Perfect Sound Forever

MOOGFEST 2014


The Synthesis of Art, Technology, & Music
By G. E. Light


Masterclass with Nile Rodgers and Greg Tate

Greg Tate masterfully guided natural-born raconteur Nile Rodgers through the highs and lows of his life and career. No wonder his book was so well received; he has lived a life... and then some. Ironically, Niles cleaned Frank Sinatra's private jet at Van Nuys Commercial Airport in his youth and on it met all the heavy hitters of the day. He's enough of a hippy to have dropped acid with Timothy Leary. And the story of how "Le Freak" was originally composed is classic: it involves being denied entrance to Grace Jones' private party at Studio 54 on New Year's Eve 1977 despite being personally invited by the French disco diva. Let's just say the originally lyrics weren't ‘Freak Out' and they were scathingly said about the club not describing "a new dance craze." But the best bit was hearing Niles talk about his varied musical career, his early jazz training (that morning he got out of bed and was playing "Stella by Starlight"), the jazz tunings and weird chord changes in Chic tunes masked by the funky riffs, and how much time he spent learning to play a guitar like Moroder's "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" only to find out it was a synth-produced sound.

Giorgio also marveled that Niles could do it live on his guitar. And best of all was the occasional strumming he did on his white Telecaster. Later at the show, there was a 10 minute tuning break because it's the only guitar Niles uses live. The only thing he didn't play all weekend long was his recent all conquering smash with Daft Punk, "Get Lucky," which served as his outro for both Q&A and show while he stood stage-side and shook hands and chatted with fans. One of the happiest, hippest cats I've ever met and a 3-year cancer survivor.



When You Get to Asheville

"The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change."
? Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

Asheville and its surrounding mountains have long provided a clarion call for the bohemian and artistic. Between 1889-1895, George Washington Vanderbilt II built the largest private home in the United States, his Chateux-styled Biltmore House at 178,926 square feet of floor space and 250 rooms. In 1927 the "Singing Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers had a radio show on WWNC, Asheville's first radio station.

F. Scott Fitzgerald decamped at the Grove Park Inn during the summers of 1936-7 for his tuberculosis. His wife Zelda stayed across the valley at Highland Psychiatric Hospital dealing, with her own demons. She would die there tragically in fire that destroyed the wooden structure and took eight other lives.

In the late 1970's, Bob Moog moved his company to Asheville and became a professor at UNC-Asehville. In the late 1990's, Asheville became a new Bohemian mecca and home to lots of dreadlocked, trustafarian ski bums. Later, it became both a foodie mecca; home to such places as Tupelo Honey Cafe and Curate (owned by two former elBulli staigiares) as well as the Beer Capital of the U.S. (home to numerous small craft breweries including Highland Brewing Company, a recently opened east coast branch of Sierra Nevada and a soon to be opened eastern plant for New Belgium along the French Broad River in New Tryon).

As a 9 year old in the summer of 1973, I first visited Asheville while attending nearby Camp Rockmont in Black Mountain, NC. This is less of a anecdotal cul-de-sac than you might think because before it became Camp Rockmont, the site housed the second incarnation of the famous Black Mountain College (1941-1957). In fact, in a closet in the main building, I once found dozens of old turntables, tape machines, reel-to-reel tapes and what looked like marked up musical scores; I can only imagine now that these were detritus from the early collaborations between John Cage and Merce Cunningham and maybe included stuff from "Williams Mix" (1952) or ideas that eventually showed in works like "Variations V" (1965).

On the idyllic shores Of Lake Eden, Buckminster Fuller built his first geodesic dome, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weill, and Cy Twombly were students. Faculty included Walter Gropius, Charles Olson, Robert Creelye, William De Kooning and Alfred Kazin. So long before Moogfest 2014 happened, the Greater Asheville area was already dead center at the synthesis of art, technology, and music in the forefront of the American avant garde.

"And the Angels... were frozen in hard marble silence and at a distance life awoke, and there was a rattle of lean wheels, a slow clangor of shod hoofs. And he heard the whistle wail along the river. Yet, as he stood for the last time by the Angels, he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he has left, yet he does not say "The town is near," but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring hills..."
-Thomas Wolfe



Workshops and Installations

Lucky Dragons "How to Hear"

At Moogfest 2014, I attended a workshop, "How to Hear," lead by the Luck Dragons., an experimental music group from L.A. who performed at the Whitney 2008 Biennial, London's ICA, and the Centre Georges Pompidou amongst other gigs. Luke Fischbech led a small group of 35 through a series of indoor exercises and outdoor listening to establish the four interconnected processes which make up hearing in his model: "producing your own sounds, acquiring sounds from the surrounding environment, imagining sound, and remembering sounds you've heard before." Throughout the experimental workshop, Luke used no technical aides of any kind, so as to focus intently on the listening process. We began with a few of Pauline Oliveros' "Sonic Meditations: Teach Yourself to Fly" and spectral centering through "Removing The Demons or Getting Your Rocks Off." This led to a discussion of the three different categories of processing sound: "sensory relationship 1) as a physical phenomenon, involving ears and skin as receptors, 2) as an event, remembering a sound, and 3) as information--the brain breaks sound down into discrete objects." From there, we headed outside to listen for discrete sounds around Pack Square and along Biltmore Avenue in Downtown Asheville, focusing on the differences between longitudinal and transverse sound waves. Fischbech offered a light critique of Schafer's notion of "the soundscape," which he believes overemphasizes individual subjectivity and perception. The two major takeaways from the workshop:

1) making a sound and receiving one from the world are deeply connected and a very complicated process, and
2) quoting Luke, "arbitrariness + ambiguity is sound world."
Playing with Theremins: Amateur and professional categories

Bob Moog's first love was Theremins. In fact, he's generally considered the preeminent designer of Theremins. There was an installation of some of his varying designs in the Pack Place Lower Lobby that festivalgoers could fool around with. Saturday the 26th, Dorit Chrysler gave a virtuoso performance on the same. But the most stunning Theremin performance I saw all week was footage from Hans Fjellestad's 2004 Moog Documentary with Bob visiting Pamelia Kurstin in her NYC apartment while she performed stunning Mingus-like walking bass lines on her Theremin.

Kurstin's segment begins at the 12:56 mark. The twinkly joy of Bob's face as he was entranced by the performance really signified what Moogfest 2014 could be at its best.



My 50th

Why did I choose to attend Moogfest from the myriad of options available even locally in the Southeast (Think Hang Out Bonnaroo, and Wanee, for starters)?

Well the unique daytime educational offerings (installations, films, talks, workshops) for one thing. Second, my family has a house on Lake Junaluska a mere 23 miles west of Asheville on I-40 and the Smoky Mountain Expressway.

Third, an opportunity to see three bucket list performers: Pet Shop Boys, Kraftwerk and Laurie Anderson. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, and the third's absence is understandable given the events of the last 12 months. Fourth, the penultimate day of the Festival fell on my 50th Birthday and it was an opportunity to have a fabulous lunch at elBulli-inspired Curate. Here's a picture of a few of the items I had.


Tabla de Jamon



Synesthetic Experiences

Moogfest 2014 drew 7,000 badge holders for daytime educational events and nighttime shows with an additional 25,000 people visiting the events' free programs. By those numbers alone, Moogfest was a success, even if it didn't make money outright. Ticket sales covered 2/3 of the estimated $3 million in costs. All over town excited geeky fanboys and girls could be heard whispering their latest "Star" sighting: Roger Linn, Don Buchla, and "Neil Harbisson. Still a chance for the Moog Company to shine and show off Asheville as a potential future hotbed for further music and technology ventures was further reason to believe that there will be another in Buncombe County's future. Maybe not next year but as Billboard noted in their end of conference review: "The festival nearly [perhaps a typo for neatly methinks] mastered a blend of innovative and diverse electronic music with impressive and thought provoking daytime programming, in a beautiful setting full of happy and engaged people. But like any utopia, can Moogfest last?" For further excellent coverage (particularly of acts I didn't cover) go here and here.


POST-SCRIPT

According to Hypebot,com's Clyde Smith, the final figures are now in on Moogfest 2014. Despite receiving $90,000 from Buncombe County and a similar amount from the City of Asheville, the festival finished $1.5 million in the red. But organizers are looking forward to 2015 with a grant request increased to $250,000. While the festival was clearly a success, more works needs to be done to actually realize its claims about being an economic development driver for producing a more robust entrepreneurial tech culture in the area.



Works Cited


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