From the Dallas Observer, January 4th, 1990

The Acts to Watch in '90

by Clay McNear 
 
Course of Empire: "Just personally, the idea of exploring the entire room, 
leaping off the stage, grabbing someone, handing them a pair of sticks, and 
getting them involved in creating the music that is going down right now in 
the present tense is fascinating to me," Course of Empire guitarist Mike 
Graff told the Observer last year. And this attitude of breaking down that 
transparent boundary that separates band from audience - of muddling the 
gray line between entertainment and art - is what makes this act so special. 
A Course of Empire show is, literally, a hands-on-experience. "Anybody who 
shows up has an opportunity to influence the work in progress, and the 
experiences of everybody else in the room," said Graff. The dark/light 
symmetry of the band's sound (reminiscent in some ways os U2 with a Bauhaus 
hangover) may not lend itself to the immediacy of commercial-radio fodder, 
but hell, you can to it - in a tribal sort of way.