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Revelatory and, in Rundgren's solo concerts, running amuck. Perched on a small platform beneath 24 blinking video monitors, he sings and "plays" his Apple Powerbook 170 laptop computer, a synthesizer and occasionally even a guitar. Audience members can sing along or swat drum pads and see their images recorded and played back at them, mixed, enhanced and amplified in a potentially infinite variety of ways by Rundgren. There is no set list or running order, no lighting or sound technician; Rundgren, a New Age Wizard of Oz, does it all.
And for Gabriel there's nothing to lose but fustian notions of who does what in music. "Interactive rock challenges the old roles of artist and audience," he says. "No longer do you have to supply a linear form with a beginning and an end and a singular journey through it. Instead you create an environment, a kind of forest, where people have the option to follow your path through it, or they can plan their own route -- they can see the world you provided as a collage kit. All the barriers that separated education from entertainment and communication are being eroded."
The four-time Grammy winner insists that rock fans need not fret about being deprived of old auditory pleasures. "There will be times when you just want to listen to music as a one-sense operation," he says, "and there will be other times when you want to sit down and get your hands dirty and play with it." Nor does Gabriel suffer from the traditional artist's skepticism, even fear, of technology's power tools. "I'm a great believer that technology has to go through two waves," he declares. "The first wave can dehumanize, but the second wave, if the response and feedback mechanisms are in place, can be to superhumanize. So rather than contain and isolate and alienate us, technology can also expand and challenge and open us. And that's empowering."
Before the rhetoric gets too elevated -- before the government is asked to grant tax-exempt status to the First Church of Interactive Rock -- let's pause and ask what it means for the music market. Even there the predictions are rosy. "We may be a little bit ahead of the curve," says Brian Fargo, the president of Interplay Productions, whose MacPlay software division distributes Gabriel's Xplora 1. "But I think this will be a brand-new market segment that didn't even exist before. It's no longer a question of whether this format will take off but when. I'd say within a year or so it will be a CD-ROM world."
Maybe. Desktop rock could be this year's GameBoy -- or next year's hula hoop. As Gabriel warns, "In the end it's only as good as the content." But the form is in its infant stage, and all babies look cute. The best thing is that right now, it's all promise, no threat. So keep your fingers crossed -- until you pick up that mouse. Interactive rock could be on a roll.