MUSIC MISCELLANEOUS

A couple weeks ago, I went to an Ulrich Schnauss concert. Who, you might ask, is this Ulrich Schnauss? Exactly. That’s what I wanted to know.

A friend of mine really likes his music. I heard him play it once in his car. Let’s call it contemporary electronic. S’okay. I paid twelve dollars and waited in line for the doors to swing wide at 10 PM. The opening band was one middle-aged pot-bellied drummer and one tall skinny guy with a long hoary ponytail. He looked exactly like the kind of guy whose day job is selling valerian root in bulk and netti pots at the local homeopathy store. Let’s call their stuff eighties space music.

Actually no, let’s just call it bad.

After striking the drum set and various antique synthesizer boxes, I was starting to get excited about seeing Ulrich. But instead, we were made to endure another band; some horrible punk kids whose sole aim was to make our collective ears bleed.

Finally, the boys packed up their kitsch. It’s almost one o’clock in the a.m. when Ulrich takes to the stage. He’s a smallish, odd looking man but that does not stop The Uber Fans from yelling, “Schhnaauusss!! Schhhnnnnaaaauuussssss!” You can kind of see their point of view, though. It's a fun name to say.

In any case, he situates himself at a card table on stage. His instruments are a compact laptop computer, a tiny console with about nine knobs, and an itty bitty Casio keyboard. He starts to create sounds with said instruments, and I like it, it’s good, but his stage presence is kind of funny.

Here’s the artist clicking his mouse…
Now here he is tweaking dials…
God, he’s really good at tweaking those dials…
Now he’s back to clicking the mouse…
Hm. Is he just making bets on e-bay…
Or maybe he’s playing minesweeper…