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Looper's Delight
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Mark Sottilaro wrote about his scary situation: "What else can you do? WHEN YOUR GUEST VOCALIST WON'T LEAVE! " Man, oh man, have I ever been there before, Mark. At one point I got a really lucrative gig ($1000) at one of the 10,000 person Massives that they used to hold in Oakland (and why did those things stop?) I was asked to fill two solid hours in the chill room doing my live looping found sound schtick. It was fabulous, really. It was a large audience that continually turned over and people were really digging that my stuff was so different from what they normally would hear at a Rave. That was until I did a kind of trip hoppy piece and use beatboxing for the groove. A young man walked up to me in the middleof the song as I was juggling the loops (warning sign already) and said. "I dig your beatboxing", I"m a rapper, could I do a piece with you? I thought, well, that's not quite what I intended for the vibe, but I didn't want to appear curmugeonly so I said okay to his request.. Well, he gets on mic and I lay down a beatbox for him to rap over and suddenly and immediately there are ten guys in line behind him waiting for their turn on the mic. I mean this all happened within one minute of me handing him the mic and because my hands were literally full with playing bass, keys and beatboxign and keeping it all together so that it sounded like a professional production I couldn't control it at all. At one point I 'ended' a piece and went over to the line of young men and said, "Thanks a lot, I need to get back to the rest of the show now," and everybody turned on me angrily and one guy said, "Oh man, he got his turn, I want my turn" to a chorus of hostile 'yeahs' from the peanut galler. It was really pretty ugly quickly and I just gave up and beatboxed until the festival leaders aske me to quit playing (half an hour earlier than I was supposed to). The whole vibe was not 'chill' at all and I was never asked back (after having played two or three of them very successfully. Man, oh man, did that make an impression. I, unfortunately, have experienced similar situations a couple of times since then enough to have developed the prejudice that freestyled rappers are the most aggressive and insensitive musicians that I've ever played with. It's a shame because i like the form, and I know a few extremely good freestylers but even they do not seem to know when to do their thing and when to give it a rest. For some reason damned reason, even people with little or no experience or little or no talent will aggressively try to get onstage with you. Can you imagine a trumpet player or violinist with the same amount of experience going up to an accomplished musician and aggressively asking to sit in for the DURATION of a performance. ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! I regretfully have a 'no rapper' policy for my live improv shows. It's just not worth the risk. I also have discoverd, too, that anyone who is a sensitive and accomplished musician will seek you out ahead of your show and ask to sit in. I've pretty much decided that it has to be David Torn or David Sylian or Jah Wobble who asks me in the middle of playing for me to say 'yes' to them. If someone is insensitive enough and pushy enough to come up right in the middle of a show it's an automatic 'no' reply from me now....................and I love to improvisize with people, but you just gotta have your standards.