Sam passed on this article from the New Yorker about the increasing number of musicians using laptops as a part of their live performance. Pretty interesting and not all about Scratch Live either. Quite cool to see the different ways everyone uses laptops:
"Acts I’ve seen using both laptops and traditional instruments onstage in the past year include Björk, Radiohead, and Erykah Badu. At a recent Radiohead show in Camden, New Jersey, the group used an Apple laptop to provide rhythm tracks for songs like “15 Step” and “Videotape.” Used this way, the laptop functions as a powerful and flexible drum machine. For Björk’s show, the laptop sometimes provided most of the music onstage; at other times, it blended into a roar that included ten female Icelandic horn players. Erykah Badu employed the laptop in a more idiosyncratic way. Sitting on a small table near the singer, the laptop became a boom box that Badu reached for when she wanted to play snippets of other people’s songs during her own set."
Also, did anyone see that Björk show with the ten female icelandic horn players? That would've been crazy.