Two seconds after Kurtz jacked into the system, they could hear him clear across the new cyberpark at Warwick Uni PLC. The five virtual campuses had come on-line three days ago and this was the second test-run. Kurtz was offering the usual melange of cybertek, interspersed with sassy dialogue from Pulp Fiction XX, and an ancient Blade Runner CD he had liberated from the campus audio museum, earlier in the day.
Since the second revival of jungle tekno, his show had gone from strength to strength, and participants were flooding the net with praise for the show. SonyEMI had recently improved the jock simstims, and the quality of sound on the matrix had improved beyond recognition. Kurtz touched the soft node behind his ear and the volume increased by 20 dB: one or two hitchers could be heard complaining, but Kurtz ignored them: they shouldn't be on that part of the net without W.U. PLC clearance - the stewards will soon fix them.
Half an hour into the show, Kurtz received a MatInt, telling him that Orbital were preparing to download their classic farewell gig on the ethernet and he switched over in the hope of catching the last few bytes. He nearly lost it on the bridge and half a million studes were almost vapourized in an aural black hole, before Orbital finally kicked in and the familiar sounds of Kein Trink Wasser filled their heads. Ever since the jock simstims killed the radio, there was a constant fear that someone would disappear down one of those holes, but so far Kurtz had only skirted the edges.
After Orbital had wound down, Kurtz threw in one or two of his own compositions, punctuated by half-remembered dialogue from Total Recall, fed into the net by fibre optics connecting his memory circuits to the jock simstim. He felt exhausted after this little trick: the optics were ancient, and it felt as though he left a few neurons in the matrix, every time he jacked out. The last fifteen minutes of the two-hour session was filled with ads from the Addey Corp., the only corporation with enough good taste (or should that be spare credits?) to sponsor Kurtz's cybertek fixes. The jock relaxed as the matrix throbbed with the sound of the Addey Corp's latest publicity stunt: an attempt to sell tickets to a gig on Ursa Minor by the newly reformed Shed 77, by offering a free trip to Biosphere 12, which included a Series 9 Cook Cyborg as travelling companion. The ad finally shuddered to a premature halt: Addey still hadn't gotten used to the new Adstims and Kurtz was caught mid-joint, coughing up lungfuls of best Bolivian Gold as he struggled to regain control of the simstim before the Mercia Corp cut in and stole a few precious moments of virtual time. He surfed through a series of half-formed circuits: note suspended on the matrix like the petrified neural droplets on his wasted memory circuits. Eventually, normal service was resumed, but not before 50 surfers were hot-wired, roasted on the white hot neural web, woven by the spider-like stewards waiting on the Bridge. Kurtz felt no more than a twinge of remorse: they knew the risks - he'd warned them enough times.
He listened for the cybercops, but they must have been occupied elsewhere, so he jacked out. Kurtz switched off the console, finished the joint and spent the rest of the night reviewing the latest cybertek sounds for the 100th anniversary issue of the Baggage.
Far-fetched, perhaps; pretentious, maybe; portentous, definitely. The first virtual concert was broadcast by The Future Sound of London on the Internet, back in January 1995, and there are rumours of further gigs by bands as disparate (or desperate) as REM, The Rolling Stones and Orbital. Let's face it: why waste your time and money going to a smelly, fleabitten venue on the outskirts of some urban sprawl, paying money you can't afford to a promotion company whose only aim is to make as much cash in as short a time as possible. It takes half an hour to get a bloody drink, half an hour to queue for the bloody toilets (two hours if you're female) and the band is always on an hour late. And if you are seven foot tall, you'll be able to catch a glimpse of the band over the head of the second tallest person in Christendom, who decided to stand in front of you, just before then band came on. The alternative is to go down to the front of the stage, where the t-shirted throng in the mosh pit, who know all the words to the band's only hit single and are convinced that their fifth album is actually their first, are proving that the New Man really is a media myth. Any hope of seeing the gig is crushed by a pair of size 10 DM's worn by some Neanderthal moron who is determined to surf across your face. You have already endured the worst support band since Shed Seven announced their retirement, the beer was watered down, someone nicked your last cigarette and the girl you fancied in the row in front is now snogging the support band's lead singer. Another crowd surfer floats by, pours the contents of his glass down the front of your nice new 501s and, all of a sudden, that Eastenders omnibus edition seems a very attractive proposition.
OK, maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but after 23 years (count 'em) of gigging, I have to say that gigs of the quality of the PJ Harvey/Tricky double bill in March (see review elsewhere) are few and far between. The thought of a virtual concert is very tempting. And the death-knell for those over-priced CDs is not far behind, as bands like Mu-ziq and Orbital claim that they will soon be downloading their latest releases onto the Internet, where anyone with a laptop and modem can access and listen to the results. And for any talented people out there, you will be able to remix the music yourselves: no more Sabres of Paradise/CJ Mackintosh mixes for you...oh no, you'll be able to do your very own custom-made mixing, at no extra cost, and impress/bore the hell out of your friends. At the moment, virtual radio is still in my imagination, but virtual concerts and virtual music is already out there on the Net. Be there, or be left behind.