A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Eric Stoltz joins "Chicago Hope"; memory lane for "90210" and "Party of Five" Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by the San Francisco Symphony, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Emma Townshend R E C E N T_. M U S I C Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by Del Amitri, Lyle Lovett, Qu-Burns Abstract Message, Throwing Muses, Aterciopelados, Bloque and Archers of Loaf (10/07/98) An accidental obsession By Camden Joy The rock critic as celebrity stalker: an excerpt from "The Last Rock Star Book Or: Liz Phair, a Rant" (10/05/98) A match made in pop heaven By Stephanie Zacharek Elvis Costello's words and Burt Bacharach's music were meant to be together (10/01/98) "Is This Desire" -- or just bad performance art? By Bill Wyman In her first release in three years, Polly Jean Harvey offers sops to a self-consciously hip underground (09/30/98) The Shadow sheds light By Adam Heimlich Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow, goes on the record about the evolution of hip-hop and his latest project, "Psyence Fiction," the debut album from UNKLE (09/23/98) BROWSE THE MUSIC ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS          S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

___BY TOM FROST | The concrete floors at the second-ever Silicon Planet Experience sparkled with glitter. Stage lighting and giant video screens bathed the sprawling warehouse space, a converted military factory in San Jose, with a false theatrical glow. Between the two rooms there were corporate banners everywhere. Microsoft. Skyy Vodka. Or Synopsys, whose slogan read, "Everywhere There's Silicon." The event, the baby of Silicon Planet, "a new Web community designed for the Internet Generation," was supposed to be several things at once: a rave without ecstasy; a non-threatening rock concert; a social mixer for white people and Asians; a trade show of slick electronics; a spectacle of the information age; a fund-raiser for two AIDS organizations, which would receive an unspecified "part of ticket proceeds." (One ticket cost $100, but every attendant had to be invited. Yet I talked to more than a dozen random people, and not one had actually paid for a ticket -- most had obtained them from event sponsors.) Event organizers announced that Silicon Planet would "blend performance and technology into an immersive evening of entertainment and networking for techie trendsetters." They should have said "trendy techies." Between the two main rooms there were too many bars to count, their lines swollen with people wearing blazers and little black dresses who'd ostensibly paid $100 waiting for free drinks. There were also two large stages for Beck, Devo, television actor David Spade and a ragtag group of graying Silicon Valley executives calling themselves the Flying Other Brothers. Another stage at the back of the larger room provided a space for a few people dressed something like Balinese Nutcrackers to dance. There were also two bandstand boxing rings with ropes wrapped in Mylar; San Francisco DJ Polywog spun records from a booth atop one of them. Attendants passed out frou-frou munchies and large bowls of fortune cookies. I cracked one that read, "Wise people buy low and sell high. Luckily you have options." The actual experience of the event was far more reductive than the organizers promised. It seemed created for the express purpose of selling sponsorships, which it certainly accomplished. Applied Materials, Microsoft, Synopsys and Yahoo were major contributors. Two dozen more -- among them NASDAQ and Maytag -- chipped in their brand icons for the four-color semi-gloss program. The underlying message? That the mega-corporations of Silicon Valley are creating culture. (Step 1: Insert Bill Gates' money. Step 2: Add slick new electronic products and some music acts that the kids are talking about. Step 3: Toss off a couple of catch phrases -- "The next big thing!" or "It's a killer app!" -- and watch culture happen.) There is no codified behavior for a rave-rock concert/electronics store trade show. Some people played video games. Others bought $30"lunar clogs" at the "SiliconPlanet.StoreTM" or thick stogies at the "Lava LoungeTM," where "a Silicon Valley 'martini bar' meets a 21st century cigar bar." Some danced, badly, to the Flying Other Brothers' version of "Brown Eyed Girl," or laughed, hesitantly, at their Viagra jokes. Others drank too much Skyy Vodka and fell down. The smarmy and cautiously cynical Spade told jokes that the crowd could appreciate. After standard routines about college, dating, airplanes and bad drivers, he made fun of people who work at McDonald's and laughed about the criminals on "Cops," shirtless men who wear socks and flip-flops. I couldn't tell what was inherently funny about either, but then I realized that wasn't the point, anyway. What mattered was that neither was likely to be represented here, behind the walls of Silicon Planet's "cyber community." Spade's best transition between jokes: "So then there's that." Devo ran through a greatest hits set wearing yellow jumpsuits and those red hats. At their prime, Devo were one of those bands that really were smarter and more intellectually stimulating than the sum of their gimmicks. Unfortunately the act has aged as well as the Apple II C, and now they're just five pudgy guys who look like city councilmembers from Ohio. "Whip It" only soothes a 20-something's desire for irony and nostalgia; "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," once a brilliant deconstruction -- or "de-evolution" in Devospeak -- of a classic rock song, seemed tired in the post Puff-Daddy era. Beck gave the night a center, which says nothing about the event and everything about his polished showmanship, his broad appeal to suburban teens, cranky music critics and, sure, Silicon Valley geeks. Several weeks before the show, the music news Web site Addicted to Noise reported that Beck was unhappy with certain terms of the concert, including the $100 ticket price. Silicon Planet made some concessions and he kept the date. I half expected six songs and a quick exit. Instead, the pastiche artist played an hour-and-a-half set peppered with new songs and danced like a body-popping Mick Jagger (Beck has that sneer down cold). But if Beck was so terrific, why was the event a complete bust? Maybe it was because some of the invitees secretly wished they could have traded in their ticket for an invitation to last year's double-Dylan performance (Jakob and Bob played the San Jose Arena last year for a corporate event). Or maybe it was because video screens around the warehouse relentlessly mixed live performance camera work with the worst of wow-cool video editing. More likely it was because when you replace art with slogans, substitute purchasing power for creativity, hammer out any critical response with never-ending diversions, the result is clever marketing, not living, breathing culture. Rock, now an almost charmingly singular artistic experience, still has some gasping breaths of relevancy, but Silicon Planet did everything it could to suffocate it. SALON | Oct. 14, 1998 Tom Frost is a San Francisco freelance music writer.