Picture a vast, deserted, extremely dark gymnasium. It is deserted all of the time because it belongs to an art school, the Rhode Island School of Design, better known as RISD, and the students are determi ned not to be interested in athletics. We had one team sport - the samba.
Picture a small gang of budding artists, wearing costumes generally of an abstract nature and involving splotches of paint and slightly tattered denim pants carrying various bits of equipment - cables, amps and woofers, a really hot turntable...and a vinyl wafer full of music for Halloween.
I believe, though I hope it is only a patch of fanciful semi-memory, that we broke into the gymnasium. Whatever, we weren’t bad kids, just energetic. At any rate, we ended up in the gym, surrounded by the ghosts of antique gym shoes and abandoned socks, on a quite pretty inlaid wood floor(where nobody had been since a civil-defense drill last year) lying primly on the floor while the engineerish guy hooked up all the cables and amps and whatnots and ...turned off the lights.
Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens flapped on its musical broomstick through the dark, from wall to wall, zooming and dipping and in general making swooping witchy noises through the immense dark of the empty building. It was really extremely dark and the darkness grew larger and more populated by the minute as the music claimed it.
It was splendid, couldn’t have been better. I believe we played a rumbling Bach fugue or two, the Night on Bald Mountain, possibly the Sorcerer's Apprentice and a few sambas and other scary music but Sans Saen took the prize for perfect Halloween music.
I suggest you find yourself a large empty space, some big muscular speakers with the right stuff, serious woofers and tweeters and things and have at it! Happy Halloween!
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