The Premier Guide to Business, Entertainment and Recreation in Santa Cruz County.
Opened in 1949, The Rio Theatre on Soquel Avenue stands as a cultural lighthouse. With architecture to match its name, the Rio has an old-America feel that creates the illusion of being transported to a swing club on par with the famed Cotton Club of post-war Los Angeles. Theaters of this caliber are a dying breed, and Santa Cruz is lucky to have two of them, the Del Mar and the Rio, as reminders of a time when entertainment was a full-blown night on the town.
The days of USO clubs and swing dances may have past, but the Rio has been host to a wide range of events in nearly every area of the arts since then. This year alone brought the Vagina Monologues from New York, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans, and Santa Cruz's own stand-up comedy-fest, Waves of Laughter. In addition to stage shows and concerts, the Rio is also a movie theater with seating for 700 people as they take in a number of indie and classic films.
The Second Santa Cruz Bass Looping Festival is a perfect example of the varied events that the Rio attracts. The brainchild of Rick Walker, the Looping Festival began last year as part of his interest in looping technology. The use of computers in recording has expanded music in unparalleled directions and such performances are the next logical step. The essence of looping is the ability to play a note of music live, capture that note on a computer, and immediately repeat it in time to a beat set by the performer. While the first sound is repeating, the musician can play another note to be recorded and "looped." The repetition and rhythm created by several layers of loops is at the core of looping performances. Rick Walker, a lifetime musician and looping fanatic, has brought looping to the forefront of musical experimentation in Northern California, and though looping is still thought of as experimental music, Walker's bass looping tour will break the technology free of such labels.
In addition to the obscurity of looping, the general populace would be further confused at the spotlight on bass guitar. While looping technology can be used with any noise or any instrument, the bass guitar's reputation for being in the musical background clouds its versatility. Focusing on bass guitar, the festival brought in bassists of such musical expertise that their compositions and improvisations left the audience in awe.
Joining Rick Walker on stage were three lifetime masters of the bass guitar: Steve Lawson, Michael Manring and Max Valentino. One by one, in successive solo performances, they took the mystery of the bass from the back of the stage and traveled in three separate musical directions. Max Valentino opened the show with his simultaneous precision in both melody and chord sequences. Switching between looped pieces and straight-ahead compositions, he led the bass through an entire range of emotions with an especially beautiful piece written for his newborn daughter.
Steve Lawson's bass playing took off down a different path, preferring to send his otherworldly bass noises through electronic filters before capturing them in loops. He improvised both with the bass and the timing to create loops that included as many as ten distinct sounds. Creating each successive noise while he played, the overall effect brought the audience into the control room of a spaceship in this musical science fiction movie.
The bass was taken even further away from its traditional role when Michael Manring took the stage. Favoring a dirty sound, he churned out earth shattering guitar crunches that ranged from stripped-down blues to pumped-up heavy metal. Just to top himself, he layered these melodies over a funky 1970's beat. It was Parliament-Funkadelic smashed together with Metallica.
While bass was the highlighted instrument, Rick Walker rounded out the show with a demonstration of the power of looping technology. Armed with childlike experimentation and twenty-five years in music, he used everything but the kitchen sink to create a barrage of loops. He was surrounded by a drum set, a table with different sized plastic drinking glasses, and a floor cluttered with various noisemakers, all for the sole purpose of noise looping. The result was a trip through Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and all its strange bells and whistles.
The Bass Looping Festival was more akin to an art form than a traditional concert. Even so, Rick Walker returned to an even larger audience this year than at the previous looping festival held at the Rio last year, and the audience's applause gave him every indication of their intended return for future events. Let's hope that next year's festival becomes an established Santa Cruz tradition and that it too is held at the Rio again.
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