Simeon Coxe III as the Silver Apples, live at The Joshua Light Show Fest, May 18, 2010
In contrast to the younger, hip-looking crowd at the night’s previous Woods/MV EE show, the audience for the Oneida/Silver Apples bill was a bit older, with the air of serious-minded music fans. Due in large part to Mr. Silver Apples himself (Simeon Coxe), the theater was sold out for the evening. Oneida took the stage to expectant applause from the audience as wunderkind drummer Kid Millions sat behind his kit and kicked off his signature percussive assault in rare form. Drawing heavily on their single-track monster Preteen Weaponry from 2008 — while leaving plenty of room for improvised digressions and the organized chaos that defines their sound — the five-piece group were complemented by a light show that felt more frantic than the previous night’s. The strobe effect was generously deployed, and Oneida — minus regular member Bobby Matador, but with the rare addition of founding former member Papa Crazee — didn’t hesitate to respond by laying down a weighty wall of sound, complimented by a droning rhythm section.
The set proceeded through a series of distinct movements, with the light show responding to each shift in tone. First up was a hellish underworld, with cascading sheets of feedback and Millions’ propulsive drumming setting the scene as the screen flickered with dark reds and oranges. Gradually, Oneida ascended to an earthier plane, settling into a more brooding, downbeat mode as the harsh colors gave way to a lush green. Instead of cascading in all directions, the jam became more focused, steadily gaining momentum. Oneida’s career-long engagement with the possibilities of repetition in its various guises took center stage as loops of feedback ebbed and flowed, stretching and contracting time. Audience members’ heads bobbed in unison as the band locked into a psychic groove of monumental proportions.
Oneida, Live at The Joshua Light Show Fest, May 18, 2010
After ascending from the depths of the underworld to a lush forest landscape, it was time to leave earth altogether. Appropriately, the light show transformed to the blue of a brilliant sky, a strobing white circle dead center. Oneida provided the soundtrack to breaking free from gravity’s constraints, the light effects perfectly complementing the group’s eruptions of feedback, virtuosic percussion, and locked-in grooving. Seemingly over before it even started, Oneida ended their set with a confident denouement and were rewarded with a roar from the audience. Leaving their gear on stage, they shuffled off quickly.
After a brief intermission, Simeon Coxe III — the last remaining Silver Apple — appeared on stage to much audience fanfare. He tested out his signature primitive synthesizer/oscillator, and loaded up some 3.5” floppy disks. Since breaking his neck in a terrible accident while on tour in 1999, Simeon has been unable to play with as much movement as before, but this has resulted in a more direct performance style. Simeon set the mood immediately, opening with “Dust” from Silver Apples’ eponymous 1967 debut. The light projections showed more restraint than in Oneida’s sensory overload set, with wisps of red liquid percolating overhead as Simeon invoked an otherworldly atmosphere, using only his voice and his primitive synthesizer set-up.
Simeon Coxe III
As the set continued, Simeon began delivering older tracks like “Misty Mountain” and “A Pox on You,” and the light show’s sophistication increased. A young woman appeared wielding a video camera to transmit images of Simeon wrangling his equipment in real time to the screen behind. Instead of the typical arena rock tactic of displaying a blown up image of a performer onscreen, however, the light show took a more creative approach: although Simeon was filmed throughout the performance, the image was only intermittently displayed, flickering in and out, integrating distorting video effects into the constantly shifting elements of the traditional light show. The effect kept the performance visually dynamic, and avoided a static, traditional stage setup.
When Silver Apples’ first two recordings were rediscovered in the 1990s, their music came as a revelation — both to ’60s pop/rock excavators and students of Krautrock and early electronic music. What Simeon and late drummer Danny Taylor achieved was something out of time that split the difference between early electronic music and an off-kilter pop rock sensibility. Simeon’s current live performance approach is more spartan and direct than those early records. Consisting solely of Simeon’s inimitable vocals and offhand manipulations of vintage electronic sounds — via his proprietary oscillator — he achieves what might be called “electro blues.” His occasionally spoken or shouted vocals are backed up by synth loops and ambient noise that unspool into infinity. Throw in a bit more dissonance, and replace Simeon with a fresh-faced urban artist, and Silver Apples could be mistaken for any number of solo operators from the Not Not Fun/Olde English Spelling Bee axis of American primitives and sonic manipulators.
Silver Apples with Oneida
Simeon concluded the set proper with “I Don’t Care What The People Say” – a statement of purpose from The Garden, the group’s long-lost third LP; here, Simeon’s manic vocals and increasingly frantic instrumentation built to a fever pitch, the light show exploding behind him. The track ended abruptly, and Simeon left the stage to thundering applause. The house lights still turned down and the applause showing no signs of abating, he returned to the stage with Oneida drummer Kid Millions, eliciting a roar from the audience. Simeon deadpanned, “You asked for it,” and began playing “Oscillations” (according to Simeon, the first song he ever wrote) as Millions launched into a percussive assault. They were quickly joined by the rest of Oneida, turning the song into a roaring free-form jam that merged the former group’s repetition-obsessed aesthetic with Simeon’s penchant for synth manipulation. It was an exhilarating collaboration that capped a night of profound musical and artistic collaboration.
During the two nights I was fortunate enough to attend, the Joshua Light Show Fest veered away from any hackneyed notion of psychedelic revival or hippy-dippy pandering. Instead, the acts ran the gamut of psychedelic forms, from MV EE’s open-ended interpretation of American folk and blues to Woods’ singularly twisted bedroom pop sensibility, from Oneida’s impenetrably heavy excursions into feedback to Silver Apples’ ragged electronic maneuvers. The take-home message of the Joshua Light Festival wasn’t that psychedelic music has returned in any obvious fashion, but that the inspiration of the original psych groups of the early 1960s has persisted in the consciousness of a diversity of musicians — subsequently spilling out in a startling variety of permutations.
Words: Max Burke
All Photos: Lori Baily, via Brooklyn Vegan
Tags: Oneida, Silver Apples, Simeon Coxe III, The Joshua Light Show