what's happening at The Non-Writer?
live music stories, videos and book plans
It’s been over a year since I’ve done one of these “what’s happening” posts. I’m having trouble finishing other stuff to publish here, so let’s give this a go once again.
Are you finding the world full of more distractions than usual lately? To prevent this from becoming overwhelming, I finally decided to immerse myself more in the distractions I live for in order to get away from the ones I live against. And I live for live music.
Going to these shows is not an escape from the real world. For me it IS the real world — real people playing real music. I love sharing the experience with other fans, meeting the musicians, and sometimes telling their stories right here.
In this article, I’ve got a few noise and free-jazz stories from San Francisco dive bars, along with some interesting connections about two avant-rock bands I saw at larger venues just in the last two weeks.
After that I’ll give you an update on some of the longer form follow-up stories I’ve been working on (and off), as well as my plans for the forever-work-in-progress book The Gomelsky Recording.
First up are the 3 dive bars and 1 bookstore shows. It was noise improv at the dive bars and free jazz at the bookstore. I created short videos of each show to give you a taste of the performance. I’ve gotten more involved with video editing since starting with interviews a few years ago. I’ve discovered I enjoy it immensely. Last year I upgraded my editing software. These short live music videos are my way of learning how to use it, along with trying to show more than just a still camera shoot of the event. As with my writing, I try to tell a visual story of the performance with each video. I also want to share info on the artists so you can support their work. You can find that in the video description.
The first story comes from the Peacock Lounge in San Francisco’s Lower Haight district. They host a monthly series of weird music that’s been going on for years. It’s supposed to be on the 2nd Thur of the month, but that can change and I never seem to see announcements about the shows. I saw this one because one of the performers was also one of the early interviews I did for the Gomelsky book.
Elliott Levin is well known for his days playing reeds with Cecil Taylor. He toured briefly with the Gomelsky managed Zu Band and NY Gong in the late 70’s. You can hear all about that in the interview here:
Elliott Levin Interview: from Cecil Taylor to Daevid Allen and NY Gong
Elliott lives in Philly and doesn’t get to the west coast often, so it was great to see him in person. You can catch some of his performance on the short video I’ll link to in a second. But it’s not Elliott that this story is about.
One of the opening performers that night was a young drummer with a microphone draped around his neck. His drums and mic were running through electronic devices. He proceeded to attack his drum kit with a ferocity you don’t want to get too close to without wearing protective gear. I speak from experience. I used to play ice hockey.
He calls this performance Chlorine Aroma. I spoke with him briefly and later tried to look him up. I could only find an Instagram account for him. I’ll paraphrase what I found from that and the gig announcement: “bleeding edge of noise percussion … emptying into the deepest cisterns of the bay area underground … feeds live drums still kicking into MaxMSP. Bring a band-aid for your mind, razor sharp edges inside!”
My mind has healed sufficiently by now, and it’s probably safe for you to watch a short excerpt of this without getting too cut up. Take your chances here:
The next story finds me at The Knockout in the Outer Mission District. This is probably the diviest of the 3 dive bars I’m writing about here. Just one of the many things I love about it. In fact, let me count the ways. It’s one of the closest live music bars to me in SF. I live just outside of SF and it’s an easy drive and usually easy parking. They often do EARLY shows which this old geezer really appreciates. And last but not least, it reminds me of some of the punk dives I frequented in the 1980’s.
The Knockout occasionally offers up experimental bands, and this time a trio from LA was playing. Anything! is a rock trio with 2 guitarists and a drummer (one of the guitarists also played sax). They did a set of high energy free improvisation from start to finish. When I looked them up later, I was not too surprised to see that their most recent Bandcamp release was mastered by none other than Weasel Walter, mister brutal improv himself.
I corresponded briefly with guitarist Nate: “All three of us play in several other projects including other free music, synth punk and jazz type stuff. Anything! Is for all of us a specific getaway. The LA improv scene is pretty great. There are interesting shows nearly weekly at several venues and houses etc. We have played Scribble, Coaxial, and other random interesting nights at bars and clubs.”
I have to admit that I’ve lost touch with the LA improv and experimental music scene. I never get to LA anymore, but seeing a band like this gets me inspired to DO IT. If you can’t do it, then check out this excerpt of Anything!:
Next up I find myself at another monthly series, this time one that I’ve been attending often for over a year now. Jazz at the Make-Out Room has become a reliable event for me to find quality improvised music from a variety of genres. If I have one complaint about these shows, it’s that they often play nearly in the dark. Sometimes that can work, but most often I want to connect with the performer visually as well as audibly. Maybe that’s just me. I also like to connect neurally, as in how the sound waves vibrate my body. I guess you don’t need lighting for that. I simply want the whole body experience with my live music. Is that too much to ask?
The performance of Solo Organ is one of those whole body experiences. It is loud and dissonant and relentless. Douglas Katelus is a large man, so even in the near dark you can’t miss his heaving body and flailing arms as he attacks the organ, sometimes leaving his bench, standing up and moving around the instrument to attack from different angles. He calls the sound “Heavy free-form wall of sound organ. The sound is somewhere between noise and blues all while attempting to pull some sort of drone out of the traditional rock and roll 4 chord structure.”
I first saw Doug do this at my neighborhood Winters Tavern venue several years ago. At that time I had no idea what to expect as I watched this guy load a full size Hammond B3 into the bar. I asked him about that at this recent show. He said hauling that beast around was no big deal. Today he’s using a slightly more portable organ that still sounds like a B3.
When I shot this video of his performance, I knew it was going to be too dark, and it was. But I still thought I could do something with it. I played around with the editor trying to “brighten” it, but it looked horrible. I decided to embrace the darkness and go with some full-on special effect that I’ve never used before. Hope you like it:
This fourth and final dive bar story happened at a bookstore in a divey neighborhood. I used to live in this neighborhood last century and it was divey then too. Then and now, it’s been a mix of attractive art and restaurant storefronts, along with the scary looking what’s-going-on-in-that-place? open doors that you just don’t look in as you pass by. I owned a police scanner when I lived there so I could monitor what shit was going down before I left my building.
The bookstore/venue for this show is called Medicine for Nightmares, an ominous name for a lovely bookstore that you might mistake for a Barnes & Noble if you were just plopped into the middle of it not knowing where you were. Well lit and well organized, I look forward to going back to do some browsing. Right now the music was about to start and I wanted to grab one of the last remaining seats.
The performances take place in the very back of the bookstore where you’ll find a large art gallery. Oftentimes these bookstore music performances can feel cramped, but here there’s plenty of space for both audience and players to stretch out (pun intended).
Tonight’s show is part of a weekly series produced by sax player David Boyce who’s been playing music in the SF area since 1989. Some of you may know him from his work in the trio Broun Fellinis. Here’s what David told me.
“This series is a chance for folks to hear experimental music that is non-traditional, cliche free and creative. I perform/curate the series at the behest of Tan and Josiah, owners of the bookstore who wanted to have music in their lovely gallery space. My hope was to fill a much needed void in the SF bay area music scene for creative avant garde music that is underrepresented. We’ve been going steadily for nearly 3 years, the audience has been growing and some amazing music has been experienced.”
The players this night included Oakland experimental band Grex featuring Karl Evangelista - gtr/voice, Rei Scampavia - keys/voice, Robert Lopez - drums. You may remember Karl from my recent story about his monthly series Jazz at The Make-Out Room. In that story Karl talked about musicians affected by the LA fires. One of those musicians, William Roper - tuba, would join him tonight, as well as Francis Wong - sax, and the host/curator of tonight’s event David Boyce - sax.
William and Francis played first, with William mixing poetry into the improvisation and Francis often responding with his own words. They both have a great sense of humor that can be heard in the music as well as the words. Even when William was talking about his own personal tragedy regarding the LA fire (he lost his home), there was a strong feeling of “life goes on” rather than a feeling of loss.
At the end of the show, all 6 musicians would play together in what would be a rousing build up to a finish. They kicked off with a Grex composition. The groove and rap stylings of Grex soon morphed into a free-jazz extravaganza that got me out of my seat. It’s an excerpt from this piece that I put on this video:
This article is going longer than I expected. I’ll finish the rest of the stories I promised in the next article, so stay tuned.
…………………. TO BE CONTINUED …………………..
doug is a badass
Hey, Rick- Great article.