SoundCheck Live – Take 99
Synth Pop 2!
Lucky Strike Live, Hollywood, CA – Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
Recap/Pics: Will
Way back in time before The Blip… wait..sorry that was the Avengers. I mean before The Snap.. shit.. Avengers again. Ok, before the world shut down in 2020, the previous April of 2019, for the 3rd Anniversary of SoundCheck Live, Steve Ferlazzo (literally) orchestrated a show centered around the “Evolution of Synth Pop”. The setlist included songs from acts like OMD, Eurythmics, Tears For Fears, Scritti Politti, New Order and numerous others acts that utilize the keys as their primary instrument.
Here’s what I wrote at the time:
“6 months in the making, the April Edition of this Steve Ferlazzo Production saw the strings stripped back in lieu of the keys. The drum kit was electronic, the guitars were few and sparse and were placed in their rightful place…at the back of the stage behind the fortress of electronica.”
All that still stands for this show that had now been over FOUR years in the making. Because before the pandemic hit, Synth Pop Part II was already being planned. The derail in time only allowed more opportunity for Steve to focus on every minute detail of every song. But he can tell you himself…
“It’s gonna be a technical feat to pull this off with performers swapping out almost every song. I feel that I’ve tried to set up every performer to succeed with incredibly detailed dropbox folders for every player for every song in the show. Arrangement mixes, isolated stems for every one’s parts, including vocals and bgv’s, Screenshots of every sound that each player would be playing and the ranges so that when they get onstage it hopefully won’t seem foreign. We diligently produced replayed versions of every song in the show with all original synth and drum machine programming …”
Mission Accomplished. The evening turned out to be an electronic music lovers dream.
SCL 99 Resident Band:
Chris Reeve, Steve Ferlazzo, Mitchell Sigman, Sven Martin, Derek Frank, Carl Restivo, Annette Frank
SCL 99 Performers:
ADAM PERI LELE ROSE ALEXANDER GONZALES MARK SCHULMAN
ANGELA MICHAEL MATT RUBANO ANNETTE FRANK MATTHEW JORDAN
AVIV COHEN MICHEL BRADFORD BRENDAN BUCKLEY MIKE HILL
CAMERON HURLEY MITCH SIGMAN CARL RESTIVO MUTT FULLER
CHRIS ALLIS NATE MORTON CHRIS OLIVAS SEAN BEAVAN
CHRIS REEVE JULIETTE BEAVAN DAN ROTHCHILD
DAN SPRIEWALD STEVE DAWSON DEREK FRANK STU BROOKS
DRE DiMURA SVEN MARTIN EVA GARDNER VICTOR BRODÉN
FREDDIE MORALES VICTORIA THEODORE GUSSIE MILLER WOODY MANKOWSKI
J.J. BLAIR YOLANDA THOMAS JAKE HAYDEN JIM McGORMAN
JIMMY KEEGAN JUDE CROSSEN JULES QUAAS STEVE FERLAZZO
Your Host: Izzy Presley
Funny thing when you have a stage stacked from left to right and front to back with keyboards…a lot of performers (you guitar people!) get blocked out and there are a bunch of people staring down at black & white keys, iPads & pretty lit up buttons.
For this month, not every picture will correlate to every song. (It’s pretty close) But every artist who performed is accounted for…
ACT I:
RADIOACTIVITY – Kraftwerk
HOLD ME NOW – Thompson Twins
SOMETHING ABOUT YOU – Level 42
TAKE ON ME – a-ha
IT’S MY LIFE – Talk Talk
TOO SHY – Kajagoogoo
WE CLOSE OUR EYES – Go West
WHAT IS LOVE? – Howard Jones
EVERYTHING SHE WANTS – Wham
EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE – Tears For Fears
ACT II:
HIGH ROLLER – The Crystal Method
MIDNIGHT CITY – M83
IT’S A SIN – Pet Shop Boys
NO MORE WORDS – Berlin
RELAX – Frankie Goes To Hollywood
PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE – Depeche Mode
POLICY OF TRUTH – Depeche Mode
WALKING ON A DREAM – Empire Of The Sun
BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE – New Order
A LITTLE RESPECT – Erasure
ONLY YOU – Yazoo
OBSESSION – Animotion
THAT’S GOOD – Devo
YOU SPIN ME ROUND – Dead Or Alive
ACT III:
KIDS – MGMT
DER KOMMISSAR – After The Fire
EUROPA – Thomas Dolby
POP MUZIK – M
MAJOR TOM – Peter Schilling
SPACEAGE LOVESONG – Flock Of Seagulls
WOULDN’T IT BE GOOD – Nick Kershaw
LOVE MY WAY – The Psychedelic Furs
ENOLA GAY – OMD
99 RED BALLOONS – NENA
Special Thanks:
Paul David Hager – Front Of House Mixer
Sean Weitzmann & Co-Sponsor Arturia
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Kim Ferlazzo – Backstage Manager
Tony Crauss – Stage Manager
Terry Goldberg – Monitors
Nate Dawson – Guitar Tech
Christian Hogan – Drum Tech
Behind the Scenes:
Related Links:
SoundCheck Live
