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Looper's Delight
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Max Valentino wrote: "But, when the 2nd LA LoopFest comes around please count me in!!!" I, too, would like to throw my hat in for the 2nd Los Angeles LoopFest* : any chance to join you guys down south and any chance to get to see my good buddy, Max!!! I wanted to commend all of you So Cal loopers for how quickly this has all come together and with such communal spirit. Here are a couple of quick thoughts of things that I've stumbled on producing similar events. They are gratuitously proferred and should be accordingly ignored if they don't fit: I have discovered that if everybody sets up their gear at the start of the show the time between sets can be nullified which makes it a much more effective listening experience. Limiting the performances to more festival oriented sets (between 15 minutes and 30 minutes) with a 'headliner' act at the end playing a long set seems to add to the flow of the show and keeps things moving, stylistically. Also, for what it's worth, we've set up a merchandise table and gotten the artists who are not playing to man (or rather, to person) the table while not playing in a rotating fashion (It may seem silly but remember to bring $50 in $5 dollar bills and get the artists to charge in $5 increments ($10,$15,$20, whatever). More CDs get sold because there is someone to talk to or get autographs from). Add an official M.C. to the proceedings with a little cued up Loop music from auslanders (people who couldn't make the gig but want to participate and remind them to mark which cut(s) they want played on the outside of the CD so that it is a no brainer and you have a pretty professional festival oriented listening experience. Dead time (space with nothing happening sonically) is one of the great killers of vibe at concerts so the more the 'show' flows, the better the listening experience for the audience. I say all of this because we want this thing to grow as a phenomena. I'm just pulling things off of the top of my head after a night with insomnia so please forgive the wierd order: Oh, yeah. Remind all the artists to have two really long line cables that can patch into the main board (if there is one). With a lot of solo acts on stage there is always a good chance that you might end up further away from the mixing board (I always set it up on stage for ease of access because I tend to be the M.C., the mixing engineer and a performer and , in the last Festival of Voice + Electronics, I had to run all the way to the back of the Rio Theatre-which is a long ways-to change the lighting on stage for the modern dance troupe that was on stage at the time and then run back and continue MCing out of breath just because there was nobody else to do it---free shows are frequently like this. The controversial Musicians Friends catalogue sells these obnoxious dayglo line cables in long lengths. They are very good to own when there is a tremendous amount of spaghetti on stage (all the other black cables from all the loopers). Because I play a lot of instruments I use several colors (also, I'm a dayglo fetishist but that is topic for a different e-mail chain ;-) so it is really easy to see my routing in low light situations. I've rambled enough. I'm jealous that I can't be there is all. good luck, Rick * or you could call it "2001: A Loop Odyssey"---ouch that's corny, but I swear that I'll use it before the year's up)