RE: Who uses "looping" in their promo material?

["Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Ahhhh,  you know it may be because I live in Santa Cruz and have promoted 
live looping so heavily in local
press, radio, television and to anyone I ever talk to, but I have found 
that 
people who know about it actually
do care if you call yourself a looping artist.

I'll never forget jumping up and down when I read a local newspaper 
article 
that referred to Amy X Neuburg as a
looping artist and DIDN'T pause to explain what that was (assuming the 
readership was already familiar with it).

I do realize, however, that Santa Cruz is really anamolous.    There are 
several artists in this town who go out and
make pretty good scoots playing corporate gigs, weddings and parties as 
solo 
looping artists.   Of course, we
are in the extended SF Bay Area (though technically in the Monterey Bay 
area,  the musical world extends
both south and north of hear and a lot of work I do is either in Carmel, 
San 
Francisco or the South Bay).

But there are so many tools I"ve learned as a looper;   so many different 
approaches that are defined by the equipment
I use and the sensibility I have (I've always been fascinated by groove, 
repition, trance and psychedelia) that
I consider myself a looping artist in the just the same way that I 
consider 
myself an Ethnic Fusion artist, or a Jazz Drummer
or a Pop Studio drummer or a Free Improviser or a Found Sound 
Artist.............all the different worlds that I inhabit as
a professional and non-professional musical artist.

yours,  Rick



by the way,   I think calling oneself an artist instead of a musician is 
only pretentious if you don't have the goods to back it up.
I have gone to great lengths to eschew most commercial playing in my 
career 
if it ever conflicted with my own pure expression
or an all original band that I was in.      I don't think making money 
with 
music is a bad thing at all,  but it has taken a lot
of sacrifice to continue to always push for free expression and creativity 
even at the expense of my 'straight' commercial career so
I call myself an Artist with a capital 'A'  and I'm proud of that term and 
think it's appropriate and non-pretentious  to use it.