10.57
Basement Belewbeloid, Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
Ade & Martha have visited the
Basement. We discussed last night’s dress rehearsal performance & various
technical concerns, such as monitoring.
Practising a developing variation, never before developed & played.
14.41 Computing. Pre-packing.
15.05 Off to the Bellcourt & the first public performance of this manifestation of The Greater Crim.
23.17 Arriving at the Bellcourt Theatre I…
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An introductory SoundSculpture for walk-in.
At the band fisting: Mistakes will be made. May we make better mistakes! And then we went off to make quite a few of them.
On mistakes: as an audient, I love to see good players screw up! – because I get to see how they deal with the fallout. The quality of a player is best revealed, not when things are going well, but when things have just collapsed in front of them. There is no one way for dealing with a band train-wreck, other than dealing with it in the moment, thinking on your feet (or from a guitar / drumstool).
A generous audience. A performance of good spirit, with some impressive variations on Crimson themes; for example, the chords to Red proved to be elusive & mysterious.
Some difficulties with sound, which is commonplace, and the player resolves this as best they may. I was sitting next to the bass bins, placed onstage, with much proximate shaking whenever bass drums were drummed; like, all the time.
Other small difficulties such as Ade’s guitar was switched off at the beginning of the set (The ConstruKction Of Light) leaving me with offsets / upbeats to Ade’s unplayed downbeats while duetting with T Lev in 7 & some 8s.
But, there were also highspots.
The Sidney Smith…
… an informed, experienced & impartial Crim fan, audient & biographer, felt the set was almost too long. This is also my view: 90 minutes before the final block of pieces, plus encores. Another view, mainly a punter view, is play everything! This takes no accounting of a set’s form & sequencing; one-thing-after-another is a different approach, although it sometimes works. But 90 minutes of Crim is enough to make anyone wilt, even a tough & savage Geordie such as Sid; even a quiet man from Dorset.
The band was in good spirits. Overall: an honourable debut for both band & audience.
"In the creative leap, history waits outside."
