ReR Quarterly, Volume 1, No. 4
LAST quarter I outlined some of the functions I hoped this magazine might serve, particularly with reference to making public and visible the nuts and bolts, the quotidian life of the music we 'like' so that we can develop and share a common 'expertise'; sit at the same table and play with the same, unmarked, deck. Much of this issue follows trails begun there. Robert Matthews pursues in more concrete detail the way specific technologies directly influence and broadly shape the musics they mediate: human imagination is not a freewheeling force disconnected from history and technology and able simply to create 'as it wishes' in a personal or even a purely social -vacuum: the instruments of labour inevitably reflect and reinforce a subtle and apparently 'natural' aesthetic -and they similarly make 'natural' (because effective, seamless) certain relations of production, not independent of, but always either for or against, the prevailing interests of a (temporarily) dominant economic class. Political battles are fought through and with these instruments, and their designers are not dispassionate. It is necessary for us to select the instruments that give us the possibilities we want, not to accept what is put in front of us; and it is important to recognise that the pressures which shape new instruments today are not like those that led to refinements in times past. L"ss and less now are they musical pressures, and less and less do they originate from musicians and needs grown from playing. Such suspicion of the newest instruments may seem conservative -each generation after all bemoans the passing of older, better days. But here I think we are dealing with a different issue: the issue of Power. To resist a particular application of new technology is not a straightforwardly conservative act, since what is at stake is who is to have the power to exercise control over the course of history. A technology, when applied, when condensed into a particular instrument, can only show that it is able successfully to solve a problem. If the problem is how to manipulate people more effectively -or how to control new markets -this may make the particular application not only useless to any but the would-be manipulators, but absolutely negative.
Steve Moore, in his working practice and in his music, has succeeded in using very 'modern' instruments (recording studio, blades and tape, processing devices, &c.) to enhance and distil what is essentially human and affective in the aesthetic currency of sound, This is a crucial area of work and one sadly much neglected: the attention of music criticism, theory and practice tends typically to be occupied with purely musical considerations and the solving of musical problems. Yet it is the weird of recording that it opens up new aesthetic possibilities for sound and sound organisation, including the basis for new principles of construction (beyond notation and the traditionally 'musical'), new motives for composition (for instance to move and affect through the orchestration of charged 'real', environmental sound, the language of whose meaning is more open and less formally constructed than that of previous 'musics') and new spheres of operation (including, most unlimited of all, the territory of the psychological). Steve broaches a subject here that I hope will be much more discussed -it is past time.
LAST month too we touched on the problem of the distance between performers and public in the degree and type of knowiedge each has about what is happening at a concert. This quarter Michael Gerzon writes about the PA system: typically the intermediary between performer and public -and not a neutral intermediary. The PA plays an enormous part in 'constructing' the meaning and the social relations engendered at a performance. Hence Michael's startling title 'The Politics of PA'. I hope we can go further into the psychological and ideological ramifications of this in a later issue. Like Robert Matthews, Michael not only illuminates and criticises, but also offers practical proposals.
Mr Utsunomiya of AFTER DINNER also writes of PA problems of a type encountered almost universally at electric music concerts and treated, strangely, as 'inevitable', accepted by groups and public alike without question. Groups either grumble or concern themselves only with the sound in their monitors (which, argues Mr Utsunomiya, makes the end sound even worse), leaving the sound the public hears to be dealt with as best it can by the sound mixer sitting in the hall. The public also usually grumbles, but feels powerless and in any case has no knowledge of what the problem is, since basic knowledge ,about the production and reproduction of music in the medium they like....Even though the event involves real human proximity, still an in expertise on the part of the public disconnects them from participation in the aesthetics of production and propagation. The powerlessnes that flows from this has to be compensated for by dehumanising -negating -the producers, making them abstractions and their work some kind of pure expression of their being, rather than the product of an imperfect struggle with materials and time. For the group the public becomes similarly alienated, one of the external factors to be worked upon and manipulated to a successful outcome; strangers who do not take part in the work but unpredictably operate on it -like the acoustics, the sound equipment or stimulants in the bloodstream, etc. On the aesthetic ground the only way a public ear can know the details and subtleties of a performance is if it is enabled to hear them. But clarity is not usual, not expected, and the concert ear -in direct contradiction to the record-listening ear or the concert ear of an 'Art music' audience, has hardly even learned HOW to listen critically: I mean, to hear inside the sound or to hear expression mediated by the sound. To learn these listening skills will be an empirical matter -and primary will be the provision of good quality sound through which to listen, sound that can give the ear a chance to educate itself. Initially it seems that it must rest with musicians and sound engineers working as equal partners in groups to solve the problems that impede this development. Some groups try not to get a 'good' commercial sound (Abba and many similar groups spend millions on this; but a good commercial stage sound is one that, far from letting the listener in, takes immense pains to keep them out: to dehumanise) -but a good sound for listeneing and getting inside (Discos and especially West Indian Sound Systems, dub and scratch record manipulators, &c., take great care of these things and it is extraordinary that players of live music, who could control the subtlety and expressivity of sound far more, tend not to -except, again, when they are making a record). Michael Gerzon mentions some attempts to tackle this lack and here Mr Utsunomiya reports on his practical innovations with AFTER DINNER.
I wanted only to draw these related articles together. The others, on broader topics, speak perfectly for themselves, I only add that it gives real pleasure to have Greil Marcus in these pages -rare as a writer in our field who finds the place where passion for the form (and those who give it life) is informed and deepened by an intellectual analysis and a political will. For the breadth of his position 'Mystery Train' is still easy to come by and indispensible to start with. For us (Europeans) particularly it gives an invaluable insight into the American experience of the growth and 'meaning' of our now shared musics an experience we never really knew yet which seemed to come implied but inchoate in the package as we imported it, mixed inextricably with the deeper elements which did have existential meaning for us -and which we could appropriate for our own purposes. Or try to. American and European rock still have very different and very divergent cultural teleologies, but should be able to understand and be enriched by one another. Greil, illuminating his own culture, also helps make our translation clearer. Here, however, he writes about politics, and this needs no translation.
FINALLY, when we began this venture we said we'd run it for one year and then assess how it had worked. This is the end of that year (although it has taken 16 months to get there!). We are happy with the way the project has slowly taken shape and with the responses to it -which have been very good, in quality certainly, if not SO much as we had hoped in quantity. Still, so long as we are able, we'll try to continue. This year too has been marked by a number of disasters and problems for our parent company, Recommended, all of which are not yet settled; and this is will' deadlines haven't always been met. But, with the best intentions. and 1000 plans and projects-on our pad, we now dot the i's and CROSS the t's on VOLUME 1 and prepare to open Volume 2. which will begin with a special issue devoted to questions raised through the new technology and the experience and practice of 'classical' or 'Art' music , about what music actually can be -what can be meant by it? -- Chris Cutler
After Dinner
Recorded at Musiam Square, Osaka on February 2nd 1986 by Manabu Takagi. This concert also included visual works and dance performance. It was part of a tour sponsored by ZERO records. The players were: Haco: Vocal Mutsuhiko Izumi: Guitar Ichiro Inoue: Percussion Seiichi Kuroda: Bass, Hichiriki Hideyuki Yamagata: Drums Tadahiko Yokogawa: Bass, Violin (Tapes and Singing on "RE") Kenji Konishi: Melotron, Keyboards Tomoko Tsunoda: Violin Also at the concert were: Yashushi Utsunomiya: Master conductor, tape operation & submixing Sanae Hamada: Dancing Akihiro Yamada & Masaichi Kaminuma: Slide composition The tape here was mixed down from 8 to 2 tracks at After Dinner's own M.U.E. Studio, I expect by Haco and Mr Utsunomiya.
Of the songs selected here
After Dinner
A Walnut
RE
A Man ofMarble
Glass Tube
-all words & music are by Haco, except for "RE", by Tadahiko Yokogawa. Tracks 1& 5 have appeared in different versions on the LP "After Dinner" (Recommended Records'-RR C20). The remainder have not appeared on record before. After Dinner's The Room of Hair-mobile (recorded with Fred Frith in July 1984) features on "Welcome to Dreamland" (Celluloid Records CELL 5013), an album of ten Japanese groups. Contact: c/o Zero Records, 32 Shimokawara-cho, Hukakusa, Hushimi-ku, Kyoto 612
Japan.
Many thanks particularly to Haco for her generous cooperation, Mr Utsunomiya for his article & expertise, and Charlie Charles, who carried the first concert cassette from After Dinner to us.
Wondeur Brass - L'Heure des Louves
Recorded at Studio de la Main Gauche, Montreal, Quebec, January 1986. Sound Engineer: Alain DeRoque Words: Danielle Roger Music: Joane Hetu and Diane Labrosse Arranged by Wondeur Brass
Ginette Bergeron: Tenor Saxophone, Vocals Judith Gruber-Stitzer: Bass Joane Hetu: Alto Saxophone
Diane Labrosse: Synthesisers Danielle Roger: Drums Contact c/o Diane Labrosse, CP323 Station Delorimier, Montreal, Quebec H2H 2N7
Wondeur Brass have one excellenl LP .ailable so far,
"RAVIR" (\VB 21385), on their own label. They recenlly
made a highly successful tour in Europe.
Strange Games - "One, Two"
The last time I had a chance to meet the Soviet New Wave band Strange Games was in 1984. I remember it was a dark, cold evening in early winter. With Grisha Sologub, the guitarist of the band, I was standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus which would take us to one of Leningrad's Trade Unions clubs, where the band usually held their rehearsals. The club was right in the centre of the city, its windows facing a beautiful square in the French classical style. Since 1982, when Strange Games registered themselves with the Leningrad House of People's Artistic Creativity as an amateur musical group (or, as it is called officially, a Vocal Instrumental Ensemble), they have been entitled to this kind of luxury -a free space provided by the Soviet authorities where they get themselves organised, store their instruments and (in this imd similar kinds of clubs in Leningrad) do gigs.
The day we met, Grisha explained to me, was a special one. The band's keyboard player, known by his nickname Skvorechnik, had just bought a synthesiser, the first the band had ever had. I! was Soviet made: "They say it's not so bad -a new model." Grisha commented. "But in general," he continued, "the situation with instruments in Leningrad for amateur pop groups is very difficult." Of course, good Western-made instruments can only be obtained on the black market and cost an enormous amount of money. so the group could not possibly afford them. As for Soviet instruments, getting them is also a problem. There aren't enough of them, and besides they are usually not of a very good quality. Grisha's mates always laugh when people try to compare the musical style of Strange Games with Western groups, or even accuse the band of apeing Western New Wave music. "I! would bea great pleasure for us," Grisha said, "to ape someone's style, but how could we do this? Nowadays, in order to model yourself on someone from the West -say, Lhe ew Romantics -you have to have at least a good drum kit and a sophisticated, high-quality synthesiser. We don't have them a'nd probably never will. So such talk in my opinion is pure nonsense."
Still. as Strange Games themselves recognise, particularly at the very beginning of the group's history and eVtJn before the group was formed, all of the musicians were very fond of such groups as Madness, Bod Manners, Police, Specials, UB 40 and the music of Bob Marley. They tried to create their own style on the basis of these influences. Nowadays, although they stiU like to play reggae and ska, their ambitions stretch wider and in new directions. for which, as I understand it, there is a word -experiment.
When Grisha and I turned up at last at the club (late, because the bus, already packed but trying to pick up more and more frozen citizens on their way home from work, moved slowly). the instruments were already set up in the rehearsal room -a club conference hall. Skvorechnik was playing with the new synthesiser. I! squeaked and howled like hell. Although he tried to look calm and confident, he seemed to know very little about what to do with it. His fellow musicians were very patient. As I found out later, Skvorechnik, an ex-graduate of the Leningrad Marxist Ideology School, had dreamt for many years of getting an electronic toy in order to "expand his creative imagination." He wanted to do things "no one had ever yet tried on the Leningrad pop scene."
I was introduced to the rest of the band: Viktor Sologub, second guitarist; Sasha Kondrashkin, drummer; Lesha, saxophonist. Viktor Sologub is Grisha's brother. He went to a musical school when he was a kid, but now works as a researcher is one of Leningrad's Scientific Centres. Like the rest of the band. he is in his late twenties. but is also a family man with two kids on his hands. His wife, a specialist in French langugae and literature, has' been to France, they told me proudly, and she also helps to find the right kind of lyrics for the band 's songs. That was when they found they could not compose their own verses. None of them, I was told, really had a gift for writing lyrics. So rescue came from French dada and surrealist poetry, which suits the band 's image very well. Their favourites are Jean Tardieu and Raymond Queneau.
With his younger brother Grisha and the band 's drummer Sasha Kondrashkin. Viktor Sologub founded Strange Games. He also composes most of the band's music and, what is perhaps not unimportant, his enthusiasm helped to push the band through the usual trials and tribulations any amateur band is bound to go through -find ing a place for rehearsals, dealing with arbitrary and unpredictable clubs and Komsomol administration, as well as the Soviet censors and artistic committees, in order to get permission to organise or take part in gigs. Three years ago. Strange Games went through a rather serious crisis: one of the band's members, a local bohemian, died of a drugs overdose. However, the band does not like to discuss this incident now.
Viktor. Grisha and the saxophonist Lesha do not consider themselves technically good musicians. They are referring to their lack of formal education. Lesha went to a jazz school opened in Leningrad a few years ago but had to quit because, he complained, he could not afford the fee -20 rubles a month (he also has a family). Grisha went to school but he studied mostly Russian folk instruments, so that now he tries to incorporate something from his past, such as balalaika or accordion, into the band's music. Grisha's dream is to base the band's sound more' on Russian traditional folk music and to bring a Russian spirit to Western pop styles. He said however that he really doesn't have enough experience of playing with a pop band. Strange Games is his first and he has played in it for less than three years.
The band see as their strongest point so far their stage shows at live concerts. They like to move and like to act and often do it in a very aggressive manner. They play the characters of their songs on the stage or simply improvise their music, making the gigs half a happening and half theatre. From their point of view a show is very important, so they put on leather jackets, chains and shades, make spikes on their heads and often use the most ghastly make-up. "Leningrad hooligans love us," Grisha admitted shyly. "They take us for nihilists, but really what we are doing is just fun."
Sasha Kondrashkin, the drummer, put away his Walkman and went to the instruments with the others. His friends told me earlier that he listened to music at any available moment : he was listening even during our conversation. He says he listens to all sorts of music. The day we met , for instance, he was listening to Buddhist music, some free jazz and German pop avant-garde. Incidentally, Kondrashkin's favourite band is Germany's Kraftwerk because they change their style all the time. In fact he does not have any favourites and, he says, he appreciates anything which is fresh and new, including, sometimes, Soviet official variety music. Sasha always shares his good musical finds with the rest of the band. For this reason they praise him as their main source of musical information, which is just as well sillce getting new records in Russia, particularly from the West, is always a big problem. Kondrashkin is also a star. He is one of the best drummers in Leningrad.
Lesha ends our talk with a rather unexpected and peculiar resolution: "We are not really fine musicians and, as individuals. perhaps are not fine people either, but as a band Strange Games are good." -- Marianne Dulac
Art Moulu Tréfin, "C'est Bon la Viande!"
Why is Art Moulu Trefin a synonym of houndstooth? Because the "Moulus" are at the same time disgusted, fascinated and above all amused by the consumer society. The houndstooth is the representative motif of a chain of French supermarkets which uses among other things: persusasive methods of advertising like: "meat is good".
Black Sheep, "Power"
Loek Van Saus: Voice
Colin Mclure: Accordion
Ron Krepel: Drums
Theo Olsthoon: Guitar
Recorded at Quarantineweg, Spring 1985
Other recordings: Animal Sounds Vol I (spyhole on reality) MCCB; and note the Zandkorrals cassette (MCCB).
Contact: c/o Loek Van Saus, I Quarantineweg, Heiplaat, Rotterdam, KP 3089 KP Holland
Andre Duchesne, Cantate 159
Composed By JS Bach
Arranged & words adapted to French by Andre Duchesne
Composed for "La Coleur Encerclee" (The encircled colour) a film by Serge &Jean Gagne (1984) -a film primarily about the 'civilised oppression' of the status quo. This Aria is dedicated to the death of Vincent Van Gogh.
Played by:
Bernard Cormier: Viola
Rene Lussier: Electric Guitars
Jean Corriveau: Synthesiser (basses)
Andre Duchesne: Singing
Andre Duchesne, apart from his work with CONVENTUM, has been wntlng music and lyrics since 1968 & music soundtracks for about 20 films since 1973. Other recordings: Andre, Rene Lussier & Bernard Cormier were all in the excellent CONVENTUM whose 2 LPs -"A L'affut D'un Complot" (1977) and "Le Bureau Central Des Utopies" (1979) have now been released, remixed and altered by A.D.M.O. (Association pour la ditTusion de musique ouvertes) as "CONVENTUM 77-79". Rene and Jean Derome also have excellent records (4 between them) on this label (enquiries from RRUK address). Andre's first solo project on disc is Les Temps des Bombes (1984). He is currently composing for the APO-CALYPSO bar guitar-quartet for the Victoriaville festival. Contact: 3913 Rivaad, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2L 4H8
Adrian Mitchell
The murder of the poet Michael Smith by three men in Kingston, Jamaica and Staying awake Phonecall at 1.00 Tuesday 5th August 1986. Recorded by Bill Gilonis. Adrian Mitchell is a poet, novelist, performer and regular contributor to this Quarterly. His current activities include completing work on The Pied Piper, a play (with songs) for children to be performed at the National Theatre (November 1986). He is also writing two more plays: one based on Jules Verne's Mysterious Island; the other "about Maggie Thatcher" and titled The Coppers' Opera. Among his latest publications are three books for children -The Baron Rides Out, The Baron on the Island of Cheese and The Baron All At Sea (all published by Walker Books).
Steve Moore, in his working practice and in his music, has succeeded in using very 'modern' instruments (recording studio, blades and tape, processing devices, &c.) to enhance and distil what is essentially human and affective in the aesthetic currency of sound, This is a crucial area of work and one sadly much neglected: the attention of music criticism, theory and practice tends typically to be occupied with purely musical considerations and the solving of musical problems. Yet it is the weird of recording that it opens up new aesthetic possibilities for sound and sound organisation, including the basis for new principles of construction (beyond notation and the traditionally 'musical'), new motives for composition (for instance to move and affect through the orchestration of charged 'real', environmental sound, the language of whose meaning is more open and less formally constructed than that of previous 'musics') and new spheres of operation (including, most unlimited of all, the territory of the psychological). Steve broaches a subject here that I hope will be much more discussed -it is past time.
LAST month too we touched on the problem of the distance between performers and public in the degree and type of knowiedge each has about what is happening at a concert. This quarter Michael Gerzon writes about the PA system: typically the intermediary between performer and public -and not a neutral intermediary. The PA plays an enormous part in 'constructing' the meaning and the social relations engendered at a performance. Hence Michael's startling title 'The Politics of PA'. I hope we can go further into the psychological and ideological ramifications of this in a later issue. Like Robert Matthews, Michael not only illuminates and criticises, but also offers practical proposals.
Mr Utsunomiya of AFTER DINNER also writes of PA problems of a type encountered almost universally at electric music concerts and treated, strangely, as 'inevitable', accepted by groups and public alike without question. Groups either grumble or concern themselves only with the sound in their monitors (which, argues Mr Utsunomiya, makes the end sound even worse), leaving the sound the public hears to be dealt with as best it can by the sound mixer sitting in the hall. The public also usually grumbles, but feels powerless and in any case has no knowledge of what the problem is, since basic knowledge ,about the production and reproduction of music in the medium they like....Even though the event involves real human proximity, still an in expertise on the part of the public disconnects them from participation in the aesthetics of production and propagation. The powerlessnes that flows from this has to be compensated for by dehumanising -negating -the producers, making them abstractions and their work some kind of pure expression of their being, rather than the product of an imperfect struggle with materials and time. For the group the public becomes similarly alienated, one of the external factors to be worked upon and manipulated to a successful outcome; strangers who do not take part in the work but unpredictably operate on it -like the acoustics, the sound equipment or stimulants in the bloodstream, etc. On the aesthetic ground the only way a public ear can know the details and subtleties of a performance is if it is enabled to hear them. But clarity is not usual, not expected, and the concert ear -in direct contradiction to the record-listening ear or the concert ear of an 'Art music' audience, has hardly even learned HOW to listen critically: I mean, to hear inside the sound or to hear expression mediated by the sound. To learn these listening skills will be an empirical matter -and primary will be the provision of good quality sound through which to listen, sound that can give the ear a chance to educate itself. Initially it seems that it must rest with musicians and sound engineers working as equal partners in groups to solve the problems that impede this development. Some groups try not to get a 'good' commercial sound (Abba and many similar groups spend millions on this; but a good commercial stage sound is one that, far from letting the listener in, takes immense pains to keep them out: to dehumanise) -but a good sound for listeneing and getting inside (Discos and especially West Indian Sound Systems, dub and scratch record manipulators, &c., take great care of these things and it is extraordinary that players of live music, who could control the subtlety and expressivity of sound far more, tend not to -except, again, when they are making a record). Michael Gerzon mentions some attempts to tackle this lack and here Mr Utsunomiya reports on his practical innovations with AFTER DINNER.
I wanted only to draw these related articles together. The others, on broader topics, speak perfectly for themselves, I only add that it gives real pleasure to have Greil Marcus in these pages -rare as a writer in our field who finds the place where passion for the form (and those who give it life) is informed and deepened by an intellectual analysis and a political will. For the breadth of his position 'Mystery Train' is still easy to come by and indispensible to start with. For us (Europeans) particularly it gives an invaluable insight into the American experience of the growth and 'meaning' of our now shared musics an experience we never really knew yet which seemed to come implied but inchoate in the package as we imported it, mixed inextricably with the deeper elements which did have existential meaning for us -and which we could appropriate for our own purposes. Or try to. American and European rock still have very different and very divergent cultural teleologies, but should be able to understand and be enriched by one another. Greil, illuminating his own culture, also helps make our translation clearer. Here, however, he writes about politics, and this needs no translation.
FINALLY, when we began this venture we said we'd run it for one year and then assess how it had worked. This is the end of that year (although it has taken 16 months to get there!). We are happy with the way the project has slowly taken shape and with the responses to it -which have been very good, in quality certainly, if not SO much as we had hoped in quantity. Still, so long as we are able, we'll try to continue. This year too has been marked by a number of disasters and problems for our parent company, Recommended, all of which are not yet settled; and this is will' deadlines haven't always been met. But, with the best intentions. and 1000 plans and projects-on our pad, we now dot the i's and CROSS the t's on VOLUME 1 and prepare to open Volume 2. which will begin with a special issue devoted to questions raised through the new technology and the experience and practice of 'classical' or 'Art' music , about what music actually can be -what can be meant by it? -- Chris Cutler
After Dinner
Recorded at Musiam Square, Osaka on February 2nd 1986 by Manabu Takagi. This concert also included visual works and dance performance. It was part of a tour sponsored by ZERO records. The players were: Haco: Vocal Mutsuhiko Izumi: Guitar Ichiro Inoue: Percussion Seiichi Kuroda: Bass, Hichiriki Hideyuki Yamagata: Drums Tadahiko Yokogawa: Bass, Violin (Tapes and Singing on "RE") Kenji Konishi: Melotron, Keyboards Tomoko Tsunoda: Violin Also at the concert were: Yashushi Utsunomiya: Master conductor, tape operation & submixing Sanae Hamada: Dancing Akihiro Yamada & Masaichi Kaminuma: Slide composition The tape here was mixed down from 8 to 2 tracks at After Dinner's own M.U.E. Studio, I expect by Haco and Mr Utsunomiya.
Of the songs selected here
After Dinner
A Walnut
RE
A Man ofMarble
Glass Tube
-all words & music are by Haco, except for "RE", by Tadahiko Yokogawa. Tracks 1& 5 have appeared in different versions on the LP "After Dinner" (Recommended Records'-RR C20). The remainder have not appeared on record before. After Dinner's The Room of Hair-mobile (recorded with Fred Frith in July 1984) features on "Welcome to Dreamland" (Celluloid Records CELL 5013), an album of ten Japanese groups. Contact: c/o Zero Records, 32 Shimokawara-cho, Hukakusa, Hushimi-ku, Kyoto 612
Japan.
Many thanks particularly to Haco for her generous cooperation, Mr Utsunomiya for his article & expertise, and Charlie Charles, who carried the first concert cassette from After Dinner to us.
Wondeur Brass - L'Heure des Louves
Recorded at Studio de la Main Gauche, Montreal, Quebec, January 1986. Sound Engineer: Alain DeRoque Words: Danielle Roger Music: Joane Hetu and Diane Labrosse Arranged by Wondeur Brass
Ginette Bergeron: Tenor Saxophone, Vocals Judith Gruber-Stitzer: Bass Joane Hetu: Alto Saxophone
Diane Labrosse: Synthesisers Danielle Roger: Drums Contact c/o Diane Labrosse, CP323 Station Delorimier, Montreal, Quebec H2H 2N7
Wondeur Brass have one excellenl LP .ailable so far,
"RAVIR" (\VB 21385), on their own label. They recenlly
made a highly successful tour in Europe.
Strange Games - "One, Two"
The last time I had a chance to meet the Soviet New Wave band Strange Games was in 1984. I remember it was a dark, cold evening in early winter. With Grisha Sologub, the guitarist of the band, I was standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus which would take us to one of Leningrad's Trade Unions clubs, where the band usually held their rehearsals. The club was right in the centre of the city, its windows facing a beautiful square in the French classical style. Since 1982, when Strange Games registered themselves with the Leningrad House of People's Artistic Creativity as an amateur musical group (or, as it is called officially, a Vocal Instrumental Ensemble), they have been entitled to this kind of luxury -a free space provided by the Soviet authorities where they get themselves organised, store their instruments and (in this imd similar kinds of clubs in Leningrad) do gigs.
The day we met, Grisha explained to me, was a special one. The band's keyboard player, known by his nickname Skvorechnik, had just bought a synthesiser, the first the band had ever had. I! was Soviet made: "They say it's not so bad -a new model." Grisha commented. "But in general," he continued, "the situation with instruments in Leningrad for amateur pop groups is very difficult." Of course, good Western-made instruments can only be obtained on the black market and cost an enormous amount of money. so the group could not possibly afford them. As for Soviet instruments, getting them is also a problem. There aren't enough of them, and besides they are usually not of a very good quality. Grisha's mates always laugh when people try to compare the musical style of Strange Games with Western groups, or even accuse the band of apeing Western New Wave music. "I! would bea great pleasure for us," Grisha said, "to ape someone's style, but how could we do this? Nowadays, in order to model yourself on someone from the West -say, Lhe ew Romantics -you have to have at least a good drum kit and a sophisticated, high-quality synthesiser. We don't have them a'nd probably never will. So such talk in my opinion is pure nonsense."
Still. as Strange Games themselves recognise, particularly at the very beginning of the group's history and eVtJn before the group was formed, all of the musicians were very fond of such groups as Madness, Bod Manners, Police, Specials, UB 40 and the music of Bob Marley. They tried to create their own style on the basis of these influences. Nowadays, although they stiU like to play reggae and ska, their ambitions stretch wider and in new directions. for which, as I understand it, there is a word -experiment.
When Grisha and I turned up at last at the club (late, because the bus, already packed but trying to pick up more and more frozen citizens on their way home from work, moved slowly). the instruments were already set up in the rehearsal room -a club conference hall. Skvorechnik was playing with the new synthesiser. I! squeaked and howled like hell. Although he tried to look calm and confident, he seemed to know very little about what to do with it. His fellow musicians were very patient. As I found out later, Skvorechnik, an ex-graduate of the Leningrad Marxist Ideology School, had dreamt for many years of getting an electronic toy in order to "expand his creative imagination." He wanted to do things "no one had ever yet tried on the Leningrad pop scene."
I was introduced to the rest of the band: Viktor Sologub, second guitarist; Sasha Kondrashkin, drummer; Lesha, saxophonist. Viktor Sologub is Grisha's brother. He went to a musical school when he was a kid, but now works as a researcher is one of Leningrad's Scientific Centres. Like the rest of the band. he is in his late twenties. but is also a family man with two kids on his hands. His wife, a specialist in French langugae and literature, has' been to France, they told me proudly, and she also helps to find the right kind of lyrics for the band 's songs. That was when they found they could not compose their own verses. None of them, I was told, really had a gift for writing lyrics. So rescue came from French dada and surrealist poetry, which suits the band 's image very well. Their favourites are Jean Tardieu and Raymond Queneau.
With his younger brother Grisha and the band 's drummer Sasha Kondrashkin. Viktor Sologub founded Strange Games. He also composes most of the band's music and, what is perhaps not unimportant, his enthusiasm helped to push the band through the usual trials and tribulations any amateur band is bound to go through -find ing a place for rehearsals, dealing with arbitrary and unpredictable clubs and Komsomol administration, as well as the Soviet censors and artistic committees, in order to get permission to organise or take part in gigs. Three years ago. Strange Games went through a rather serious crisis: one of the band's members, a local bohemian, died of a drugs overdose. However, the band does not like to discuss this incident now.
Viktor. Grisha and the saxophonist Lesha do not consider themselves technically good musicians. They are referring to their lack of formal education. Lesha went to a jazz school opened in Leningrad a few years ago but had to quit because, he complained, he could not afford the fee -20 rubles a month (he also has a family). Grisha went to school but he studied mostly Russian folk instruments, so that now he tries to incorporate something from his past, such as balalaika or accordion, into the band's music. Grisha's dream is to base the band's sound more' on Russian traditional folk music and to bring a Russian spirit to Western pop styles. He said however that he really doesn't have enough experience of playing with a pop band. Strange Games is his first and he has played in it for less than three years.
The band see as their strongest point so far their stage shows at live concerts. They like to move and like to act and often do it in a very aggressive manner. They play the characters of their songs on the stage or simply improvise their music, making the gigs half a happening and half theatre. From their point of view a show is very important, so they put on leather jackets, chains and shades, make spikes on their heads and often use the most ghastly make-up. "Leningrad hooligans love us," Grisha admitted shyly. "They take us for nihilists, but really what we are doing is just fun."
Sasha Kondrashkin, the drummer, put away his Walkman and went to the instruments with the others. His friends told me earlier that he listened to music at any available moment : he was listening even during our conversation. He says he listens to all sorts of music. The day we met , for instance, he was listening to Buddhist music, some free jazz and German pop avant-garde. Incidentally, Kondrashkin's favourite band is Germany's Kraftwerk because they change their style all the time. In fact he does not have any favourites and, he says, he appreciates anything which is fresh and new, including, sometimes, Soviet official variety music. Sasha always shares his good musical finds with the rest of the band. For this reason they praise him as their main source of musical information, which is just as well sillce getting new records in Russia, particularly from the West, is always a big problem. Kondrashkin is also a star. He is one of the best drummers in Leningrad.
Lesha ends our talk with a rather unexpected and peculiar resolution: "We are not really fine musicians and, as individuals. perhaps are not fine people either, but as a band Strange Games are good." -- Marianne Dulac
Art Moulu Tréfin, "C'est Bon la Viande!"
Why is Art Moulu Trefin a synonym of houndstooth? Because the "Moulus" are at the same time disgusted, fascinated and above all amused by the consumer society. The houndstooth is the representative motif of a chain of French supermarkets which uses among other things: persusasive methods of advertising like: "meat is good".
Black Sheep, "Power"
Loek Van Saus: Voice
Colin Mclure: Accordion
Ron Krepel: Drums
Theo Olsthoon: Guitar
Recorded at Quarantineweg, Spring 1985
Other recordings: Animal Sounds Vol I (spyhole on reality) MCCB; and note the Zandkorrals cassette (MCCB).
Contact: c/o Loek Van Saus, I Quarantineweg, Heiplaat, Rotterdam, KP 3089 KP Holland
Andre Duchesne, Cantate 159
Composed By JS Bach
Arranged & words adapted to French by Andre Duchesne
Composed for "La Coleur Encerclee" (The encircled colour) a film by Serge &Jean Gagne (1984) -a film primarily about the 'civilised oppression' of the status quo. This Aria is dedicated to the death of Vincent Van Gogh.
Played by:
Bernard Cormier: Viola
Rene Lussier: Electric Guitars
Jean Corriveau: Synthesiser (basses)
Andre Duchesne: Singing
Andre Duchesne, apart from his work with CONVENTUM, has been wntlng music and lyrics since 1968 & music soundtracks for about 20 films since 1973. Other recordings: Andre, Rene Lussier & Bernard Cormier were all in the excellent CONVENTUM whose 2 LPs -"A L'affut D'un Complot" (1977) and "Le Bureau Central Des Utopies" (1979) have now been released, remixed and altered by A.D.M.O. (Association pour la ditTusion de musique ouvertes) as "CONVENTUM 77-79". Rene and Jean Derome also have excellent records (4 between them) on this label (enquiries from RRUK address). Andre's first solo project on disc is Les Temps des Bombes (1984). He is currently composing for the APO-CALYPSO bar guitar-quartet for the Victoriaville festival. Contact: 3913 Rivaad, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2L 4H8
Adrian Mitchell
The murder of the poet Michael Smith by three men in Kingston, Jamaica and Staying awake Phonecall at 1.00 Tuesday 5th August 1986. Recorded by Bill Gilonis. Adrian Mitchell is a poet, novelist, performer and regular contributor to this Quarterly. His current activities include completing work on The Pied Piper, a play (with songs) for children to be performed at the National Theatre (November 1986). He is also writing two more plays: one based on Jules Verne's Mysterious Island; the other "about Maggie Thatcher" and titled The Coppers' Opera. Among his latest publications are three books for children -The Baron Rides Out, The Baron on the Island of Cheese and The Baron All At Sea (all published by Walker Books).
Labels: Adrian Mitchell, After Dinner, Andre Duchesne, Art Moulu Trefin, Avant Garde Project, Black Sheep, Strange Games, Wondeur Brass
posted by jodru at 23:00
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ARTISTS FOR ANIMALS collects artists, musicians, writers, actors, poets etc who are against the exploitation of animals and who are putting that message over in their work to make people aware of the issue, to encourage people to think about the way humans are treating other species and to raise money to help fund the campaign for animal liberation. All monies raised go to the Animal Liberation Front. Anyone wishing to help them with recorded works, illustrations, concerts, live performances, venues, exhibitions etc can contact them at: c/o Slip Records, PO Box 18, South PDO, Manchester M14 5NB.
CONNIE BAUER 
ADRIAN MITCHELL 
