NASA / See The Light Tour Review
(Aphex Twin / Orbital / Moby / Vaporspace / various DJ's)
Pontiac (Detroit) Michigan, 11/5/93
---------
No one seems to have written a detailed review yet, so I'll give it
a whirl.
I met up with my friends Jeff & Amy at their place (in Royal Oak) at
about 6:30 Friday evening. We had pizza and played around with my brand
new Disney screensaver for a while. ;)
The tickets said that doors would be opening at 8PM. Judging from the
number of bands and DJ's on the bill, and figuring that the bar would want
to push us back out on the street by 2AM (when they had to stop serving
liquor) we figured the whole shebang would probably start pretty close to 8.
Being totally unfamiliar with the layout of downtown Pontiac (we later
decided it had been laid out by a crowd of drunken hillbillies partying
around a still) we left Royal Oak around 7:15. The traffic wasn't quite
as bad as we figured, so we got into downtown Pontiac at about 7:45.
After getting lost 1 1/2 times we found Industry (the club) and pulled
into the parking lot across the street. The parking attendent just sort
of looked at us and mumbled something but no one ever came over to get
any money from us (a harbinger for the rest of the evening). We walked
across the street and into the club. There were a couple of people standing
in the foyer and a T-shirt window set up to the right. We looked around
for a bit, and then walked through the unattended door into the main part
of the bar. We'd all bought our tickets in advance, but no one ever quite
bothered to take them. :)
We walked quite freely through the entire club. No one ever bothered
to ask who we were or what the hell we thought we were doing. :) I walked
past a bearded(!) Richard James fiddling with some equipment over near
the mixing desk, but I didn't realize it was him at the time. :( We later
decided that maybe the reason they let us wander around was my MW-Raves
badge (which looked quite a bit like the stage passes from a distance)
and my +8 Records cap (they're one of the tour sponsors). Anyway, we hung
around while they tested the lighting, sound, and fog.
At about 8:15 or so, we walked back over near the foyer and saw a line
of folks streaming out onto the street, being let in rather slowly from
the cold. I guess it pays sometimes _not_ to be fashionably late. :)
At about 8:30 DJ Tim from the Utah Saints started spinning in the main
room. He started out with some happy house, and later started mixing in
some light trance and a few breakbeat tracks. He also played some _radically_
remixed Utah Saints stuff: these remixes sounded like a significant progression
from their recorded material so far. There were other DJ's set up and
spinning in the Saroki Room, a cool, strange little club-within-a-club on
the highest and furthest back level of the building, but I wasn't up there
long.
At about 10:00 PM, a guy (who might have been Scotto, I dunno) came
out on the main stage and said something unintelligible to the crowd.
People started pushing the dancers aside to get to the front of the stage,
but they were to be disappointed as the live show didn't start for another
half an hour and when it did the action was up on the second level.
Vapourspace started at 10:30. He started up a wonderful analogue
soup that seemed to confuse most of the punters, who mostly sort of stared,
having expected the performers to all use the main stage. Eventually he
moved into more dance-oriented material, including an entirely new version
of "Gravitational Arch of 10". All in all it was very groovy and quite
"intelligent".
As Vapourspace finished up, the guy who'd introdced him came out
and introduced Moby. This seemed to surprise quite a few people -- most
figured there's be breaks between the live P.A.'s, and they were also expecting
Moby to be the "headline" act. Thank goodness that neither of these things
were true.
This part of my review will probably anger Moby fans (and Moby too
if he's reading this), but I thought his set was horrible. It really didn't
bother me that the majority of the show was obviously on DAT, it was that
the whole thing was so damned ROCK. On this tour, Moby has transformed
himself into the Eddie Vedder of techno. He started out as the last spacy
notes of Vapourspace were fading by saying "Now for some good old fashioned
unintelligent techno." The crowd roared, and what sounded an awful lot
like the CD mix of "Ah-Ah" kicked in. Moby hit his Octapad a few times,
and to his credit it was actually plugged in (both power and MIDI out cables)
-- and I heard sounds being triggered from it. But then he had to go and
stage dive. Yes, stage dive. Then he got climbed up on top of the speakers.
A large part of the crowd enjoyed being pandered to in this fashion,
so I don't really suppose I can blame him, but I thought this shit was
dead tired when indie bands were doing it ten years ago. He played a few
thin synth lines from a keyboard on the other side of the stage (I couldn't
tell from where I was what kind of keyboard it was), but the Octapad stopped
functioning after a song or two of being tossed around. Moby came over and
beat on it a few times, but couldn't get it to trigger anything, so he yelled
"Fuck" into the mike. Ooooh, rock on, D00D! A dutiful sound tech would run
out every few minutes and try to get the poor thing working again. No
matter, the DAT played on.
He rapped (painfully) over a few tunes, and then brought out his
guitar. The transformation was complete. He played all the hits: "Go",
"Move", "Next Is The E", as well as a new song. But the ugliest moment
of the set was undoubtedly "Thousand". A bad joke taken too far, he pummeled
the audience with overdriven beats as they raised their arms and ate it
up. He raised his arms as well, and as the beats piled on top of each
other he spread them out to his sides, looking for all the world like any
of a million Jesus Christ Poseurs from the pacific northwest, except he
had a lot less hair. I raised my arm too, in the heavy-metal index finger
and pinky salute. "Man, this guy rocks." "Yeah, heh heh heh heh heh heh..."
Thankfully, Orbital were there to save us. No bullshit, just the
Hartnoll brothers underneath a stairway at the center of the club, nodding
their bald heads and shining their eyeglass-flashlights at us. They weren't
so much "playing" as much as they were doing live remixes right there on
the spot. Not much to look at, but oh-the music. They played almost all
of _Orbital 2_, including the Lush/Impact/Remind suite. The crowd got
into it after they managed to shake off the rock-concert vibe Moby had
set up. They seemed a bit confused by "Planet of the Shapes", but by the
time "Impact" got going everyone was moving. The only bum moments came
care of a moron behind me, who decided to blow his whistle through all of
the beatless moments, including the wonderful swirly intro of "Remind"
and the voice-of-angels intros of "Chime" and "Halcyon" (which was performed
in a version closer to the original mix than that of the "Halcyon and On
and On" version). I gave him a look that would melt concrete and he laid
off a bit.
As soon as Orbital finished up, Aphex came out with a series of noises
that for all the world sounded like an explosion in an oscillator factory.
The material was completely beatless for about 5 minutes, during which
time his dancer (now we know where Bez ended up after the Happy Mondays
breakup :) ) danced to beats that were only in his head. While this was
going on, a tall jock-looking guy to my left kept yelling "PLAY HARDCORE".
Yup.
Richard was seated front of the stage behind a wall of electronics,
with an incredibly serious look on his face, twirling knobs and hitting
buttons. After awhile, he put on a pair of headphones. I assume he was
constructing his rhythms, because after he took off his headphone some
incredible beats started up, accompanying the analog swamp he'd been generating
up to this point. Sheets of noise and punishing rhythms, mostly, it seemed,
in the 150 to 180 BPM range, were the main fare of his set. Not everything
worked, of course, but there were quite a few moments of brilliance. As
far as I could tell, the set was completely improvised -- I certainly didn't
recognize any of the things played at tracks I'd heard on any of his
recordings.
I saw a number of MW-Ravers around the place -- Matt McQueen, Rob
Smith, JSqared. Apparently Andy and Curious George were around as well,
but I didn't get to see them :(. Rob told me about the afterhours going
on down the street, but by this time all my energy was gone and all my
artificial energy was wearing off :), so we called it a night.
There was a bit of merchandise out in the lobby -- there were See
The Light shirts (same design as the flyer), Moby shirts and caps, and
two different Orbital shirts. I got a _wonderful_ longsleeved black Orbital
shirt with a grovy silver hologram of their "atom" logo on the front.
All in all, I had a great time. Industry isn't bad as far as clubs
go -- they didn't seem to be pushing the drinks quite as hard as I thought
they would. The bands, except for Moby, lived up to my expectations,and
DJ Tim was pretty good.
| Dave Walker, Detroit Art Services (DAS) |
| "I don't read, I just guess" |
| marmoset@msen.com -Happy Mondays, "Wrote For Luck" |