Naked EYES
I just saw NAKED EYES at the Largo Cultural Center. It was awesome. You know, they sang "There's Always Somethin There to Remind Me" and "Promises Promises" and were big in the 80s. All of thier songs at the performance were well crafted in songwriting and fun to listen to, only 3 out of an hour and a half performance felt weak to me. And theres nothing like KILLER SYNTH BASS!!
Since they are Synthpop I was dying to check out thier setup. I was hoping they would have a bunch of original analog synths like from thier original days. But suprisingly they were using just a Roland JP-8000 (from circa '99, made to emulate the older sounds) and the other guy was using some unlabeled Roland, probably a controller. The first synth guy had a laptop with his Jp-8000 and I could tell he had the songs sequenced in a seqencer and was using MIDI to control the Roland and was running everything through a POD 2.0, probably for effects.
The variety of sounds they got just from those 2 boards was so amazing. It definetly wasn't the same as the original recordings, but was pretty close. Thier guitar riffs were stellar too, and relied heavily upon the whammy bar and that awesome-delay effect. The drummer was great, taking full advantage of syncopating the driving beats like few other bands do, similar to INXS or SIMPLE MINDS.
It was a shame that it was in a small place and not that many people showed up. Mabe it's becuase around here there's a lot of older folks. I was very suprised. But there was more sound per person, IT WAS AWESOME.
Since they are Synthpop I was dying to check out thier setup. I was hoping they would have a bunch of original analog synths like from thier original days. But suprisingly they were using just a Roland JP-8000 (from circa '99, made to emulate the older sounds) and the other guy was using some unlabeled Roland, probably a controller. The first synth guy had a laptop with his Jp-8000 and I could tell he had the songs sequenced in a seqencer and was using MIDI to control the Roland and was running everything through a POD 2.0, probably for effects.
The variety of sounds they got just from those 2 boards was so amazing. It definetly wasn't the same as the original recordings, but was pretty close. Thier guitar riffs were stellar too, and relied heavily upon the whammy bar and that awesome-delay effect. The drummer was great, taking full advantage of syncopating the driving beats like few other bands do, similar to INXS or SIMPLE MINDS.
It was a shame that it was in a small place and not that many people showed up. Mabe it's becuase around here there's a lot of older folks. I was very suprised. But there was more sound per person, IT WAS AWESOME.