As a Christmas special mrsneff thought it might be interesting to dig something out of the vaults that’s rarely seen the light of day: Renaldo and the Loaf’s one and only live performance. Mrsneff explains: Back in 1980 Renaldo and the Loaf played their one and only live performance. The performance was one of a number staged to promote the release of the sampler of Portsmouth music, South Specific. We approached the performance with some trepidation as it was somewhat out of our comfort zone, and we sought certain assurances before we committed ourselves. Specifically, we wanted adequate time to set up and do a sound check before the performance to ensure that we could monitor our playing adequately. Although the gig was supposed to promote the album we weren’t playing any of our music from the album because we didn’t know how we could reproduce it live. Instead we opted to perform an improvisation using a tape delay system, and the nature of the system makes it essential to hear what you’re playing, ‘mistakes’ tend to return and haunt you. Of course the nature of the tape delay system meant that we had a recording of the performance. We put it on a shelf, forgot about it and got on with other things, like recording Songs for Swinging Larvae. In 2006 Brain gave me a CD with a number of obscure Renaldo and the Loaf pieces on it, including the Bali Hai recording. I thought it might be fun to reinterpret it and set about sampling the recording. This was before I’d started using FLStudio, I just used a simple audio editor to extract and treat the samples (just with some echo and reverb) and put the whole thing together using a free program called Kristal. Everything you hear was played on that night on guitar or prepared guitar or by Brian singing, just not necessarily in that order or at that particular pitch, no extraneous sounds have been added. So there you have it Renaldo and the Loaf Live @ the Bali Hai 1980, not exactly as it was, but as it might have been, a trifle heavy on the reverb perhaps. The artwork is adapted from a picture of Brian and I at a fancy dress party around the same time. Enjoy the recording while you can – on 1 January 2012 it will disappear.
Tracks:
- Live @ the Bali Hai
enjoy Christmass.
