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Looper's Delight
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Tim Munengast wrote this about the San Francisco noise scene: "Once again I find myself on the wrong coast. Seems like the West has all the cool cars, the trainspotting action, and the most vibrant avant scene." I agree with you about the coolness of the scene but people should know that the scene, like almost every fringe musical scene in the world, is peopled by people who are fanatical about promoting it and creating opportunities where none appear to be. I just saw an amazing concert with new music luminaries Herny Kaiser, Scott Looney, our own loopers delight member, Italian guitarist Roberto Zorzi and four other really talented musicians. There were four people in the audience. Roberto wrote me back and said he'd love to come play in Northern California and said he'd just need a minimum of three gigs to be able to afford to come (mentioning a sum that would be a rather embarassingly low paid casuals/wedding gig). I had to tell him that it wasn't possible......that even I , who have a decent draw in SF for new musical events considered myself lucky if my expenses are paid when I do a gig (they a frequently aren't) ******** Lately there has been a amazing collection of new music people in the East Bay because many of the bay areas best and brightest young musicians lost there lucrative software day jobs and could no longer afford to live in the pricier cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Cruz. I'm on tribe.net which is full of electronica musicians and it seems like 1/3 of the people on that website are from Oakland. Is there a scene there? No? The reason? Well, at least one of the reasons is that there are very , very few places to play and even if people would play the people would not come out to see them. The other reason I think is that like a lot of people on this list, a lot of people who do new or unusual musics are not particularly social people to begin with but that's the subject for another discussion. My own wife once said, "How ironic is it that we live in the wealthiest empire in the history of the entire planet and that we live in one of the wealthiest per capita urban areas in that vastly wealthy country and that, instead of the arts flourishing with support and patronage, that they are, instead, barely breathing. The singer/songwriter Sam Phillips (the woman, not the man) said, "No matter who is the president of the record company or the A&R person or the lawyers or whatever, the artists never go away. We are always here and we always will be. I say, yeah verily to the Scott Looney's of the world who open up their own homes to money losing new music concerts..........to the Roberto Zorzi's, Bernhard Wagners and Andy Butler's who will risk their own money in an effort to spread their artistry outside of the confines of their own countries and cities; to the Sunao Inami's who will risk the very small amount of money they have to put out recordings of artists who don't recoup their costs just so this beautiful music gets heard; the Matt Davingons' who produces a monthly new music series that rarely pays for itself; to the Murias/Pheaki Boi'a who put his whole financial situation on the line to produce the 1st ever 2 day Dark Elektronika festival in San Francisco and lost his shirt even when the even was a stunning success. If things are happening artistically in the SF Bay Area and environs it is because there are about 30 people who are fanatically committed to 'la causa', come hell or high water.................paying gigs or not. Buy a dinner for one of these people the next time you see them at a gig you dig! It'll lighten their load and keep 'em going, I assure you.