Rhys Chatham's Guitar Trio (G3) from 1977 with Pictures for Music (1979) by Robert Longo.
ZXZW Independent Culture Festival
Tilburg, Holland - 22, 23 September 2007
At Zaal 16
Electric guitars:
Dennis Toebak
Mischa van Rodijnen
Frank Crijns
Jos van den Brand
Gijs Coolen
Rhys Chatham
Jurriaan Dekker - electric bass
Pieter Holkenborg - drums
Theo van Rock - sound engineer
Sander van Amelsfoort - sound assistant
Jeroen Smeets - lights and projection
I met Joost Heijthuijsen through Myspace. He was asking me about playing a G3 concert for a small festival he was putting together in Holland. We got to talking and determined that the G3 project might be more appropriate for a larger festival he was co-directing with Frank Kiminai called the ZXZW Independent Culture Festival. Frank got in touch with me and we set the dates for Saturday and Sunday 22, 23 September.
ZXZW is an annual festival for independent culture in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and is currently in its third year. It started out as a small festival for underground bands, but this year has grown to a diverse view on indie culture as a whole, including music, contemporary dance, film and visual arts. It's an indoor festival held in small clubs, galleries and pubs all over the city centre of Tilburg, and took place over a full week starting the 16th of September and ending the weekend after with over 130 shows of bands from all musical genres from breakcore, punk, noise to experimental pop, free-jazz, sound experiments, dance and doom metal. They even had a bit of No Wave with their inclusion of the revival version of Guitar Trio, a re-creation of the original performance we did in the late seventies at Max's Kansas City in NY, with a film by visual artist Robert Longo.
On the day of the first concert, the train leaving from Paris to Tilburg left out of Gare du Nord at 7.55. For some reason I woke up at 5.30 in the morning. I didn't need to get up that early, but somehow, I did. So I had plenty of time to catch the train, as Gard du nord is only 15 minutes on foot from where I live.
The train ride was in one of those fast French trains called a "TGV", train ý grande vitesse (high speed train), which was indeed fast. It got me from Paris to Brussels in about an hour! Frank arranged that I would stay with RenÈ van Peer, who is a journalist specializing in non-mainstream music and arts, and RenÈ suggested that he meet me in Brussels. He decided it would be logistically easier to simply meet in Brussels rather than me having to make the two train changes necessary to get from Paris to Tilburg.
RenÈ van Peer
The journey by automobile was about 90 minutes from Brussels to Tilburg, and during the ensuing conversation in the car, it turned out that RenÈ and I had many friends in common.
RenÈ had worked closely with my friend Paul Panhuysen of Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven and he had actually seen a concert on electric trumpet that I did there way back in the early nineties. We had many, many friends in common like Phill Niblock, Robert Ashley, Yoshi Wada, Nicolas Collins, Tom Johnson, Takehisa Kosugi as well as the ethnomusicologist Francis Falceto, whom RenÈ had interviewed only the day before. Francis was my manager when I first arrived in France in 1988, and he was single-handedly responsible for bringing into existence my first composition for 100 electric guitars, believing in the project and introducing me to Jean-Pascal Reux of l'aÈronef in Lille, who commissioned and produced my first concert of 100 electric guitars, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See. Getting back to RenÈ, RenÈ is heavily into world music and has a huge and truly amazing collection of vinyl records. We spent the rest of the journey listening to Ethiopian music, Moa Anbessa - Getatchew Mekuria, The Ex and Guests, who will be playing at the Africolor Festival in Paris on 12 December, as well as a CD Ethiopiques 1, Golden Years of Modern Ethiopian Music, and Ethiopiques 17 with Tlahoun Gessesse, which is one of Rene's absolute favorites in this series, as well as one of my own, now, thanks to RenÈ !
After listening to a lot of cool music in the car, we arrived in Tilburg and had lunch at RenÈ's house and then went to the venue where G3 was to be performed, called Zaal 16.
As we arrived at the venue, I could see some of the musicians hanging out in the parking lot, for it was an absolutely gorgeous day. The first guitarist I met was Mischa van Rodijnen, who introduced me to his friend Dennis Toebak, who had lent Mischa some equipment for the gig. We got to talking, and Mischa asked if it would be OK if Dennis played the concert, as he was also a guitarist and was there, on the scene, ready to play, as it were. The only problem was that there wasn't an amp for Dennis. There was some talk of Dennis and Mischa going through the same amp, but I explained that this was not ideal for the sound of Guitar Trio (G3). The sound gets a bit confused when two guitarists go through the same amp. After a bit of discussion, Dennis came up with the idea of "why don't we just go with the flow and see what happens?" I thought this was an awesome idea, so that's exactly what we did.
Dennis Toebak and Mischa van Rodijnen
Photo: ZXZW
Some of the other guys had arrived and I was introduced to them, the guitarists Frank Crijns and Jos van den Brand. So we all went into Zaal 16, the venue we were to play in. The front door opened into a large, airy, window-lined space that was called CafÈ CarrÈ. Some of the other band members were there drinking coffee. In fact, the rest of the entire band was there, consisting of Gijs Coolen, a guitarist, and Jurriaan Dekker, who plays electric bass and Pieter Holkenborg, who was to play drums.
Jos van den Brand and Gijs Coolen
Photo: ZXZW
Theo van Rock, the sound engineer, had already set up all the sound equipment. It turned out that Theo had seen me play in Eindhoven way back in the 80s, and also had mixed sound for my friend Glenn Branca, who played with me at a critical juncture in the making of Guitar Trio back in the 70s. Glenn's music has a lot in common with my own, so I was delighted to have Theo working with us.
The feeling at the sound check was quite relaxed, which I must say consistently turned out to be the Dutch way of doing things. Somehow precise, yet somehow... relaxed! One of the guitarists who was supposed to show up didn't. So this worked out quite well as it freed up an amp for Dennis to play through. Dennis was in the band, awright!
The other musicians already knew the form of G3, so I went over the basic techniques and we rehearsed getting from one section to the next. We eventually arrived at a good stage sound. Next, Theo set up some monitors for us.
I should mention at this point that Zaal 16 is a theater of about 300 seats that is usually used for amateur and semi-pro theater. The room is box-like and painted completely black, so it was perfect for us in that we like the color black when we play, it wasn't hard to imagine that we were playing in a rock club! At first we thought we might not need monitors because the room was relatively small and our amps were already pretty loud. However, the first part of G3 calls for the drummer to play only the high hat, so in the end we decided to set the monitors up. To good effect. In any case, we finished the sound check, everyone knew the cues, and we could hear everything perfectly, thanks to Mr. Theo van Rock!
We had an hour or so to kill before dinner, so we went to the CafÈ CarrÈ and had some more coffee. Then we made our way to NS 16, which is a cultural centre for young adults provided by the city of Tilburg. ZXZW had their headquarters there. We got our meal tickets and went downstairs for dinner. I hung out with Jos van den Brand, who is a metal guitarist. We got to talking about the various death and black metal bands that we liked. Jos turned me on to some that I had never heard before, groups like Dark Funeral, Craft and Vader on the black metal side of things, and Carcass and Autopsy on the doom metal side. I'm gonna give them a listen soon 'cause I'm into that stuff bigtime.
We finished dinner, and then discovered that our drink tickets had to be used at CafÈ CarrÈ, so we made our way back there and used the remaining time before the concert to sample, in moderation, various Dutch tap beers whilst engaging in convivial conversation.
Before the 7.30 pm curtain time, I went into the theatre itself to discuss lighting with Jeroen Smeets, the designer. We worked out something nice for the first part, and then something more minimal and stark for Part 2.
The way G3 works is we play a 20-minute version of Guitar Trio for 6-10 guitarists, el. bass and drums, then we take a break and I announce the names of the musicians. After that, we then proceed to play the same thing, exactly the same thing, all over again, except the second time we play it with the full drum kit and show the original film that the NY visual artist Robert Longo made for a performance we did at the infamous Max's Kansas City in the late seventies, when I had Nina Canal (Ut) and Glenn Branca (Theoretical Girls) on guitar, and Wharton Tiers (Theoretical Girls and current Sonic Youth collaborator) on drums.
By the early 80s, Glenn had gone on to form his own multiple electric guitar configuration, so I worked with new musicians and the piece somehow shortened to a total duration of 8 minutes. It was quite intense. And that's the version we used ever since.
However, last year, I decided to revive the original version that we did with Nina, Glenn and Wharton, keeping the same form, but adding more guitarists than we had in the original version. We heard the result of this in Tilburg.
So I finished talking with Jeroen Smeets about the lights, and went backstage to do a final tuning on my guitar. It was at this point that I noticed there were only about three people sitting in the audience...
"Oh, shit!" I thought, "I hope more people show up." Because I HATE playing for anything less than a full house: because while it is true that G3 is a composition that draws on my minimalist roots as a composer coming out of a classical tradition, it is also true that G3 is basically an extreme form of rock 'n' roll and needs an audience. The musicians who play G3 feed off the energy of the audience. The more energy the audience has and gives to us, the musicians, the better the music sounds! It's really a give and take between the musicians playing the piece and the energy that the audience reflects back at us. So I was getting a little worried when I saw only three people sitting in the room.
They looked very nice, these three people, very, well, friendly, but, I mean... ya know?
Happily, it turned out that the rest of the audience was in the CafÈ CarrÈ sampling, in massive quantities, the fine Dutch tap beer that they had there! An announcement was made that the doors were open and that we were going to play, and the room then filled up quite rapidly and nicely.
All the musicians were in back in the dressing room. I encouraged everyone to rock out, reminding them that it "ain't nothin' but a party!". While it is true that we have certain prescribed things to do, certain prescribed things to play, I explained that if anyone felt like, for example, like standing on their head, or jumping up and down, or yelling or hollering in Dionysian union with the music, to please be my guest.
In other words, to ROCK IT !
The reason I gave this pep talk was because in past performances, I noticed that the musicians had a tendency to get lost in the music...
The entire melodic vocabulary of G3 consists of the overtones of the one note, or eventually, the one chord that we are playing throughout the entire piece. These overtones are absolutely fantastic to listen to, and it is easy to get hypnotized by them.
So often the musicians of G3 get tranced-out and arrive at a kind of dreamy look as they are playing, like they were on drugs or something. After all, it is often the first time that many have played G3, so this is completely normal. Also, sometimes the musicians want to make sure that they don't miss any of the cues, so during the performance they are intently listening to what is going on, which of course is a good thing, as well as keeping an eye on me to make sure they don't miss a cue to get from one section to the next, which indeed is a commendable strategy. On the other hand, I didn't want them to neglect the performance aspect, hence the pep talk.
So the concert finally began...
We started the first set with a duet between me and Pieter Holkenborg on high hat. Gradually, I brought the musicians in one by one. After about 8 minutes, I brought in Jurriaan Dekker on electric bass, and then things started to really cook.
At this point I was looking out at the audience, all of whom were seated since we were playing in a theatre with fixed seating.
Now, usually, I like to have at least part of the audience standing so that they can dance around while we play. However, this wasn't possible because there was no stage and people standing would have blocked the sight lines.
I was a bit concerned about this because it is boring to play for a bunch of people glued to their seats, but then I noticed that everyone was sort of bouncing around in their chairs: everyone was moving. Cool! It felt good, and the harder we played, the more the audience moved around, yeah! And they weren't the only ones. The musicians were starting to move around, too. At times during the set I was at the extreme stage left position. Throughout the set, I found myself looking across the stage at Dennis Toebak, who was at extreme stage right. We made eye contact and worked together, playing a kind of duet. At other times, when I occupied center stage, I found myself working with Frank Crijns, who was just to stage right of the drums and bass. In a similar manner, Jos van den Brand and Gijs Coolen, who were next to each other on stage left, often teamed up and worked together, getting seriously down on things. Dennis and Mischa van Rodijnen over on stage right were doing the same thing.
Rhys and Jos gettin' down together.
Photo: ZXZW
We finished the first part of G3 to an appreciative applause.
Normally the first set is supposed to last 20 minutes or so. It went by so fast that I thought we had played less than that, but I found out later when I listened to the tape that we had played longer than a half an hour. I asked the public if they wanted to hear another number, and after getting a positive response, I announced the names of the musicians and then we dived right into the second part of the G3 set.
By this time, all the musicians were completely relaxed and comfortable with what they were playing. We began the set and Jeroen Smeets started the Robert Longo projection and had us lit in an eerie electric blue color. Jos had his two feet firmly grounded to earth, spread wide apart in the classic guitar hero position. By the first 6-string section, where we play all six open strings of the electric guitar, which ring out in an E minor 7 kind of sound, everyone was working in pairs again, those with long hair were thrashing their hair all over the place, up and down, in time with the music. During Pieter Holkenborg's drum solo, he played so hard that Mischa had to come up to the drums and put his foot on the bass drum to keep it from moving, Pieter played so hard!
Pieter's solo. From left to right: Dennis Toebak, Frank Crijns, Jurriaan Dekker, Pieter, Mischa & Rhys (with feet on the drums), Jos, and Gijs Coolen. Photo: ZXZW
After the first drum solo, Mischa and I started dancing around together, everyone was jumping up and down by this point, including the audience, to heck with the seats! The 6-string section came to an end, leaving just me and Pieter on drums playing a duet. One by one the musicians re-entered on the low E string of their electric guitars, and finally, when Jurriaan Dekker came in on bass, Pieter brought the back beat in at last, the effect was quite dramatic and the audience went wild.
We then went into a power chord of low E, B, E octave on the lower three strings and Mischa went into whirling his long hair all over the place thing, then Dennis got into the act, the two were facing off each other, with me and Frank doing the same thing, it was totally awesome.
We were well into the second 6-string section by this time, when Pieter went into a kind of primal Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA backbeat kinda thing. The guitars rose in volume and became obscenely, electrically loud. The overtones meshed together in such a way that it appeared that the audience was roaring its approval. In fact, the audience was making a certain amount of encouraging noise at this point, but the roaring sound we heard was made up entirely of the overtones being generated by our electric guitars, meshed in and blending perfectly with the constant crash cymbals that Pieter was playing, with Jurriaan's bass providing a kind of rhythmic bed. Pieter took his final solo with Mischa thoughtfully anchoring the bass drum again, which was in danger flying out into the public! We went into our final riff and ended with a final booming chord of doom, but not gloom. The audience went crazy after that.
Circle of Power! Left to right: Frank, Jurriaan, Mischa, Pieter, Rhys
Photo: ZXZW
The concert thus ended, we musicians spent a bit of time backstage recovering. I went out into the audience and chatted with Frank and Joost, ZXZW's producers, who introduced me to a quite charming gentleman named Mark Hosler, their "consultant-in-residence". Mark was a founding member of Negativeland, founded in California in the late 70s and famously concerned, among other things, with copyright issues, due to certain liberties taken on one of their early albums.
During our conversation, Mark pointed out something interesting.
After the first part of G3, we take a break to tune and, if the audience seems receptive, I ask them if they want to hear another number... (and if they don't seem receptive, I don't ask them and we play the next number anyway!) In Tilburg, I asked the audience this, and they agreed. Mark said that this confused him, because it seemed that the next number was the same, EXACTLY the same, as the first number...
Mark had a point.
Because in fact, what we play for Part 2 IS the same piece, or rather a continuation of the first part, except during the second part the drummer plays the entire kit rather than just the high hat, so the energy is different, it's more intense. However, the form is virtually the same as the first part, although the various sections are usually a bit shorter.
The reason I always ask the audience if they want to hear another number is that it is a kind of an "in" joke. Anyone who is familiar with my work knows that I'm gonna do this as a kind of punk gesture, a tip of the hat to the late seventies period.
There was a famous article written by Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo that first appeared in one of the Wire Magazine's "Epiphanies" section at the back of the issue, where Lee describes the original performance of G3 that he saw at Max's. He said, "the crowd was stunned, and then broke into wild applause! A roomful of people were amazed at what they just heard. After the applause died down, Rhys announced that the band was going to play another number, which was a bit of a surprise considering that 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 play the exact same thing again, for another half hour! THE SAME EXACT THING! Fantastic!"
At first I thought that maybe Mark was right and I should explain during the break that we were going to tune up and then do Part 2 of G3. I thought about it, and then decided, nah... The second part is a different experience, and anyway, everybody knows that I always play the same piece over and over again! ;-)
After rapping with Mark, I made my way to CafÈ CarrÈ to use up what remained of my drink tickets. I had a long conversation with Frank, it turned out that we're roughly the same age and have had similar checkered backgrounds of being involved in contemporary music coming out of a classical background, then being heavily into jazz and rock. Frank often composes fully notated pieces for ensembles of various sizes as well as playing in rock bands. We rapped for a time talking about all our favorite musicians. By that time, a theater performance was about to take place after us, so the merry musicians of G3 made their way to see some of the other acts on the ZXZW festival.
This is the end of this chronicle of the first performance of G3 at the ZXZW in Tilburg. Check this blog for an update of what happened on the second day!
Links:
ZXZW - http://www.myspace.com/zxzwtilburg
Mischa van Rodijnen - http://www.myspace.com/transmission0
Frank Crijns - http://www.myspace.com/blast4tet
Jos van den Brand - http://www.myspace.comoutburstmetal
Jeroen Smeets - http://www.theater-zaal16.nl
Zaal 16 (the venue where we played) - http://www.theater-zaal16.nl
From left to right: Dennis Toebak, Mischa van Rodijnen, Frank Crijns, Jurriaan Dekker, Pieter Holkenborg (seated), Rhys Chatham, Jos van den Brand and Gijs Coolen.
Photo: Rhys Chatham
