Band mates? We don’t need no stinkin band mates
This iPod thing must really be taking off, because big time pop stars are
replacing real live musicians with the milky white players.
Erasure, the 80’s pop duo, has some behind the
scenes rehearsal footage on their website, as they prepare for an upcoming tour. The backup singers seen in the “I
Broke It All In Two” video are real live girls… but the music is coming from an iPod, piped through what looks an
awful lot like an Altec Lansing InMotion
portable audio system.
I will admit I don’t really know anything about Erasure. Because I’m just not hip like that. But according to Disco
Dave, a TUAW reader who sounds like he is far more familiar with the 80’s pop scene than I am, Vince Clarke is a
well-known Mac fan, and has used them to program entire tours in the past.
Barb is the musician amongst us here, perhaps she can ellaborate more on this phenom?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
iMatt said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Erasure had a legendary domed studio that housed Vince Clarke's countless vintage synths.
http://www.erasureinfo.com/features/privateear_05.html
With the latest album, though, the duo discovered soft synths and seem to have abandonded the elaborate hardware for this more modest (!) set-up built around soft synths and a small MIDI keyboard:
http://www.erasureinfo.com/features/diary/diary_07.html
According to Clarke, "Recording this album was all done on my laptop. All of the sounds were generated by software synths and the only auxillary equipment I needed was a Oxygen 8 keyboard and a pair of speakers. I used a mixture of edited preset sounds and also programmed my own patches from a whole myriad of soft synths."
He doesn't say if his laptop is Mac, but based on this studio picture, it sure looks like Erasure was using some app in OS X to compose its latest album.
http://www.erasureinfo.com/features/diary/diary_26.html
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Brad Knowles said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Funny, I thought that all the video available on this website was only in Windows Media and Real formats.
If they were true Mac fans, I would have expected QuickTime MOOV format to be at least one of the formats available, or at least a platform-agnostic format like MPEG.
I'll believe that these guys are Mac fans when I see the evidence.
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Laurie said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Depeche Mode? Now them I remember! At least as much as I can admit to remembering anything that took place in the 80's ;)
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Thevil said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
>Brad, Maybe the webmaster isn't a Machead, but Mr Clarke is.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2001/08/02/erasure/index.php
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marcus said 7:58AM on 8-17-2005
vince clarke is the brains behind every band he has been in. depeche mode would not be where they are today if vince had not gave them the inspiration. yazoo was the best band vince ever formed once again he was the brains behind the music. erasure was also a good band but that was only down to vince. ok all the singers in the above bands are exelent the best has to be yazoo the very strong voice of alison moyet. vince if you ever get to read this do some more work with yazoo bring it back to life even if its just for a few new tunes you know it makes sense mate i before e except after c this line only applies to true yazoo fans kind regards going out to vince from marcus
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barb dybwad said 4:41PM on 10-07-2005
It's actually rather interesting, because Vince Clarke was one of the original members of Depeche Mode, who were one of the first groups to make use of a drum machine in lieu of a live drummer. In a way, this is precisely the same thing, only the iPod is the new drum machine. They do make some nice-looking drum machines these days but I'm sure the iPod is a supreme contributor to stepping up the fashion sense in one's gear rack. :)
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