ALEF (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} alef_grizley) wrote,@ 2008-10-07 20:15:00 |
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in some sense we are jazz musicians../ but its not jazz - it's ROCK AND ROLL!!!
The curtains opened and three men with electric guitars stood in a row across the stage. Behind them, center stage, a “drummer” stood erect with a lone high-hat cymbal. These were, we later discovered: on the left clean cut guitarist David Rosenbloom, whose band Chinese Puzzle was part of the downtown art/rock scene. Next to him was Wharton Tiers manning the hi-hat. Wharton’s band was A Band with Paul McMahon, and he’d played in Theoretical Girls as well with the guy prowling the shadows on the right—army fatigue jacket collarupturned like a punk Elvis in a rags, holding his guitar like a weapon: Glenn Branca.
It was Rhys himself standing in the center.
He had these weird Roger McGuinn-style granny glasses on his nose, leather vest, lips pursed, a determined look on his face, perhaps standing a little unsteadily. That is, until the music started. Rhys began stumming downstrokes on his low E string (we later found out it was a specific tuning of the guitars, not conventional EADGBE jive at all). Soon Glenn and David joined suit, one after the other,with Wharton beating out eighth notes on the hat. That was it for percussion—he was getting a lot out of opening and closing it for accent purposes… The sound grew as the guitars slowly introduced the other strings, one at a time, creating a more complex chord. No one ever touched the fretboard once; just this open ringing de-tuned tuning that built to an incredible din (indeed The Din was the name of one of Rhys’ later ensembles). Occasionally Rhys would give the others cues for changes in section or intensity, his whole torso nodding the last 4 counts, his mouth miming ‘one, two, three, four…’
Something going on inside the music that I couldn’t put my finger on. Although the players seemed to be simply downstroking with flat picks across the length of the strings, amazing things were happening in the sound field above our heads. Overtones danced all around the notes, getting more animated, turning into first gamelan orchestras, then later a choir of voices, and finally a complete maelstrom of crushing sonic complexity, ping ponging over the minimalist low notes of the rocking chord.
Rhys was definitely more than a little high (“I was on Quaaludes and speed that night, yikes!” he later told me). As the music reached full tilt he started weaving into the crowd, down the long narrow center aisle between the rows of tables running up to the stage. Beer glasses were rattling from the decibels. Seating was sort of communal along the rows, and as Rhys walked he began swinging his guitar absentmindedly, hitting people in the head and knocking over drinks and stuff. People scrambled to get out of his way, but he seemed so absorbed in the music that he didn’t notice the commotion at all. He slowly made it back up to the stage and the musicians dropped strings one afteranother until they were all back on just the low note, gamelans subsiding but still dancing, and then it was back to just Rhys for awhile, with that insistent rhythm on the low string. Then he let the last note ring.
The crowd was stunned, and then broke into wild applause! A roomful of people were amazed at what they’d just heard! After the applause died down, Rhys announced with an exuberant slur in his voice that the band was going to perform ‘another number’, which was a bit of a surprise consideringthat they had essentially played one chord for a full half hour! Rhys began drumming on the low string once more, and the group proceeded to careen right back into the exact same thing again, for another half-hour! THE SAME EXACT THING! Fantastic! At this point some of the ‘less committed’ in the audience ran for the exit!
This time, though, a series of grainy black-and-white slides of ambiguous, film-noirish scenes were projected on a screen behind the band. A famous shot of Pennsylvania Station with the huge beamsof sunlight beaming down, a Pacific Island beach with low flying (Japanese?) fighter planes. The brilliant whites in all the images had a transcendental vibe that seemed to connect them to each other. One at a time an image would appear, long slow fade in then hold a long time then long slow fade out. There were only about 5 slides over the half-hour, moving in glacial time. Turns out these were the work of fellow musician and up and coming ‘art star’ Robert Longo. I had some sort of ecstatic experience there, listening to this strange music and watching these images. I say strange because on the one hand it was Rock, really rocking out and familiar. But it had this other quality to it as well; something else was going on there. This was ‘Art’ too. The piece was Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, and it was our entry into an amazing new world of music being created below 14th Street in lower Manhattan. I had never heard anything like it before, yet that night I felt it was something I'd been hearing in my head forever. Here it was, in front of me in the flesh, finally in real life.
LR / July—September 2000
http://www.sonicyouth.com/dotsonics/l
Rhys Chatham (guitar) +
Magical Unicellar Music (ВОМ4 - guitars, bass, drums) +
Dmitry Kuzovlev of MMDM (guitar)+
personal Exit (guitars)
The curtains opened and three men with electric guitars stood in a row across the stage. Behind them, center stage, a “drummer” stood erect with a lone high-hat cymbal. These were, we later discovered: on the left clean cut guitarist David Rosenbloom, whose band Chinese Puzzle was part of the downtown art/rock scene. Next to him was Wharton Tiers manning the hi-hat. Wharton’s band was A Band with Paul McMahon, and he’d played in Theoretical Girls as well with the guy prowling the shadows on the right—army fatigue jacket collarupturned like a punk Elvis in a rags, holding his guitar like a weapon: Glenn Branca.
It was Rhys himself standing in the center.
He had these weird Roger McGuinn-style granny glasses on his nose, leather vest, lips pursed, a determined look on his face, perhaps standing a little unsteadily. That is, until the music started. Rhys began stumming downstrokes on his low E string (we later found out it was a specific tuning of the guitars, not conventional EADGBE jive at all). Soon Glenn and David joined suit, one after the other,with Wharton beating out eighth notes on the hat. That was it for percussion—he was getting a lot out of opening and closing it for accent purposes… The sound grew as the guitars slowly introduced the other strings, one at a time, creating a more complex chord. No one ever touched the fretboard once; just this open ringing de-tuned tuning that built to an incredible din (indeed The Din was the name of one of Rhys’ later ensembles). Occasionally Rhys would give the others cues for changes in section or intensity, his whole torso nodding the last 4 counts, his mouth miming ‘one, two, three, four…’
Something going on inside the music that I couldn’t put my finger on. Although the players seemed to be simply downstroking with flat picks across the length of the strings, amazing things were happening in the sound field above our heads. Overtones danced all around the notes, getting more animated, turning into first gamelan orchestras, then later a choir of voices, and finally a complete maelstrom of crushing sonic complexity, ping ponging over the minimalist low notes of the rocking chord.
Rhys was definitely more than a little high (“I was on Quaaludes and speed that night, yikes!” he later told me). As the music reached full tilt he started weaving into the crowd, down the long narrow center aisle between the rows of tables running up to the stage. Beer glasses were rattling from the decibels. Seating was sort of communal along the rows, and as Rhys walked he began swinging his guitar absentmindedly, hitting people in the head and knocking over drinks and stuff. People scrambled to get out of his way, but he seemed so absorbed in the music that he didn’t notice the commotion at all. He slowly made it back up to the stage and the musicians dropped strings one afteranother until they were all back on just the low note, gamelans subsiding but still dancing, and then it was back to just Rhys for awhile, with that insistent rhythm on the low string. Then he let the last note ring.
The crowd was stunned, and then broke into wild applause! A roomful of people were amazed at what they’d just heard! After the applause died down, Rhys announced with an exuberant slur in his voice that the band was going to perform ‘another number’, which was a bit of a surprise consideringthat they had essentially played one chord for a full half hour! Rhys began drumming on the low string once more, and the group proceeded to careen right back into the exact same thing again, for another half-hour! THE SAME EXACT THING! Fantastic! At this point some of the ‘less committed’ in the audience ran for the exit!
This time, though, a series of grainy black-and-white slides of ambiguous, film-noirish scenes were projected on a screen behind the band. A famous shot of Pennsylvania Station with the huge beamsof sunlight beaming down, a Pacific Island beach with low flying (Japanese?) fighter planes. The brilliant whites in all the images had a transcendental vibe that seemed to connect them to each other. One at a time an image would appear, long slow fade in then hold a long time then long slow fade out. There were only about 5 slides over the half-hour, moving in glacial time. Turns out these were the work of fellow musician and up and coming ‘art star’ Robert Longo. I had some sort of ecstatic experience there, listening to this strange music and watching these images. I say strange because on the one hand it was Rock, really rocking out and familiar. But it had this other quality to it as well; something else was going on there. This was ‘Art’ too. The piece was Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, and it was our entry into an amazing new world of music being created below 14th Street in lower Manhattan. I had never heard anything like it before, yet that night I felt it was something I'd been hearing in my head forever. Here it was, in front of me in the flesh, finally in real life.
LR / July—September 2000
http://www.sonicyouth.com/dotsonics/l
Rhys Chatham (guitar) +
Magical Unicellar Music (ВОМ4 - guitars, bass, drums) +
Dmitry Kuzovlev of MMDM (guitar)+
personal Exit (guitars)
