The Record Crate by Alex V. Cook – Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana, Jason Isbell, R.E.M., Mike Watt

A formative event of my musical awakening was in 1989 or so, watching LSU Music professor Stephen Beck perform one of Mario Davidovsky’s Synchonisms for piano with electronic tape accompaniment. That 1970 piece (for which the composer won the ’71 Pulitzer Prize) is a sprightly interplay between man and machine, alternately dense and curious, man engaging the information age that he could hardly know was coming around the bend. Just now, minutes before writing this, I witnessed a performance by Beck’s Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana at LSU’s venerable Free Speech Alley. More…