The Orb Live Review

Death Before Disco | The Orb Live Review | State Theatre, St. Petersburg, FL | Saturday, September 5, 2015

by • November 5, 2015

It’s perhaps a hyperbolic stretch to call the 90s an age of innocent exploration, but if you were at The Orb’s show at the State Theatre in St. Petersburg, you got a reminding dose of the days when computer generated electronic music brought psychedelic and dance music together to help create a new culture called rave. The rave scene was to the 90s something like what the hippy scene was to the 60s. At its beginnings, the rave scene was the jubilant, innocent bouncing together of bodies, finding new ways to move to layers of sequenced beats, synth melodies, samples and bass lines that combined to make a poly-rhythmic sound unheard before computers had the ability to separately sequence and combine these elements.

The Orb was at the forefront of this musical evolution. Sure, there had been bands before them that made innovative use of the sequencer (ie. Joy Division and New Order), but The Orb was among the first to deeply delve into the exponential jumps that new personal computing powers could avail to musical creation. And unlike Joy Division, The Orb’s vibe was upbeat and happily psychedelic. Their music sounds not only mind expanding, but also dares you to even try not to dance to it. Dance and bounce is what The Orb’s faithful did when they turned out to see them.

The inability to not dance was perhaps what began to take the rave scene from its happy, innocent beginnings, to its downfall into the abuse of MDMA (AKA Ecstasy; forefather of today’s “Molly”) and other nootropics. Ravers just had to be able to dance to every beat of the all-night and often “illegal” dance parties, which came to be known as “raves.” Ecstasy, amphetamines, marijuana, LSD and other psychedelics gave ravers the ability to dance to every beat at these marathon dance parties.

I personally saw things turn from happy to tragic while attending raves in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area in the 90s and early 21st century. I saw people go down to heat exhaustion and mental implosion when mind and body could no longer keep up with the computer’s ability to play all night. I also saw people get arrested, or at least have their pills, weed and glow sticks confiscated by police, whom decided such scenes had to be brought under their control to answer to a new surge of newsworthy parents wondering what the heck was happening to their kids. What was happening was the new power of this music and the same old parental inability to be involved enough with their own kids to teach them enough about life to keep them out of trouble.

Being that raves were most often pop-up, one night parties at warehouses and empty fields where other kids, DJs, visual artists and promoters were industrious enough to set up an ear-drum crunching sound system and lights, they were also the place where underage kids could go to get their first taste of drink, drugs and a whole new musical dance experience. All you had to do was be smart enough to keep yourself out of trouble. As parents wondered about what was happening to their kids, there were kids like me complaining about how their dumb kids were ruining my good time. That struggle continues to this day.

So, as rave became the new “devil’s music” and was infiltrated by more idiots and cops, the parties went further underground and local promoters and artists seemed to lose their desire to want to deal with the trouble. The music continued to evolve and shift into other sounds and the rave scene deteriorated into the lamer, safer, easier-for-normal-people-to-dance-to genres of techno and EBM that this writer calls the disco of this day — I also say death before disco.

There was a happy absence of police and glow sticks at The Orb’s show. What we did get was all the happy-bounce of their music and some of their projected visuals. The show wasn’t as visually stimulating as their performances in the 90s when they their record label had the means to bring a bigger projection show. I swear that even if you weren’t on any number of substances when you saw The Orb in the 90s, the sight and sound of their show alone got you super high — perhaps even seeing things that maybe were not there … Or were they? The musical synesthesia I’m convinced this kind of music has the power to create was at least partly on display as I looked over the crowd. People were simply getting lost in the layered grooves and visuals. We all took the music-space-time trip to the rave scene.

For full disclosure and to avoid flaming comments, some rave purists, myself included, will say the rave scene truly began with live bands like Stone Roses, Charlatans UK, Happy Mondays, Blur, the Factory Records crew and the DJ’s who spun their gigs. If you want to check more into the roots of rave see the flick, 24 Hour Party People.

To sum up: parents, teach your children they don’t need “Molly.” They just need better music and some common sense. Thanks to No Clubs productions for continuing to bring great music to Tampa/St. Pete and showsigoto.com for the good time.

The Orb Live Review by Eric Haase, edited by Matthew Weller.

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