ok, another reminiscence. for some reason in writing about past musical experiences i’m drawn to the less successful shows that i’ve had.
there’s a tolstoy quote, to paraphrase:
all happy families are the same, all unhappy families are unique in their unhappiness
kind of the same with anecdotes. happy anecdotes are all kind of the same. the miserable anecdotes are usually a lot more interesting.
so here’s a happy anecdote that started miserably… and forgive me if i’ve shared some of these stories before.
in autumn of 1990, before i had made any records under my own name, i received an offer to open up for ‘snap’ (of ‘i got the power’ fame). ‘snap’ were huge at this time, and they were playing a show at the palladium (which is now an nyu dorm) for 5,000 people.
i had never really done a live electronic music performance, but i said ‘yes’ anyway (‘nothing ventured nothing gained’, ‘carpe diem’, ‘moby’s an idiot’, etc). and i was as nervous as i’d ever been. my trial by fire.
i rehearsed by myself and figured out what songs i’d be performing and shined up my equipment and then found out on the day of the show that ‘snap’ had cancelled but that the show was going to go on anyway (it was sort of more of a rave, with a few dj’s as well) and i was to be the only performer. suffice it to say that i was a nervous wreck. i did my soundcheck and then sat backstage and waited and waited. and then at midnight someone told me that it was time to go and perform. gulp.
the crowd were pissed off that ‘snap’ had cancelled and then suddenly there’s this skinny little white kid that no one had ever heard of performing instead. walking across the stage i was met with some ‘boos’ and tossed plastic cups even before the performance started.
so i walk across this huge stage under a subtle barrage of ‘boos’ and i finally reach my equipment and i reach down to hit ‘start’ on my alesis sequencer. i hit ‘start’. and silence. nothing happens. if you look up ‘panic stricken little white kid’ in the dictionary there’s a picture of me standing with my equipment on stage at the palladium in front of 5,000 hostile ‘snap’ fans in 1990.
see, back then i performed alone. just me and some keyboards and samplers and a sequencer and a mixer. so i’m standing on stage panicking, and i look to see what the problem is and i see that my piece-of-shit yamaha tx-16w sampler hasn’t booted up. and booting up this sampler (which never should have been built because it’s one of the most awkward and un-user friendly pieces of music technology ever constructed but i ended up with one, much to my shame…) booting up this sampler takes about 3 minutes.
so i quickly boot it up and then start playing one of my synthesisers to placate the audience while the sampler is booting up.
waiting. waiting.come on, piece of shit yamaha tx-16w sampler, try not to be awful just this once.
waiting.
little lcd arrows moving across the screen… and finally it booted up and it worked and i was able to do my 25 minute performance and, surprisingly, people actually responded positively (it was a rave, after all, and people at raves in the late 80’s and early 90’s were chemically predisposed to respond to things positively…). but that moment of standing on stage and hitting ‘start’ on the alesis sequencer and hearing bone-crushing silence instead of big techno beats was one of the most nerve wracking moments of my life.
i imagine it’s like being attacked by a flesh eating dinosaur and pulling the trigger on your gun to defend yourself and hearing a little ‘click’ instead of the boom that you’d been expecting.
and thus ends todays little story
moby