The Amnesia Quartet loosely formed in about 1993-1994 as the 'house band' for a local Phoenix Arizona underground bookstore and performance space run by Peter Ragan called Metropophobobia (AKA 'the Bobia' for short) and continued playing once a week until its closing in Dec. 1998. (It has since been reopened and continues to this day to function as 'Modified Arts'). Many international experimental musicians played at the Bobia and Peter was known to provide one of the better sound systems as well as live mixing for this type of music.
AQ (Amnesia Quartet) was begun just as an excuse for Peter and myself to play improvised electro-acoustic music. Over time a wide variety of local musicians came and went as well as one off jams with out of town performers. We had no particular goal except to play. Since we did this for 2 hours once a week we didn't care if it sucked or not. One half hour might be little more than creepy crap, another might not. We also rarely had more than a hand full of people in the audience, most often just the local homeless and mentally ill looking for a place they could hang out at without being immediately escorted out the door. None the less we always played as if there were large crowds waiting for that next moment of magic when out of the chaos something greater than its parts formed mysteriously in the air between us.
After several years we settled into a stable lineup. Joe Willie Smith on horns and percussion, Alan Jones on woodwinds, Peter Ragan percussion and live loops, David Oliphant on live sampling, mixing, misc do dads... We recorded most every nights performance. After the Bobia's closing Peter and myself put together 2 CD mixes the first of which is included here for free download
Of all the musical 'group' actions I was part of this was by far the most satisfying and enjoyable group of people I had the good fortune to play with. We often half joked that we basically played only one very long song. If you figure that we played about 200 times, plus or minus.., 2 hours each night, we really played one 400 hour long 'song' :)
All Content, images, text, mp3's, copyright 2004 W. David Oliphant
