Meat Beat Manifesto
Saturday 11/21/98, Deep Ellum Live Dallas, TX
review written - 11/24/98I showed up near the beginning of Wink's set. The first thing that struck me, as I turned the corner of the wall at the back of Deep Ellum Live, was "wow ... there's a shitload of people here!" The SubSan show, also at Deep Ellum Live, had a crowd probably 1/4 of that of this show. I assume that Josh Wink was what dragged everyone and their cousin out for this one (or has MBM become much more popular over the past few years thanks to the Nothing connection? Hmmm ...), was everyone else's shows as packed as this one, or moreso than the SubSan show? Oh well, thankfully darn near everyone stayed for Meat Beat and walked away happy ...
The fascination with Wink by many is completely beyond me. I endured an eternity (an hour?) of his really bland, dance floor fodder. The best part of Wink's set was the video footage of his day in Dallas, which included visiting a modern art museum, being chased around by a curious squirrel which at one point climbed up on the camera and pead on it, visiting a park and driving around Deep Ellum at night just prior to the show. The video quality was great too, you could easily see both of the screens from any angle (except of course when the geniuses would turn the smoke machines on). When there was a danceable beat, the crowd was into Wink's set quite a bit ...
Meat Beat played from around 11:30 to 1:00am. Same set as before, basically a best of mix (Hello Teenage America, Acid Again, Prime Audio Soup, Helter Skelter, I Am Electro, God O.D., Edge of No Control, Radio Bablyon, She's Unreal, It's the Music, etc) with 3 or 4 jams/songs that I didn't recognize. The synced up videos were a real nice bonus, especially on the extended mega jam of "Helter Skelter" with the footage of Spock and Alex from "A Clockwork Orange". It was overwhelmingly loud but still came through nice and clear. As usual, Jack had the double mike setup (one occasionally vocoded), his drum pad (Roland Octopad?) and a whole mess of synths/samplers/effects/modulars. Mark had a few synths and samplers, did some vocoded vocals himself and I was surprised to see him play bass guitar on several songs. Lynn played drums/percussion in the back which made him a little bit hard to see. Banksy did his funky dance thang, shot the crowd with a big ass water gun, and stage dived ... the last one at the end of the show the crowd carried him overhead a good 75 ft to the back, almost all the way to the mixing board ...
For about the first 1/4 of the show, I had the feeling that I was listening to a lot of sequences and Lynn wasn't adding all
that much to the beat (even though *I know* that isn't the case). There was something about the mix, or the fact that I was further away from the stage this time around, that gave me the impression that Lynn wasn't the driving force behind the beats (like he most definitely was at the SubSan show). Well, I was very wrong, because for 1 of the encores Jack introduced the band and yelled out for Lynn to fire up a jam and that he did! He was the only 1 playing for several minutes and it became glaringly obvious just how much of the beat was coming from his kit. As the show progressed, I noticed the relation between what Mark and Jack were doing on their respective synths and drum pads with what I was hearing ... it was really obvious on the jams (a lot less sequencing there). I really can't believe how much sound comes from just these 3 guys and their machines ...They all seemed to be having a lot of fun, Jack said a few times "wow ... you're fucking awesome Dallas!" and he got a good laugh when Mark yelled out something to the effect of "Mr. Jack Dangers on scratches!" during the final jam. One of the jams in particular was extra groovy, Jack introduced it by saying "old school!" ...
I didn't meet up with anyone, unfortunately, 'cause we never really worked out a solid plan. I'm not one for self torture, so I didn't stick around for more Josh Wink after Meat Beat, and I wasn't interested in stalking the band (nothing to say but "thanks") ...
My fav parts: the jams/unknown songs, God O.D., Edge of No Control, Helter Skelter. It was all very, very good though ...
Merchandise:
3 or 4 $25 shirts (no thank you!)
AS+V cd
Meat Beat stickers $2
Pistel "Millenium" 12" $8Bottomline:
$13.50 for the ticket, $8 for the 12" and 12 hours on the road ... it was most definitely worth it!
Meat Beat Manifesto at Brainwashed