Pile o' paint scrapers

So now my exams are completely done with (as of this morning). I have to pick up my report card from school on thursday between 10 am and noon, which sounds shifty. They might as well say "come to the back door and knock three times" as well.

Nils, Fab and I all rolled down to hear some ear-splitting noise at the Roundhouse last night. A cool $26 to see Evan Parker (tenor only, sadly), Barry Guy (baez and paintbrushes), Paul Lytton (drums and objects), and Agusti Fernandez (pianoforte and some kind of brick), plus The Thing with Ken Vandermark. The latter act I had never heard, so the whole event was more explosive than I could have imagined. This was my first 'free music' concert, and I couldn't believe how much better it was live!

When we sat down, Fab and I gathered round the Village Elder, Nils, and he told us many tales of the realm of free jazz. He was talking a lot about how one person might play something, then another will pick up on it/react to it, and it might just ricochet through the whole band. And when they came on, it didn't take much hard listening to notice this kind of thing; it was happening the entire time!

Paul Lytton's drum kit was surrounded on all sides by various objects on the floor, such as sticks, small cymbals, wooden frogs, paint scrapers, shells - anything that made sound. Which is everything. Most of the time he'd be reaching onto the floor to grab something new and putting it in the pile on top of his snare drum. It got full up there, so stuff was falling off constantly.

I find I like Barry Guy's playing best when he's on his own, but he wasn't without his highlights. The best part was when he had something that looked like a hairless bow shoved up under the strings, and whenever he touched it, it would rock back and forth, making a really cool sound.

Fernandez I hadn't heard more than about a minute of before. He looked conspicuous, because while the other three band members were wearing all black, he had on this lipstick-red shirt. He looked like Florian Schneider on the cover of The Man Machine. Anyhoot, he made fine use of harmonics on the piano throughout, and of course wasn't afraid to play using his elbows.

I wasn't familiar with anyone in The Thing or Ken Vandermark, but they were a treat. Interestingly, where the Evan Parker band would play in a sort of straight line, moving wherever they happened to move, The Thing tended to sort of build more. The two horn players, Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, constantly played off each other; one might start a riff, and the other might either play lines over it or kind of expand it.

The ultimate treat with this band was, of course, getting to hear TWO baritone saxes at once!