*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************     CHICK COREA'S ELEKTRIC BAND LIVE    Your favourite AM/FM Editor (me) had the excellent pleasure of witnessing Chick Corea's Elektric Band live in Oslo a few weeks ago. The concert was part of their "Beneath the Mask" world tour, and was a true delight right from the start till the end. Chick Corea's Elektric Band, and most of all Chick himself, is well known for always using the latest in synth technology to colour his incredible talents and playing skills - and it showed. I thought it might interest the AM/FM readers to hear what the future of live stage performance will be like, and what they will need of synth equipment to match Chick Corea. I have been to a lot of concerts, both huge mega-concerts such as Michael Jackson or Pink Floyd's shows, and down to 30-persons-in-the-audience club sessions, but I have never ever ever heard as brilliant live-sound as the one these guys produced. The sound was simply stunning, and it's obvious Chick and his band are leading the way for other bands to follow, and within a few years, hopefully everyone will use the same kind of high quality equipment, and use it with such skill, to present a truly great live sound. The band consisted of Chick Corea (keyboards), Dave Weckl (drums), Frank Gambale (guitar), Jimmy "Fingerlicking" Earl (bass), and Eric Marienthal (sax). Chick himself was the obvious "conductor" up there, but this whole band is so full of excellence that each of the musicians in the band could at any time stand on their own feet and record well respected solo-albums. And most of them also have. (All except Jimmy Earl, if I'm not mistaken). As most of us already know, Chick Corea's Elektric Band are heavily sponsored by Yamaha, so it came as no surprise to us when we saw that Chick's rack consisted mostly of Yamaha stuff. He played on a Rhodes electric piano and a Yamaha SY-99, those were the only two actual keyboards he had - the rest was all rack modules. No, wait. He also had a Yamaha KX-5 "guitar grip" keyboard that he used whenever he felt like walking around on stage instead of standing in one spot playing. In his rack were another SY-99 (rack version), two SY-77's, a Yamaha TX-802, a Mentor MIDI Processor, a Lexicon PCM-70 reverb, Rocktron Noise Gatyes and a Studiomaster 16 x 2 mixer (for Chick's keyboards only). When he used the little KX-5 though, he didn't use the sounds on it - all that came out of it was a MIDI lead going straight into the rack version of the SY-99. Your favourite AM/FM Editor (me) has never been too much of a Yamaha fan, mostly I guess because I didn't find the DX-series too exciting (sure, lots of features but it sounds crap -(sorry)), but times they-are-a-changing, and for me anyway, Yamaha has put the DX-era behind them and come up with some stunning pieces of hardware in the SY-series. And nobody proves it better than Chick Corea - he just uses his equipment so inventively! Why, I'm quite sure Chick, with his playful hands, could make any synth sound great! Yamaha has truly done wise in "hiring" Chick to use their equipment. The SY-99 now comes with a demonstration disk containing a demo song by Chick Corea, custom-made for the SY-99. I've heard it, it's a superb piece, and partly, no mostly, because of this demo-song, it's a rough experience to walk out of the store empty handed because the SY-99 was a wee bit too expensive. :-( Well anyway, to sum it all up: after hearing Chick perform on his Yamaha horns, I can safely recommend an SY-99 to those of you who can afford! For those who know the Elektric Band's music through CD's etc., I can tell you that the material they played was mostly from their latest album "Beneath the Mask", but they also played some older stuff, as well as 4 brand new pieces, which I suppose will show up on their next CD. This new stuff was simply shitkicking, and I just can't wait to get it on CD! Chick dedicated one song to "Tiny little plastic electronic instruments" (The KX-5), and 3 of his new songs to Miles Davies. Chick Corea + Yamaha SY-99 = Magic! Oh, and I shook Chick Corea's hand. :-) [Ed] *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************