When Becky turns me on to a concert with robots, I don't know what to expect. Being somewhat of a fan of electronic music, I do not hesitate for a single second. Later, I also wonder if I am going to find "it" there, what Kerouac was looking for in jazz musicians... They would capture "it" by getting a rhythm going until they just about lose their breath. And then they would keep it up until reaching ecstacy, bliss... The term "beat" has its roots in the jargon of jazz, just like the terms "cool": neither hot nor cold; "hip": side of the pelvis; "swing": movement back and forth while suspended... The rhythm of Kerouac's writing also leads to jazz in the form of 'spontaneous prose', which is indeed 'experimental writing'. The 'cut up' technique (an apparently unstructured accumulation of writing fragments), brought to its ultimate in the Bourroughs novel "Naked Lunch", had a huge reciprocal effect on rock music.
As for the robots, I think that they will still have a ways to go to capture the celebrated "it".... Even though, to me, it is found in electronic music, like House or Techno music, but that's another story... This concert turns out to be a bit too experimental for my taste, but I am anyhow impressive because of the performance by J.G. Thirlwell and his string quartet.
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