{"id":3179,"date":"2012-12-24T11:45:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T16:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/?p=3179"},"modified":"2012-12-24T11:45:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T16:45:18","slug":"my-musical-evolution-part-385-21st-century-the-porter-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/2012\/12\/24\/my-musical-evolution-part-385-21st-century-the-porter-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"My Musical Evolution – Part 385 21st Century The Porter Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Balkan<\/a>For a few years, I worked with a guy named Ben Porter. Ben is a musician. He plays guitars and other similarly string instruments.\u00a0\u00a0He always seems to be playing\u00a0in a band of some kind.\u00a0\u00a0He is a fan\u00a0of a good coffee press and a bunch of\u00a0unusual music. As you know, I too like unusual music but\u00a0I feel that Ben and I have very different approaches. I think he see everything through the prism of being a musician where I like things just because I like them. sometimes\u00a0I like the weird stuff\u00a0simply because it is weird. Go see the post about Agony<\/em> which I think is an excellent example of weird.<\/p>\n

We have been to thank for our forays into The Flaming Lips, Balkan Beat Box, H\u00f4tel Costes <\/em>and the resurgence of Irish Drinking Songs <\/em>among others.\u00a0 It would be interesting to see his Musical Evolution.\u00a0 <\/em>I don’t really know what he liked in the mainstream area but I can’t think him enough for getting us started with St\u00e9phane Pompougnac and H\u00f4tel Costes. <\/em>I’ll get into H\u00f4tel Costes <\/em>in detail in the next post.<\/p>\n

Ben introduced us to The Flaming Lips. <\/em> He told us about an album that was supposed to be placed on 4 CD players simultaneously. That sounded like our Echoes Experiment. <\/em>We looked it up online and soon I had Zaireeka.\u00a0 Zaireeka<\/em> is a very interesting piece. It is a 4 Disc Set but all 4 discs are meant to be played at the same time.\u00a0 The concept is an extension of something they used to do with car stereos in a parking garage. They would take a musical composition then break it up into a dozen or two cassettes then everybody would show up in a parking garage and start their tapes at the same time then listen to the result. Variances in cassette deck speed, volume, equalization stings and simply pressing start on cue meant that each performance would be unique.<\/p>\n

Our experience with Zaireeka was unique as well. We only had 3 CD players so one of the 4 would invariable be omitted. It really is an interesting concept but there is no point in trying to demonstrate it here so I’ll just post a few other items from The Porter Influence.\u00a0<\/em> Unfortunately, I will no doubt have to omit some because they were songs from some of the bands he was in along the way.<\/p>\n

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The Flaming Lips – The W.A.N.D.<\/em>
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