Hi,
As it is all a bit quiet here, I just thought I'd show that there is life in my Prophet, and it has had its first live outings with my solo show, Spectral Streams
In June I was on stage for the first time in six years (!!!) and all on my own for the first time instead of being in a band (and wedged at the back of any small stage with the drummer). This was a warm up gig for the "Dr Sardonicus" festival held last weekend for which I did a three hour set for the "meet and greet" night. I also ended up opening the last day of the festival as a band had to pull out due to illness and I was asked to step in.
Here is the stage setup ... We decided to go for this layout as with a solo keyboard gig it is not an interesting watch in terms of the audience watching an old git sat behind the keyboards. At least this way the audience can see some of what I am doing. And I was thinking of some of the early Tangerine Dream Gigs where the band had their backs to the audience with an array of keyboards and sequencers.
You can see the Prophet at the top of the back stand. Below it are a Novation Summit and an ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe, to the left working down again, you can see my Kronos X 61 and Montage 7, with a Roland FC300 MIDI Foot Controller on the floor
It's taken me six months plus (on and off of course in amongst a crazy work schedule where I have been away a lot) to get the ideas and the setup together.
Normally I have only ever taken the two keyboards on the left out, but as this is meant to be just an occasional thing - two or three times a year - I decided to "go large" on this one.
As well as the keyaboards, you can see my gig rack towards the back between the stands.
All keyboards are in a MIDI STAR configuration with Cantabile software running on the gig PC acting as the router and processor of all MIDI data, and there is lots of layering going on as well, sometimes running multiple instances of Wavestate and Modwave, Falcon, DIVA, PolyKB, etc. . I also MuLabs VST running within Cantabile to give me Albeton type looping but I retain all the power of Cantabile without requiring a change in live host or trying to run the two together.
On to the gig itself, it went pretty well. A few glitches in both the kit and the player(!), but that was the whole idea for doing a warm up gig / test drive, and I played about three hours of music; the longest I have ever been on stage for!
it was interesting being on stage solely on my own. Not sure if it was the solo facet or not having been on stage for six years, but I was more nervous than usual at the start of any gig, but I soon settled down.
It was strange having to do the inter song chat with the audience. That is normally lead singer territory, and all I have ever had to do previously is say the odd "thank you" into a backing vocals mic!
Reactions were pretty good - even had a few people dancing in the faster numbers towards the end. Here are a few quotes from Facebook responses.
From Jim Harwood: The perfect Sunday afternoon at The Cellar Bar, Cardigan, in the company of Derek Cook, and his amazing array of keyboards. It was as close to a Tangerine Dream gig as you can get without them actually being there, close on three hours of beautiful synth music with a wide variety of textures, rhythms and tempos, and all for free!
As always the Cellar Bar had that wonderful atmosphere and was pleasantly full without feeling at all crowded. I was amazed it was still daylight when I left (I'd forgotten it was an afternoon gig!) Time does strange things in the Cellar!
From Geoff Leavold: What a pleasure it was to listen to this hugely talented guy yesterday. A free gig too - he was testing material for later gigs. Many thanks to The Cellar Bar - yet again this venue offers something different. If you're a lover of Vangelis, JM Jarre, Steve Hillage, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwork, Eno or electro music generally, and you missed this gig - don't miss him next time.
I have always loved playing the Cellar Bar. It is a small intimate venue. When I have played there in Echoes, Pure Floyd or Welsh Floyd we always sold the venue out. In these "not many people going out any more" and post Covid days it is struggling a little, but hangs in there. Steve the owner (ever the entrepreneur) has diversified by turning it into a second hand vinyl record store as well, which has reduced the audience capacity quite a bit, but it probably fits the size of crowd going out these days. I think I had about 40 people watching me. So, not quite Wembley arena, or even matching the 500+ we have have in my other bands at larger venues, but I prefer smaller gigs in terms of audience feedback.
And onto the videos. The first is the sound check promo and you can hear Steve, the Cellar Bar owner who I have known since 2006, making his amusing pronouncements. He does the sound check videos to post on the venue's FB page to promote the gig. The second one is a short segment, and the 3rd one is longer, but with some artistic camera video mangling for some reason!
All videos courtesy of the Cellar Bar.
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