Son Kite on playing live in trance

On 2006-09-09 13:38, Magox wrote:
so much negativity..........just go and have fun......wether its "live" or just mixed......

On 2006-07-12 11:51, Bom*shankar wrote:
Just got the Son Kite newsletter.

Here's a quote:

"We mostly try to talk about the good side of things, especially in the newsletters, but this spring have been packed with negative tour experiences and we feel that we have to share some of that with you. If you get bored just skip reading!

When we get a booking we always send a technical rider/contract to the organizer that he/she have to confirm/sign. In the technical rider you get all the information about what we need to be able to make our performance and since we bring around 100 kilo equipment ourselves the organizer don't need to arrange much. Just to make sure that we will get everything we need our manager always calls three times to the organizer to make sure that they have arranged everything we need. Important to add is that we don't ask for things just for fun: EVERY thing we ask for is used in our live set and if we don't get it we can't perform. To us this sounds very easy and logic, doesn't it?

Here comes a short story/example of how it can be when you're touring and end up with an unprofessional organizer. This story is from the Souleclipse festival in Turkey, they made all the mistakes an organizer can do! Please note that they are not the only ones doing mistakes but this was just hilarious!!!

We took the flight from Sweden to Turkey 6.30 in the morning (just to make sure that we got to the festival in good time) and arrived at the festival in turkey late afternoon and there where nobody to pick us up at the airport. got picked up a few hours later (because some juicy champignons were going to get picked up), arrived at the festival area around 01.00. We where supposed to play around 8.00 in the morning so there was a lot of time to prepare the liveset. We thought!! Went to the stage and tried to find someone in charge. We couldn't find anyone so we had to do all the stage management by our self, until our dear friend and angel Sally Dollally came and saved us. (Without her help there wouldn't have been a live set from us). From 01.00 to 08.00 the three of us were working our asses of just to get hold of the equipment we need to be able to play, but after scanning the festival site for hours we couldn't get the stuff we needed and had to find out new ways with the things they had (12 hours before that the organizer made a personal promise that he had ALL the equipment in front of him and that he personally would show it to us when we arrived (we never saw him!!!))
So finally we have enough equipment to play with, but where? Before our gig was four "live acts" in a row, all just using a laptop playing a stereofile! When someone is playing you can't connect four meters of equipment (on a two meter table) since you then would have to disconnect the stuff he's playing with (even thou it's just a computer thru a 48 channel mixer and even thou it would sound exactly the same if he just pressed play on the cd player). This is the reason why you ALWAYS should have one dj in between two liveacts. To be able to play we had to build a new table behind the other one and do you think we got any help (except from Sally of course)? Anyway we managed to get everything ready 3 minutes before our timeslot, this means 7 hours of non stop stage-managing, stage building and equipment hunting, all well wrapped in frustration and irritation! How much motivation do you think we had to play? How much energy to do you think we had for smiling, improvising and to get into the music?
Different people are responsible for different things, also when you're making a party. The only thing an artist should be responsible for is performing, at his/her absolute best, the party organization should work at its best to create the best circumstance for the artists to perform and for the audience to enjoy the performance that is the point with having a concert or a music festival. People that love our music paid a lot of money to see us in Turkey and because of a shit organization we couldnˇ¦t do a good job, we are very sorry for this but we hope that people understand the reason. As I said before this organization is absolutely not the only one that don't know what a technical rider is, at least half the time we play we have to make weird solution to be able to play. If you're an organizer you should know your work and take it serious since you have a responsibility towards artists and most of all; your customers.

BUT we believe that the problem is much more complex than this and there is an explanation why organizers don't pay so much attention to our technical rider. There are hundreds of live acts in the trance scene, playing all around the world and earning good money and you could probably count the ones actually playing live on one hand! Playback live set in the trance scene is as accepted as djs playing with cd players, people even get surprised when you actually play live! how sick isn't that??? If you get booked and paid for playing live you should play live, if you don't have the equipment or the knowledge to be able to play you shouldn't accept the booking! If you're interested to play live, develop your way to play and let the world know when you're ready. We totally disrespect all the fake artists playing around the world (almost every trance artist) and we hope that YOU, the customers that in the end pay the money to the artists, claim your obvious right to enjoy live performances when this is what they write on the flyer! You should print t-shirts with the slogan "FFLA" fu** fake live artists! and if you come to a party and find an artist not playing live, go to the door and claim back your money!!! In this way the organizers will start to claim a non playback live set when they book an artist and hopefully this would force the lazy m****fu**** to work for their money. "

The bold is my addition.

What do you say? I totally agree!!!

On 2006-10-24 15:38, Justin Chaos wrote:

Quote:

On 2006-09-09 13:38, Magox wrote: so much negativity..........just go and have fun......wether its "live" or just mixed......

This is the kind of attitude I utterly hate the ''Who cares it's just music'' kind of one.
Thank God for those who cares, and God bless all our negativity as well

On 2006-09-10 04:21, Nobita wrote:
I've got proof right here that trance can be played live:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2985216487147417042&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en

On 2006-07-13 13:07, Yuli wrote:
Well it is pretty simple actually.

90% of the organizers prefer to bring 1 dude with laptop, then 2 dudes with technical riders, special place on stage, drum sets etc..

That is the sad truth, and all those organizers spit in the well that our scene drinks from, cuz this is one of the reasons why the trance scene is so unpro and stuck in itself. It is the ONLY music scene I know where the real MUSIC makers are less appreciated then the computer / audio freaks.

On 2006-11-06 01:48, OpenSourceCode wrote:
My .02:
"Anyone who is concerned with what equipment is being used on stage is obviously not dancing hard enough."
-OTT