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Looper's Delight
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Dear Mark, What I've noticed, viz a vis your list of loop freindly venues around the planet is that frequently, it's more efficacious to find out who the people are in a region who can help you to find a gig, as opposed to having a list of specific gigs. That's why I haven't responded yet to this list because, frankly, despite Steve Lawson calling my home town the 'live looping capitol of the univers", I can't really send you a definitive list of venues that one could book in my area. Instead, I think it might be a more accurate list to mention the people who seem the most committed to this notion of helping live looping artists to get a gig when they are on tour. Here's a long winded , but salient list of reason why I think this is true and, at the end of my exposition, a list of people who one might contact through this list if they are trying to book a gig in a region. To whit: All of my adult life (from the turn of the decade from 70's to 80's until the prestent time) I have constantly searched for and encouraged the creation of new venues for all original music, whether it be new wave/punk/world music/live looping/ experimental/goth-industrial or noise music. Toward that end, in my home town of Santa Cruz, California, I've been successful at getting literally dozens of venues to open themselve up to new music/creative performances. Over those years, the lion's share of every single one of those venues has gone out of business, one by one. Oddly enough, I've never gotten very depressed about this because I realize that there is always an idealist who opens up a gallery or museum; a struggling local bar who can always use an infusion of a small but fanatical group of cretive musicians to swell there ranks on at least an off night. Also, having committed my entire adult life to trying to promote the notion of creative community I have noticed that many, many venues will be open to new music but that , essentially, it really takes someone being fanatical and completely existentially committed to the proposition of expanding the community of creativity in a regional location. Even in my touring in Europe and the UK, I have noticed that every several years, the really hip and supportive venues have changed hands or gone completely out of business. I've played amazing venues in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, the South Bay, Monterey, Carmel and many, many places in Scandinavia, Western Europe, the UK, Mexico, Canada and Japan that no longer exist. This constant overturn of venues could be really depressing to me if several people in this community didn't feel completely committed to the unstoppable force of human creativity and the notion of it's promotion. ****** This is a really long winded explanation of why I can't really contribute to your list in the SF and Monterey Bay Areas despite the fact that this might be one of the strongest places to present live looping music per capita on the entire earth. The venues keep changing and a lot of them get opened up only by dent of personality as opposed to the success of commerce. As a stellar example, I've had the Y2K series in 5 different locations over 8 years and I can't honestly recommend any of them for travelling loopers because either they are mostly not open to live looping presently or they literally don't exist. Two of the wonderful spots that I did the festival in (the Rio Theatre and the Cayuga Vault) were brand new struggling arts venues when I first approached the owners to do the festival. At the time, I had enough clout from having successful bands in the region that I could offer them all kinds of publicity if they would gift us with a venue for the looping festival. At the time, that was a great idea and mutually beneficial to all parties concerned. After a while, though, they had to pay the rent or mortgages that they had involved themselves in to run these places and our little wonderful but economically modest festival just couldn't help them to stay in business. Even the venue that we've produced the festival in the last three years is struggling greatly due to the recession/depression that Northern California finds itself in (and it's much worse here than most places in the US at least) and as of this late date I don't even know if I have a spot to do Y2K9 for certain because the owner may have to let go of his lease. This means that I really don't have the ability to list great places to loop in this area..................................at all!!!!! ****** At the same time, what I've noticed is that there are personalities in this scene who seem incredibly committed to this notion of the live looping community and pushing it's existence to the world. _* My advice is that a list of those people is really just as important , or perhaps more, than a list of specific venues (which come and go).*_ As an example, in my experience, I can reccommend some names of people to contact if you want to get something going. I'm a bit tired tonight and it's late so please don't be offended if I have a brain fart and forget you, but contacting these individuals will be as efficacious in determing a place to play live looping music as a specific list of current live looping venues: note: many of these people may no longer be involved, actively in the promoting the international live looping movement, but all of them have made significant contributions in the past. My apologies to anyone who no longer wants to be involved with this list. Also, I am just not very connected to the New York/East Coast scene so please forgive my lack of information around that scene. Please , anyone............................amend this list with my humble apologies. _United States_ Peter Koniuata, David Kirkdorffer, Tim Nelson (Boston) Todd Reynolds (New York City) Michael Klobuchar (Pittsburgh) James Sidlo (San Antonio) Hans Lindauer (Portland --- originator of Loopstock) Rick Walker, Bill Walker, Glenn Smith, Chris Cohn, Dan Soltberg (Santa Cruz) Matt Davignon (San Francisco) _England_ Andy Butler (Norwich), Andrew Ostler (formerly of Cambridge) Steve Lawson (London) _Northern Ireland _ Ricky Graham (Derry), Paul Marshall (Bangor/Belfast) _Wales_ Gareth Whittock (Swansea) _Sweden _ Per Boysen (Stockholm) Tryggve Lund (Sweden/Norway) _Norway _ Tellef Orgrim (Oslo) _Finland _ Miro Mantere (Poorvo/Helsinki) _Germany _ Leander Reinhinghaus (Berlin) Andreas Willers (Berlin) Michael Peters (Koln) Rainer Straschill (Munchen) Luis Angulo (Radolfzell/Konstanz) _Switzerland_ Bernhard Wagner (Zurich) Claude Voit (Lucerne) _Belgium _ Sjaak Overgaauw (Antwerp) _Italy_ Massimo Livernani (Firenze) Fabio Anile (Roma) Bruno Kleinefeld (Milano) Luca Formentini (Descenzano/Lago Di Garda) _ Greece_ Costas Andreou (Athens) _Brazil_ Matthias Grob (Bahia) _Bahamas _ Andre Donawa (Barbado) _Argentina_ Ariel Rzezak (Buenos Ares) _Singapore _ Randolf Arrioloa (Singapore) _Japan _ Sunao Inami (Kobe/Osaka) Aci (Tokyo) Okay, I know I"m missing a lot of important people (especially people from my own country) Please help me out and forgive me any brain farts.