Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 22:52:21 -0400
From: "Jacki Dimitroff"
Subject: An Electric Evening
To: "Echoes"
This is my review of HRV-021: Electric Factory. It's not a typical
review, because its a work of fiction -- an allegory. But this is the
only way I can convey my thoughts about this show. I have not
researched anything for accuracy, so if you find discrepancies, tuff
titty!
========================================================================
One night in 1970, a platonic male friend invited me to a show at the
Electric Factory. He promised me the most interesting, compelling,
life-altering evening of my life, so how could I refuse?
The Electric Factory was an old warehouse they had renovated to a
nightclub. There were some seventy-odd tables scattered around the
great room with a small platform stage at one end. When we arrived,
the place was almost full and quite noisy. The heavy smoke from
tobacco and cannabis created a gloomy atmosphere, and made me feel
totally cool. The glow from the table candles created halos of light
like you'd imagine seeing from an active crystal ball or Gandalf's
staff. My friend and I sat down at a small table for two in the center
of the room. I felt an odd, unfamiliar sense of anticipation as show
time drew near. My friend had told me very little about the band we
were about to see, only that it was something unlike I'd ever heard
before. A waitress came by and offered drinks. I was too young to
order alcohol, but my friend ordered a glass of ale. He had dropped a
hit of acid before we arrived at the club, so a beer buzz wasn't his
intention. I drank from the glass that sat in front of him. Mmmm. I
love Guinness.
The band appeared on stage quietly and without ceremony. It appeared
to
the crowd around me that the real show wouldn't start until the music
did. My friend pulled a pen out of his pocket and opened up the
cocktail napkin the ale was served on. "This is important," was all he
wrote, with a colon following the phrase. And then the band struck its
first notes and the room went quiet. "Astronomy Domine," my friend
wrote on the napkin below his first phrase. I didn't get the "domine"
part, but the astral tone to the music sent my mind's eye gazing toward
a clear night sky, complete with a full moon. I'd seen a shooting star
only once in my life, and the "oohoooh's" of the song echoed the sense
of what it was like to see one. There was polite applause following
this song, and I snickered at the thought of myself sitting before this
band just as my parents would sit and applaud a symphony.
The next song gripped me from the first notes. My friend whispered the
lyrics to me as Cymbaline played. I finally understood the eerie tone
of the song as I realized I was listening to someone's nightmare. But
it was more than that. It was the serene tone to the verses and the
pounding insistence of the chorus. The pleading tone of "please wake
me" shot a bullet through my psyche as I recalled the last nightmare I
myself experienced. My friend watched me with amusement as I sat
perplexed during the "footsteps" sequence. Perhaps he thought I didn't
understand, but I did. What I was really concentrating on was the
sound effects. With the exception of the footsteps themselves, I was
trying to figure out if the other sound effects were coming from that
guitar player, and I am pretty certain that they were. My friend and
I had quite the discussion about this part on the way home from the
show. I must say the song overcame me. During the applause, I hollered
out "play it again," much to the amusement of my friend.
One of the band members introduced the next song as "A Saucer Full of
Secrets." As the first notes played, I looked around and saw tea cups
on saucers. I don't know how many secrets you could hold in a saucer,
but the band played on mercilessly as though one could hold all the
secrets of the world, including the secret behind Mona Lisa's smile.
Quite frankly, I didn't like it. This was my cue for a trip to the
bathroom. My friend was disappointed, but his look seemed to tell me,
"I may have lost this battle, but I'll win the war." Sorry, chum, but
this song is too free-wheeling and lacks order. I like order. Order
another pint, please, so I can enjoy the drummer. Where was* he* in
the first two songs? And then, miraculously, as though the band had
read my mind, A Saucer Full of Secrets became a cohesive, orderly
piece.
After the intermission, the band took up again slowly and quietly.
Hey! I knew this song. I used to hear it over my girlfriend's house
coming from the hi-fi system in her older brother's room while we
played PONG on her TV. But I didn't remember it being this long, or
this good! My friend scribbled another note on the napkin:
Interstellar Overdrive. Man, that bass player really had his groove
on. After my friend had written his note, he was pretty lost to me,
absorbing himself in the jam, or was he just peaking?
Ahhh, Fat Old Sun. Another song I knew. Boy do I love this song. I
found myself singing along quietly under my breath and letting the
music carry me away to a faraway time when I was young, and bronze was
the requisite skin color for summer vacation. We worshipped the Fat
Old Sun during tag, statues, Mother-may-I and pick-up games of
softball at the school grounds. It was the Fat Old Sun we loved even
when Tommy Pickles got mad because he'd stolen a Playboy from his
father's sock drawer and the girls wanted to use it for home plate.
But there I was, years later, yelling to my girlfriend's brother to
turn this song up as she and I laid on chaise lounges under the Fat Old
Sun trying to get that bronze look we never had to work on while we
played pick-up softball games. Funny that. At one point the music got
so quiet I wondered in my musings if the song hadn't stopped and I was
just hearing it again in my mind. The melody moved on and on and soon
became melancholy. Like the way your day under the Fat Old Sun ended
when the streetlights came on or you heard the familiar whistle of your
father calling you home to dinner. I thought that someday this song
would mean to me the loss of youth, but that was many years away and
the Guinness was tasting too good to ponder on it any further.
A band member announces the next two songs, and Green is the Colour
begins. I suddenly feel romantic. My friend's arm brushes mine as he
writes "quickness of the eye deceives the mind." on the napkin. I
realize this is not a romantic overture, but an exclamation of a
critical part of this song. Still, I have had a crush on him for
years, and the melody --or the beer buzz or the contact high-- gives me
a bit of courage and I place my hand on his forearm. My friend smiles
at me and takes my hand in his. Sweet innocent heaven, like my first
"steady" in third grade, Garth. He and I were too shy and nervous to
do anything else besides hold hands as we moved in tandem on the swing
set at the school yard.
The music changes quickly without a segue and it becomes ominous and
gives me a sense of dread. I forget what the band member called this
song. My friend, definitely peaking at this point, is sitting forward
as though in anticipation of something. The music makes me uneasy, so
I squeeze his hand more tightly. He turns to me with this look that
says "you're gonna love this." I'm not so sure. Then, as the tension
of the music rises and rises, my friend leans over and whispers in my
ear, at exactly the same moment the singer whispers in his microphone
"Careful with that axe, Eugene." And then there's the scream, ripped
from the bowels of the vocalist, and striking the primordial center of
my brain like an electrical charge. I feel as though I'm standing
behind a jet engine and I look over at my friend, who is smiling and
nodding with eyes closed, acknowledging some connection with the angst
of the scream. Take a drink of Guinness and try to understand this.
Ahh, yes, the music now seems to move toward healing and "glad I got
that off my chest."
My friend is smiling at me; he knows from the look on my face that I
have been bowled over by this performance. The final song begins and
the methodical beat calls to me, as though I'm standing before a Druid
bonfire, having completed some coming-of-age ritual. The music kisses
me in welcome to a secret understanding not everyone will know. I
smile back at my friend as someone behind me leans forward and says in
my ear: "set the controls for the heart of the sun." This floods me
with images of pick-up softball and swinging with Garth and Tommy's
father's Playboy and how this music will affect me when I'm older and
the feel of my friend's hand together with mine. This night has taken
me backward and forward in time and yet its the here and now that
amazes me. My friend writes one final note on the napkin: "do you get
it now?" and I remember my initial thoughts about A Saucerful of
Secrets. Astronomy Domine, Interstellar Overdrive, and Set the
Controls for the Heart of the Sun. I guess we're not talking about a
teacup saucer, but a FLYING saucer. I take the pen from my friend's
hand and write on the napkin: "I'll see you on the dark side of the
moon."
========================================================================
My point to choosing this technique to review Electric Factory is to
exemplify the beauty of this recording. The SQ is excellent and gives
me that feel of a concert from a coffeehouse versus a larger venue.
I've also tried to show how the music attacks your mind with feeling
and conception. This is definitely pensive head-phone music! Oh, and
for those interested, I imagined the narrator as 16- or 17-years old;
I was only *eight* when this show was recorded.
Thanks to Buddy Duke for sharing the music, and thanks, as always, to
RonToon and the Harvested Team for one amazing production after
another.
I'm raving and drooling about what's to come.
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