From: pet@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (paul eng-yi tan)
Subject: Re: bloody record companies( was Re: Headless Chickens support Poppies!
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Distribution: aus
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 00:27:49 GMT

hamster@werple.apana.org.au (Anthony Horan) writes:

>pet@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (paul eng-yi tan) writes:
>>Actually, I consider Mushroom a major record company. It may not be inter
>>national, but it is major within Aust... Indie is like Present, Razor (on MDS)
>>shock...
>I wasn't saying they were an indie! I was just making a point that the
>indie labels will manipulate product just as readily as the big boys...
Sorry, then, I misread :) All friends here... this is good. The flames
shooting round alt.rave and RMI really piss me off. Civilised discussion
gets a lot more SNR. (Signal to Noise ratio, for non engs.)

>By the way, Razor are usually released through Mushroom/Festival, not
>MDS, and Shock is rumored to be signing a distribution deal with Sony
>soon, which may explain the Sony-style catalogue number on the Lab CD...
>:-)

Yeah, I knew about razor's distribution deal. It's not exactly the same thing
as being label-signed subsidiaries of a major.Basically Razor has a free hand
with recording and promoting, and doesn't get money from Mushroom for these
purposes either. Mushroom distributes the material and gets a cut of the
profit. This is my understanding. Please feel free to correct me!

As I see it, this would mean that Shock's deal would not allow Sony to control
to sound of the releases either...

>>vocals were 100% live, ditto the DJing. Of course the rest was DAT. The
>>reason I think the vox was live was because the sound quality was terrible!
>>Couldn;t make out a word. But as a whole, the performance was quite good.

>Talk about playing to a non-critical audience! If I had a dance/rave
>band and could have chosen a place to play, it'd have been at Pure.

That's the whole thing. A techno band cannot hope to compete with U2 or GNR
et al in a stadium situation. They have to rely heavily on sequencers and
backing tapes. Pure is just the place for these bands. I mean the audience
of the genre should not be as critical as enemies of the genre. I go to see
a pub band for instance and I am usually overwhelmed at how shit the sound
is, how overly loud it is, and how crap the presentation is. However the
hardcore pubbies who like these bands are not as critical in this regard:
they appreciate the guitar playing, the shouted/screamed vocals which are
100% live. If these people went to see quadrophonia, they would criticize
all those things: lack of live playing, no drums or guitars, etc...

>Sheeesh! Just like the ridiculous 20-minute DAT-and-vocal Beloved "gig"

I am 99% sure all the vocals were on DAT except for the very low-mixed
and totally different-sounding (frequency-wise) ad-libs he did, like
"YEAH" and what have you.

>at Chasers, the Quadrophonia "gig" was a Hey Hey appearance dressed up
>as a concert. If we establish that the singer/rapper from Q can't sing
>or make proper use of a mike, then all you're left with is the DAT and
>the DJ-ing. Better to hire a Technics turntable, pretend you're tripping
>and do it yourself at home! :-)

Well, I thought he was rapping live, esp since the sound was so bad. I find
that clubs, not being configured for live performances, get heaps of feedback
over the singer's mike. As a result they either have the vocals mixed far too
low (as in Sound UNlimited at Chasers) or they heavily filter out the high
end (Quadro at Pure). I saw the Beloved at Chasers and enjoyed it even though
the WHOLE thing was on tape and they were all miming as far as I could tell.
The songs sounded just like the 12". The thing is, it was only $10. Plus I'm
a Beloved fan. Plus I had a chat with Steve waddington who was pretty cool.

I don't see any reason why most of the music can't be on DAT, esp for techno
groups. In fact, my idea of what techno "concerts" should be is basically
(if no vox involved). Have fractal projections, light show, cool background
movie, a few guys with synths, and a DJ. I heard 808 kep the stage dark and
shone all the lights on the audience instead, so basically they were
invisible. That's fine by me. I don't want to watch techno groups, I wanna
dance to them. Well, I DO want to watch them just because I like checking
out the synths, seeing how they pull off a successful live gig, etc.

I feel that Beloved was not completely successful, but Quad came across very
well to a suitable audience. I think band/venue/audience matching is important.
The gig is as good as the correlation between these factors! :)
Paul


--
Second Hand vinyl for sale: Depeche Mode, Indie, Severed Heads,
Beloved, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets,
Cabaret Voltaire. Excell. Cond. Also X1 as NEW $88US, $110AUS.
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