Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

silent. Then he turned intense attention upon the text.
Later, when the talking had started again, although I am not sure that any of the performers really
cared, Upton went into one his famous gestural arguments with himself growling and chanting
with great bombast in what I think are invented and probably improvised languages.
Few of the audience paid any attention. I could see little response to what always is to me a
riveting sight. I have never seen anything like it. Though one knows it is an act, the spectacle can
be terrifying. Generally he will maintain apparently wild aggression for many minutes. He slowly
pushes it completely over the top until the whole thing is undermined and it collapses into general
laughter.
On this occasion he engaged in a virtuoso two-hander with a speaker emitting one channel of the
pre-recorded tape which was playing his own voice. There was a moment when all was fairly
quiet. Then the speaker roared. Upton spun round as if surprised, like a startled animal. The
speaker roared again. Upton queried it with a growl. Then he spoke to it in words that weren’t
quite words...
The tone was perfect. There was a long debate between the man and the speaker and it was
obvious that the whole thing had been prepared for if not exactly planned.
After a while he turned back to the audience. He performed a sort of loping ape dance, hooting and
shouting.
Perhaps the lack of response disheartened him. He stopped quite suddenly.
Meanwhile Cobbing produced an inventive variety of sound with simple percussion instruments
and also spoke and chanted though it was quite hard to hear him because of the poor acoustics
and the chattering audience.
Upton has a karaoke machine with which he performs complex sound structures and duets with
himself. I was looking forward to seeing and hearing him. I have read accounts of his
improvisations with the simple mechanism, but I had never seen it myself.
He did make a start but the sound didn’t carry. He was clearly putting a lot into the microphone
and his hands moved quickly over the controls, but I didn’t hear any sound which seemed at all
different to the other kinds of sound the duo generate. The work needed the space that was denied
it. What I have read tells me the karaoke effects are distinctive. Within minutes he abandoned the
karaoke machine and did not go near it for the rest of the performance which last nearly three
quarters of an hour in all.
Increasingly he paced around the small area. I saw him gesturing at the technician to stop
reducing the volume of the live microphone. The techie obliged, only to slowly pull the slide down a
few minutes later. Late on in the performance Upton leaned over and took control of the desk
himself.