FraKctured

November 17, 2000 Theater of the Living Arts, show #2 / Philadelphia, PA

Ugh. I hated the show tonight. Absolutely hated it! From the very first
note....a big fat yuck! I COULD NOT get present. I never gave up -- I kept
struggling throughout the night to bring myself into presence. One
effective way that I have to do this is to put my attention into my body.
Say.. my hands. Or my feet, or neck. Nothing worked tonight.

And the music sounded like shit to me. The material didn't convince me at
all, until the encores. It sounded convoluted and unreasonably dense, and
overblown. Big piles of pompous and desolate sonic pooh-pooh. And the
playing? Well, pretty crap as well.

I can accept that the audience's experience could be quite different to
this. I mean they seemed to love the show. But, for us on-stage: a
resounding "No!" to this show. Actually I take that back. Adrian had a good
show. He was playing and singing quite well and really enjoyed himself. So
1 out of 4 was happy. That makes it still worth doing in my book. But, boy
was I miserable. I experienced no soul to the performance, just a vacant
shell with lot's of excitement around it.

And then.... what did I discover? Hmmmmmm... Some good friends of mine said
that they saw a bootlegger in the balcony. And not only taping the show,
but filming it. And most likely, filming the whole show. Aha! So perhaps
there is a link between the bootlegging of a show and the lack of focus
within the performance, like Robert has been claiming for many moons now.

----------------------

Upon pondering this for a few hours I have come up with a few more
questions regarding bootlegging. I'm beginning to wonder if the experience
I had during the show was directly linked to how the viewing of this tape
might be experienced. It will certainly not capture very much of the power
of the show. Even if we had had a good night. And considering it was a
pretty crap night, the tape is going to be severely lacking in what a good
show would have been like. Is that what we feel on-stage while we're being
bootlegged? The 'full' experience of the performance taken outside of this
one moment? And including all the people who will experience the watching
of the video tape later and sensing how dead it is? Could this be entering
into the show as we are laying it down? Perhaps this tape will some day
make it into the hands of someone who will write an article about how
utterly crap this band is. Or perhaps it will be seen by many people who
completely hate it? Can all of these experiences enter into the performance
as it is unfolding?

Or perhaps I've just lost my mind being on the road for the last three
months?