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Looper's Delight
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Hi all, I first heard "live" looping in 1972 by being taken to the home of an friend of a friend in an old Victorian house in Oxnard, CA. The player was a mid-to-late-20s-ish hippie guitarist named Randy Jones. I'd never heard of him before (or since) and I have absolutely no idea who his musical influences were. He was undoubtedly more influenced by major doses of cannabis than anything else (but let's not start THAT particular thread again, please). He played an old Strat copy with a mother-of-dinette-set pickguard and lipstick tube pickups into a pair of reel-to-reels set up on the mantle over the fireplace. The output of these (such as it was) went to his home stereo. An approximately 8 foot loop of 1/4 inch tape was strung between the two recorders and dangled before the empty hearth -- which would have been quite dangerous if there'd been a fire in it. He played with a bottleneck slide (which I'd been toying with some at that time too -- and THAT was the whole reason my pal took me over to hear this fellow play). Anywho, he played medium to pretty well guitar-wise. But, I was floored . . . absolutely knocked out . . . by the delay concept he was toying around with. It was a musical epiphany that changed my life. I set out from then on to learn how to do this sort of thing myself. I was a shy, reticent young dude and not hardly prone to joining bands and playing much in public anyway. The simple Idea that I could (by this method) be a one-man-band in the comfort and privacy of my own bedroom closet was what attracted me. That and the all-instrumental aspect of it -- I still cannot sing and play guitar at all after 40 years. (heheh, some would say I still can't PLAY either). I saved my money and periodically rented tape "echoplexes" from local stores, bought electronic analog delays when they became available and digital ones when they came around and became affordable to me (mostly EH and old DOD stuff). I never even heard of Fripp's 1973-74 recordings with Eno 'til I was more financially established (married) in 1978 and could afford to visit the record store more often. I snagged my first copies of "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star" from the cutout bin for less than half normal price. I'd been a fan of King Crimson and had read about Mr. Eno in magazines but was not familiar with these recordings at all. They were revelatory, to say the least -- totally outside the scope of my previous experience as a lonesome finger picker. I got my first eBow in 1980. I've sought out a lot of music since then that I knew was "looped" in some fashion or another (not all of it guitar). And listened to many pieces of music that didn't involve looping at all, but (because of the repetitive and rhythmic nature of pop music) I constantly imagined just how they could have been realized if they HAD been. I never really set out with the expectation that I'd ever really turn out to be a "real" musician even. Jeff Kaiser put that troublesome notion in my noggin BTW (blame him). I was just an interested and quirky tinkerer with only a modest amount of talent, a certain amount of imagination and time on my hands to develop it (plus a "mostly" understanding wife and family). I still don't really imagine that I'm a whole lot more than that, even though I have become accustomed to having the "m" word (musician) applied to myself . . . and occasionally even the "c" word (composer). I am a visual artist by academic training and a commercial artist/ graphic designer for 25+ years of my professional life. I don't imagine I've been an influence on anybody. But almost everybody on this list who has bothered to share their music freely and publicly in this forum or in the various festivals has been an influence on me -- whether the influence is obvious or not. In particular I'd single out LDers past and present (and in no particular order): Andre LaFosse Rick Walker Michael Klobuchar Max Valentino Steve Lawson Dave Trenkle David Torn Mark Hamburg Scott Hansen Dr. Richar Zvonar Matthias Grob Jon Wagner Kim Flint Amy X Nueberg Bill Walker Stan Card Joe Cavaleri Greg Campbell Andy Ewen Frank Gerace Tom Heasley Terry Blankenship Alan Hoover Sunao Inami Zoe Keating Hans Lindauer Mark Sottilaro Cara Quinn Steven Rice Alex Martinez Larry "the O" Oppenheimer Nick Roozeboom Kevin Cooney Stuart Liebig The Loop Collective and a host of others . . . Thanks a bunch! With all of this talk of who influenced who and when, I figured it was time to render a certain amount of appreciation to present company. A number of you have exchanged CDs with me (often making nice comments about mine) and or exchanged e-mails on- and off-list. Others have pointed in the direction of where their music could be downloaded or streamed from time to time. I may have even left out a few names. You will have to forgive the omissions and chalk them up to "old guy's" disease. But I am thankful that LD is here and that all of you are too . . . corny as THAT may sound. Best, tEd ® kiLLiAn PS: If any of you knows the whereabouts of Randy Jones. I owe him big time. http://www.mp3s.com/tedkillian http://www.pfmentum.com/flux.html http://www.CDbaby.com/cd/tedkillian http://www.guitar9.com/fluxaeterna.html