909, Morris was to spin. Going from P909's sound back to the crap sound
of the turntables was unbearable. Apparently Morris had a long tour and wasn't
having it, so he turned to the crowd and said, "There's no point in doing this!
" and was ready to walk away. Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to miss Morris
spin, so I shut down the system right there and then and started unplugging
and rewiring! (Again, where's the fucking sound person?) I get it sounding
better, but he's limited to the two turntables, and I had to unplug my DAT on
which he was going to let me record his set 8.( Jared from Instinct ran
home for his portable cd-player, and someone else did likewise, and these were
plugged into the system during Morris' set.
"Welcome to New York, Mother Fucker!"
Morris obviously wasn't able to do a "real" set under the circumstances. After
reading the reviews of the SF shows and elsewhere, I was kinda surprised that
I recognized alot of what he played. The only thing of his that he played was
a part of the first track from Dreamfish. He didn't play any of his upcoming
album (which he only had on cassette - when I asked him half-heartedly if he
had an extra copy he replied "Not a chance, mate!" ;).
The show ended around 3:50am, and most people had left by then. This is when
things got better, because Morris, his Mgr. Russell, Testu Inoue (FAX Records),
myself and a couple others all went for food, then back to Morris' hotel to
bullshit until a little after 6am. While we were in a taxi lugging our gear to
his hotel (just Morris, Russell and I) we convinced the cab driver that we
were Metallica, so that was pretty fun! We went through all the records he
picked up in SF and elsewhere, and he pulled out his holographic t-shirt
collection :) He really has an encyclopaedic knowledge of avant-garde music.
He talked for a while about the Cosmic Music scene in the UK during the 70's
and 80's, and other groovy stuff. He was also talking about some of his future
music ideas (watch out) and I asked him a few questions about how he got
certain FX in his previous releases. He wasn't uptight or overly secretive.
And to put rumors to rest, no, he is *not* working on an ambient project with
Prince! (But Prince is working on a project of his own - *giggle*). Morris is
a really nice guy, and down to earth, but hey, I just had to have him sign my
vinyl copy of "Flying High" ;) We left looking forward to a show we were
both tentatively booked for in Manchester, which neither of us knows if it's
happening for sure.
Morris span again last night at "Egg" (held at Nell's, coordinated by the
Liquid Sky people). This just kinda happened impromptu, and I wasn't able to
make it. Nell's was a far superior venue to the place we were at the night
before, and I'm sure it went better. Can anybody comment on this? (If it's not
a review, please mail me direct, because I'm on the idm.reviews list.)
-Terre