Roger Miller at the San Francisco Music Works, 3/27/88

[Niels P. Mayer <mayer%hplnpm@hplabs.HP.COM>]

I decided to see this show on y'all's recommendation, as well as the
recomendation of various rec.music.misc'ers (a list i no longer read
since everybody is just rehashing info on music that sucks)....  ex
Mission of Burma member Roger Miller performed all by his lonesome,
using some analog delays (or very expensive long-delay digitals) as
looping devices, a distortion box, various other guitar fx, and a
prepared electric piano.  With a "tip of the hat to John Cage", Roger
would attach alligator clips to harmonic nodes of the low strings of
the piano, popped a comb into the mid-high range strings, or plugged
some bolts inbetween the strings. Most of his pieces were constructed
by laying down a measure or three of rhythm onto the looping device,
and then laying down intertwingling layers of "melody" into the delay.
Sometimes the effect was ethereal and enoesque, more often, though, he
would set up a jangling sea of noisome echo lurching ontop of a rhythm
line made from the dingy hollow clang of the alligator-clipped low end
of the keyboard. five alligator clips, mounds of effects, hundreds of
decibels of sound, five icons of lenin hovering atop the keyboard,
three pints of blood from my eardrums.... niels-bob says check it out!

On the social scene, I arrived at the following personal consensus --
the stray cats in san francisco are almost as jaded as the black-clad
deathrock women. Here I am, clowning up and down and hissing at this
evile looking black cat thang -- it don't budge. It sits there in
perfect repose on a late victorian doorstep and just stares me down
with this menacing all-encompassing gaze -- very disconcerting.

-- Niels Mayer.