Senor Coconut in San Fransico
My nite with Uwe... by Gilly Videla
Friday, Sept. 22nd 2000, 10 p.m - San Francicso, CA - California College of Arts and Crafts 

Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 23:52:07 -0700
To: "mother@hyperreal.org"
From: galaxey@earthlink.net
Subject: My nite with Uwe....

Damn I fear I write all nite long about this (I just talked Raul's ear off, poor guy- sorry, about it) but after so many years of being on the list and so many more waiting to meet the man I guess I should share it.... ok I'll trim it down:

a few highlights for motherlisters: "Ma_hovina mentioned you have to return later this year for more Senor Coconut gigs, true?" - "No, they have been cancelled. Emperor Norton will not be able to finance it. To expensive for them right now"

"I think Chris Miller once told me he is only missing like 5-10 of your releases..."(Uwe's eyes light up)"...now that guy is fanatical" - "yes, I know, I often have to email him to ask him questions about me archive. He knows it better than I and I'm often asked for details when it comes to contracts. I've emailed him on ocassion when I can't get info i need." ***PROPS TO CHRIS MILLER!******

"So, Uwe, come on man, it's just me and you here in this lobby, fess up man, you can be honest with me WHO IS LISA CARBON, come fess up"
-- "You mean to tell me you flew 500 miles just to ask me that question?"
"Ah ha, so it is you"
-- "No comment"
"I know who you Lisa Carbon is"
-- "You do?"
"Yes, she is you!"
-- (silence)

 

"I have seen some of your music being traded on Napster, how do you feel about that. Mr. Tangent mentioned Geez n Gosh on there. Does it bother you, since it's a new release?"
-- "I know Senor Coconut has been on there for while now"
"But does it bother you in any way?"
-- "Not at all, if people wanna to listen to my music with crappy mp3 and it's horrible sound quality, that's fine if they like it to sound that poor"
"So then how is that emusic thing going. I can't imagine too many folx actually going to emusic looking for you music unless they are the typical die hard MOTHER list fan who simply can't find a copy of Flextone. Is it working out in anyway for you?"
-- "...blah blah blah about publishing....They gave me a good sum of cash, they're already 1.5years into it and haven't even recovered 5% of that ammount. They only have 1.5years left to do what they want with it. I got a good deal"

 

"last few days on mother list there's the talk about some mp3 label on the net who does glitch music and they list you as a song on the comp"
-- "I don't know anything about it, I didn't do a song for a glitch mp3 label"
"that's what someone said, they assumed it's possible Snr Coco was sampled, no one was certain what it was, so I thought I'd ask"
-- "I have nothing to do with it"
"We all know 'El baile aleman' and LB took you some time to compose, and RI, how long do you usually work on those?"
--"No more than two weeks."

 

"now you're flying to LA tomorrow morning, what do you plan on doing this weekend. I know Sunday you're going to the Brian Wilson concert, so what will you do on Saturday?"
-- "I'm having dinner with Axl Rose."
"Shut the fuck up"
--"No I'm serious"
"Ummm why?"
--"He likes my music"
"I assume so, but tell me the connection how did you two meet?"
-- "We haven't. A year ago I sold some gear..."
"Yeah I know I tried to buy the Roland SH-101 from you but you were stingy and wouldn't accept my 500bux. I remember that, you prolly sold it for $2000!"
-- "something like that. I sold it to Axl's engineer. When he is formatting hard drives, cleaning up, basically not recording Axl, he's listening to my music. Axl heard him play it one day...." "He told the engineer to tell me if I'm ever in LA he'd like to meet me"
"Yeah, he will offer you a plate of coke when you knock on the door"

"have u done any design outside of the RI artwork?"
-- "I designed one of Cecillia's albums but the label dropped the project all together. I also did the design for Gonzalo Martinez record."
"But nothing else? like a magazine ad or something of the sort?"
-- "No completely different industry"

we talked about a whole lot more (mainly about being married, having kids, being daddies, and whatnot- call it support group or something:), but I was in such an "oh mah gawd i'm sitting with Uwe" feeling that I don't think I was able to really hear him as he was talking to me, I was about to wet my pants......

ok, this is getting long. Hmm... really short: Why Smelly Feet? Before you entered the pink room, you were asked to remove your shoes. (no shoes on the pink foam). My wife is Korean, we also request no shoes, but this was 200 people! That's a lot of feet.....Yuck! So here we sat, 200 people, in a small room, gasping for fresh air, on a pink foam hill facing Uwe. Me, dead center, two inches from the sampler. Call me a groupie or what?

Oh the music, well, it was umm... fuck, just take all best elements of all ther RI releases add the Latin side of Uwe, and blam! there you have it. Perez Prado walks in and plays a little, then Lisa Carbon took over for a few minutes, finally Uwe kicked them both off stage and went to town..... People cheered, whistled, screamed during the performance. Think a mixture of Brown, SIlver Sound, Machine Paisley, with Los Samplers thrown on top in 37mins and that's what we were treated to, FANTASTIC.

like I said, I could go on all nite about the gig, and I don't think I've really described it all too well, but it's too much to tell.

more later (I'm sure), gilly (sorry I REFUSED to take off my shoes)