The Concerts

1982 Mu Promotional Concert

Played to a small audience (1) in Littlehampton using a Piano/Metronome backing tape and a menagerie of electronic toys. The concert did not cause much of a stir. "Recorded concerts" which involved the live and ceremonious playback of the Mu album were far more popular at the time.

1982 "Half live" Recorded Concert

Held in Littlehampton with free food and drink to lure the reluctant audience. Used drum tape, 16 rpm German record and electronic toys. Featured embryonic material from the 1983 release "Doped" (some of which was dropped before the album was released). Tracks included "Doped", "Virtues and Vices" (inspired by a Shakespeare sonnet), "Chinatown" (dropped) and "So I started to row" (inspired by an "Uncle Windbag" story in a Beano annual and later dropped).

1983 Public Viewpoint Concert

Held in Littlehampton with a questionnaire to gauge audience response. Used "Monitor and Disperse system" that allowed the combination of inputs from electronic toys, record players and radios with selectable attenuation on each channel via a "passive" resistor pack. Control was via a routing switcher and a keypad with visual feedback available from power and voltage meters. Also used a primitive synthesizer (CT82 Noise Generator) and home-made 12v drum machine that also included a pressure pad input device (made from rubber carpet tiles and a plastic picnic table). Acoustic drumming was still on a pre-recorded backing tape. Audience reaction was largely negative but the questionnaires showed the drumming as being more popular relative to other areas of the performance.

1984 Plans for the First "Mass Audience" Cake Concert

In April '84, Commodore 64 boffin Kieren Spooner was enlisted to work towards a totally sequenced live concert at "The Littlehampton School" in which "The Jungle" would be performed using only C64s and Electric Guitar for instrumentation. The idea was to produce a juxtaposed work of "music theatre" with Webb, Spooner and Greenstreet at C64's - disguised as vicars. The Webb and Spooner machines would be linked up running percussion, bass and FX sequences with the two operators merely loading programs and pressing go. The Greenstreet machine would be running a program that enabled the operator to play tri-phonic music via the QWERTY keyboard. Meanwhile Laviers - not disguised - would play the electric guitar and sing when appropriate. Because of technical problems with synchronising the C64s and wiring-up the machines - which had an unacceptable signal to noise ratio - to a PA system the project was eventually ditched. Webb and Laviers went on to perform several "mass audience" concerts with Laviers' solo project "Resistance 1933".

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