WoG Cassettes Next: Madness Lives
WoG 021 - Live Improvisations
1985
Architects Office
"Ciconia To Beethoven"
(29:07)
Architects Office Performance #6
The Boulder Center For The Visual Arts
3/25/84
Musicians: Joel Haertling, Paul Kern, David Lichtenverg, Charles Verrette, Evan Cantor, Trevor Haertling and Claude Martz.
Post-Architects
"Eternity"
(10:47)
Halls Of Genius
2/12/85
Musicians: David Lichtenverg, Ed Fowler, Evan Cantor, Charles Verrette, Peter Saucier, Gary and Georg.
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor
"Pure Happenstance, Part I"
(5:02)
The Brilligworks
6/5/84
Space Probe
"Improvisation I & II"
(40:05)
The Brilligworks
May 1984
Musicians: David Lichtenverg (Synthesizer), Evan Cantor (Bass Guitar) and Claude Martz (Bass Clarinet)
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor
"Pure Happenstance, Part II"
(5:17)
The Brilligworks
6/5/84
"Ciconia To Beethoven"
(29:07)
Architects Office Performance #6
The Boulder Center For The Visual Arts
3/25/84
Musicians: Joel Haertling, Paul Kern, David Lichtenverg, Charles Verrette, Evan Cantor, Trevor Haertling and Claude Martz.
Post-Architects
"Eternity"
(10:47)
Halls Of Genius
2/12/85
Musicians: David Lichtenverg, Ed Fowler, Evan Cantor, Charles Verrette, Peter Saucier, Gary and Georg.
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor
"Pure Happenstance, Part I"
(5:02)
The Brilligworks
6/5/84
Space Probe
"Improvisation I & II"
(40:05)
The Brilligworks
May 1984
Musicians: David Lichtenverg (Synthesizer), Evan Cantor (Bass Guitar) and Claude Martz (Bass Clarinet)
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor
"Pure Happenstance, Part II"
(5:17)
The Brilligworks
6/5/84
|
Evan Cantor:
Live Improvisations: This is a very matter-of-fact title, designed to sound “serious”, as this was a “serious” release, or as “serious” as WoG ever got. We were, by this time, starting to take ourselves more seriously than ever before. The success of our previous two releases made us quite prominent in the underground scene, but we still felt that people thought we were musical naïfs at best or, at worst, incompetents. This outing featured nothing but live improvisational performances, reflecting that more “serious” side of the group. The previous releases, while quite complex and serious in their own ways, featured a good deal more of the comedy and silliness (Before…And After, The Mysterious Case of Pussy Lust) with which we were associated. The idea of live improvisation was partly inspired by our involvement with Architects Office, but had always been an integral part of our modus-operandi. It also reflected our on-going desire to be taken seriously by the underground scene via the ‘zines and the full magazines like Option and Unsound. Regardless of how well or poorly received our previous two titles had been, we still labored, or thought we did, under people’s misconceptions about our musical competence. Just as people bought the marketing illusion that the Sex Pistols didn’t know how to play their instruments, it was the same with us. We quite often feigned incompetence, embraced absurdity and sang like lunatics, and it worked because there was a background of competency. But it was hard to get any credit for that. It took a lot of people a long time to realize just how subversive it all was. There was still some confusion in reviewers’ minds about the multiple-band illusion as well. We were now representing Architects Office, so the multiple-band illusion was becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy. One reviewer for Unsound (Steve Perkins) who loved Ludovico Treatment panned The Mysterious Case Of Pussy Lust and, to this day, we don’t know if he realized they were the same band. In response to these perceptions or mis-perceptions, we issued an item that would show how serious we could be about making abstract music-art, as we had done once before with Ludovico Treatment. And to top it off, it was completely “live” material, except for the taped material used, so there were no “illusions” being created by overdubbing. Instruments were actually being played by musicians! Imagine that! (he says, tongue firmly in cheek) For this release, despite any confusion about who we might or might not be, we went back to multiple band names. For one thing, the opening track was performed by Architects Office, which was itself a separate group, but recorded under the aegis of Walls of Genius and including two of the three primary members of Walls of Genius. By the time of this release, WoG was likely persona-non-grata with Architects Office leader Joel Haertling. But since I had made the recordings at the Boulder Center for Visual Art during our period of collaboration with A/O, I likely felt a proprietary right to release this previously un-released track. Post-Architects was recorded about 11 months after that A/O performance. Except for Ed Fowler, it represented a group of musicians who had either been summarily dismissed from A/O by Joel or had quit A/O on their own volition. Charlie Verrette is credited as “Charles”. He was a good pal of ours and we had played with him in A/O and supported his band-vision with his group Doll Parts. I recorded some Doll Parts sessions and the reel boxes are marked “C.V.” and Doll Parts. Peter Saucier I can picture in my mind but recall nothing more about him. “Georg” was an Austrian fellow that we knew through A/O. All I recall of him is that we thought the pronunciation of his name (“Gay Org”) very amusing. I have no idea who “Gary” was, but he was likely another participant in A/O who had quit or been dismissed. Space Probe consisted of David Lichtenberg, Claude Martz and myself (Evan Cantor). Timm Lenk, David Lichtenberg and Evan Cantor billed ourselves as such. The cover featured alternate funny-face drawings I had made on cut-outs of colored paper. I utilized the same technique as on Crazed To The Core by using a black background and printing on colored paper. The lettering of the title was made with the same stick-on letters that I had used for Crazed. We gave “special thanks to Frank Zygmunt for 1/8” sheet plastic”. This was a big sheet of plastic that came from a fluorescent light fixture and when you held it by both hands and moved it about, it created a terrific “whoop whoop” sound that we used on a number of occasions. Frank was a dedicated fan. He had already given us the warped autoharp that he found in a dumpster. David and I both remain in touch with Frank to this day. We thanked Jane Carpenter for tapes used on Space Probe. These were the same tapes that I had made in her machine shop for Ludovico Treatment. We gave special thanks to “Sleepless nights DJs for witnessing so much of the music herein”. ‘Sleepless Nights’ was the name of the late night radio show on KGNU public-radio where so much of our music saw the light of “day” (or “night” as was the case). We also mentioned “Watt” by Samuel Beckett, the source of my taped reading on the Space Probe track. |
Little Fyodor (David Lichtenberg):
You could probably have seen this coming. After long totally free-form improvisations on 90 minute long tapes had been a large chunk of what Walls Of Genius had originally been about, we had been begun putting out shorter, more focused tapes that largely ignored this aspect of our interests. Yet we had some long improvisational efforts “in the can” that hadn’t seen release just because they didn’t fit the concepts of our last several releases (for one reason or another). And so we figured we may as well put out a release dedicated exclusively to this thus far forgotten body of work, still thinking as we did that everything we did that we considered worthwhile to have done and to be heard should in fact be shared with the world and thus “released”. Another example, of course, of stylistic segregation, this was not a “major” release and only received very limited distribution or promotion, if any at all of the latter…. I encouraged Evan to put the Architects Office material on this tape. He first brought up the possibility, but with palpable trepidation and uncertainty, and I told him don’t worry, just do it, be happy, so what? My feelings about this were consistent with our general MO, that music wants to be heard, so why bury it -- release it! And I felt we had a right to this music having been participants in it (Evan’s own sense of that may have derived more from his having recorded it; this was not as much of a factor for me, but yeah, that’s in there, too). Sure, Joel Haertling considered himself to the sole “owner” of the music, but this was far from clear when we first began participating in it, when it seemed we were all pretty much equals as improvisers, even if Joel clearly seemed to be the “Head Architect” to some degree. We may or may not have learned of Joel’s reserving of all AO rights to himself by the time we played at this the second to last of the AO shows that Evan recorded (I know there was at least one more AO show we both played which Evan didn’t record because I remember one that took place in the Boulder band shell located in Boulder’s Central Park, a show at which we all played through a mixer that Joel used to turn each musician’s music up or down (including all the way down) at his discretion, leading Charlie Verrette to later say, “Well, we all wanted to kill Joel that day!”). We certainly knew of it by the time we released this tape, and I can certainly see that the ethically optimal thing to do would have been to ask Joel’s permission, but we wanted to release this regardless of what his answer would be, and we didn’t want to ask him regardless in light of the ugly events that had transpired between us, and so we didn’t. And yeah sure, okay, I can also see how this action may not only have been sub-optimal but maybe clearly fails any strictly applied rules of ethics. Well, I guess we were looking at it from the artistic point of view, ha-ha! Again, we were part of the music that was made and an argument could be made that we were there as equal participants. Would I be okay with someone doing this to me? I’d like to think that I would view any free improvisation I participated in as equally owned by all participants and that any release of the resulting music by any of other participants would be fair game as long as everyone (i.e. me) received proper credit (we did list Joel first!) and would be dealt in were any “real money” ever to be made (ha-ha). Of course, maybe that’s easy for me to say never having been on that receiving end of such a move. Plus, was this music really free improvisation as such? Or was it Joel’s “composition” since he made the backing tapes and he named the project and he may have booked the gig (at the Boulder Center for Visual Arts, now called the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, a pretty posh and respectable setting for us ragtag underground types!) and he was the one who recruited and instructed us all to go forth and improvise? Who knows, I think a case could be made either way, it’s all so abstract. If anyone really wants to dock us ethical demerit points for this, feel free to direct that at me as I take full responsibility for pushing Evan off the dividing line onto the side of going ahead with this. My role as such was somewhat ironic in some respect as I was the much less emotionally invested of the two of us in the conflicts that had gone down between AO and WoG that ruined that partnership. But then, we didn’t do this out of malice anyway, but out of a love for the music in which he had participated and a desire to share it. Maybe I’m biased, but I actually think this may be the best AO material released by WoG. That said, as I said above, this tape never received much if any promotion or distribution beyond the merest basics, and thus this whole ethical agony diatribe is largely a tempest in a teapot anyway, and even then only a tempest for as long as I’m writing about it, and it will cease again to even matter that much once I’m finished, to my mind, anyway…. Speaking of merest basic distribution, we did send a copy of this tape to Joel, and he sent it back (unopened?) with a brief note saying something like, “Sorry Evan, but I am not interested in this.” That said, he never made any fuss about it beyond that, either (that we were ever made aware of anyway), so I guess kudos to him for that. The feud did continue, so maybe this fed his anger at us for all I know, but there was zero fallout over this in any direct or concrete way that I was ever aware of, it was just never brought up in one way or the other…. |
Side A
Architects Office - "Ciconia To Beethoven"
Post-Architects - "Eternity"
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor - "Pure Happenstance, Part I"
Architects Office - "Ciconia To Beethoven"
Post-Architects - "Eternity"
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor - "Pure Happenstance, Part I"
“Ciconia To Beethoven” (Architects Office)
Evan Cantor:
This was essentially an “out-take” from the two A/O cassettes we had produced earlier. Why it had not been chosen for either of those, I couldn’t say, except to say that although I had recorded the sessions, Joel Haertling chose the material for Partitions and Dispensation. There is a lot of acoustic percussion and drums on this track and I have lived for many years with the impression that Joel wanted to move away from such overt musical elements. At the time of release, he and I had completed our falling-out, but I likely felt a propriety right or interest in the music since I had recorded it and David and I had performed on it as members of Architects Office. So in the process of putting together a “live improvisations” cassette, this material was available in our own archive. The recording was made at the Boulder Center for Visual Art (now the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, in Central Park, Boulder). Participants included group leader Joel Haertling, Paul Kern, David Lichtenverg (aka “Little Fyodor”), Charles Verrette, Evan Cantor, Trevor Haertling and Claude Martz. We played out in the big front room, an open space that lent itself to sculptural exhibition on occasion.
Little Fyodor:
As to the music itself, in league with the other Architects Office material of this time, it’s more mass synthesizer improvisation with Evan on percussion, mostly his roto-toms, all to Joel’s prepared tape, once again putting a lot of emphasis on classical music with a number of other repeating motifs, a bell ringing, an old car horn ah-oogling, etc. That loud synthesizer that comes in about three minutes or so in might be mine, it sounds like something I would do, but as always with listening to these AO tapes thirty years later, it’s next to impossible to be sure with all the synthesizers that were there. Maybe not six as I originally remembered, but at least three for this show. At the 21 minute mark I’m hearing more synth sounds that sound like me as well as the first bit of Claude’s bass clarinet that I’ve noticed. Heh, seems there’s a lot less talking in the audience now than during the first several minutes of the piece. Once again, not sure if Joel’s son Trevor’s voice is live or on the tape, but it may very well be live as he’s given credit as one of the musicians, and I seem to remember him doing that at various points. I think I heard a little bit of laughter in the audience too, maybe a reaction to his vocalizing. Then we hear some bagpipes on the tape and that’s probably Evan playing the old WoG three-bell along with it. Evan responds to the military calls on his roto-toms. That’s Joel saying “We’ll take a little break” to a smattering of applause at the end. I remember him telling someone that he was in the habit of saying “little” on account of having a young child and always saying “little” this and “little” that to him….
EC:
The piece starts out with a cacophony of Joel’s tapes. I hear Frank Zygmunt’s plastic sheet whoop-whooping in the background. A recording of a horn going “ooh-ga! ooh-ga!” is followed by bell-ringing. This tape would re-occur during the piece as a kind of announcement or warning to the listener. The drums (played by Evan) are going wild while a Beethoven symphony sounds and synthesizers wail away. Rhythmic percussion comes in while the synths continue to go strong. The synths stop for an organ recording, sounding a bit like Bach, cut up and repeating. Everything stops while a choir sings. Drums come up prominently as all the synths chime in. It sounds like my old set of Roto-toms. Then some cheesy television music comes in, stops and starts, the bells and ooh-ga sound, it all works up again to another drum frenzy. Claude Martz’s bass clarinet comes in with a lot of drumming. Some Teutonic music-hall singing comes in and then tapes of piano enter while the Roto-toms pound out a fairly regular beat. A tape of a child’s voice sounds, likely that of Trevor Haertling, Joel’s son, since Trevor is listed as a participant. The oohga! introduces bagpipes and a lot of pipe-banging percussion sounds. A moment of silence is followed by a martial screaming voice. It doesn’t sound quite like Hitler, but it’s very close, martial German uber-blather. Unintelligible PA announcements follow with plenty of drums. The piece ebbs into a tape of some major key orchestral thing and then stops with a voice announcing “we’re going to take a break”.
Evan Cantor:
This was essentially an “out-take” from the two A/O cassettes we had produced earlier. Why it had not been chosen for either of those, I couldn’t say, except to say that although I had recorded the sessions, Joel Haertling chose the material for Partitions and Dispensation. There is a lot of acoustic percussion and drums on this track and I have lived for many years with the impression that Joel wanted to move away from such overt musical elements. At the time of release, he and I had completed our falling-out, but I likely felt a propriety right or interest in the music since I had recorded it and David and I had performed on it as members of Architects Office. So in the process of putting together a “live improvisations” cassette, this material was available in our own archive. The recording was made at the Boulder Center for Visual Art (now the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, in Central Park, Boulder). Participants included group leader Joel Haertling, Paul Kern, David Lichtenverg (aka “Little Fyodor”), Charles Verrette, Evan Cantor, Trevor Haertling and Claude Martz. We played out in the big front room, an open space that lent itself to sculptural exhibition on occasion.
Little Fyodor:
As to the music itself, in league with the other Architects Office material of this time, it’s more mass synthesizer improvisation with Evan on percussion, mostly his roto-toms, all to Joel’s prepared tape, once again putting a lot of emphasis on classical music with a number of other repeating motifs, a bell ringing, an old car horn ah-oogling, etc. That loud synthesizer that comes in about three minutes or so in might be mine, it sounds like something I would do, but as always with listening to these AO tapes thirty years later, it’s next to impossible to be sure with all the synthesizers that were there. Maybe not six as I originally remembered, but at least three for this show. At the 21 minute mark I’m hearing more synth sounds that sound like me as well as the first bit of Claude’s bass clarinet that I’ve noticed. Heh, seems there’s a lot less talking in the audience now than during the first several minutes of the piece. Once again, not sure if Joel’s son Trevor’s voice is live or on the tape, but it may very well be live as he’s given credit as one of the musicians, and I seem to remember him doing that at various points. I think I heard a little bit of laughter in the audience too, maybe a reaction to his vocalizing. Then we hear some bagpipes on the tape and that’s probably Evan playing the old WoG three-bell along with it. Evan responds to the military calls on his roto-toms. That’s Joel saying “We’ll take a little break” to a smattering of applause at the end. I remember him telling someone that he was in the habit of saying “little” on account of having a young child and always saying “little” this and “little” that to him….
EC:
The piece starts out with a cacophony of Joel’s tapes. I hear Frank Zygmunt’s plastic sheet whoop-whooping in the background. A recording of a horn going “ooh-ga! ooh-ga!” is followed by bell-ringing. This tape would re-occur during the piece as a kind of announcement or warning to the listener. The drums (played by Evan) are going wild while a Beethoven symphony sounds and synthesizers wail away. Rhythmic percussion comes in while the synths continue to go strong. The synths stop for an organ recording, sounding a bit like Bach, cut up and repeating. Everything stops while a choir sings. Drums come up prominently as all the synths chime in. It sounds like my old set of Roto-toms. Then some cheesy television music comes in, stops and starts, the bells and ooh-ga sound, it all works up again to another drum frenzy. Claude Martz’s bass clarinet comes in with a lot of drumming. Some Teutonic music-hall singing comes in and then tapes of piano enter while the Roto-toms pound out a fairly regular beat. A tape of a child’s voice sounds, likely that of Trevor Haertling, Joel’s son, since Trevor is listed as a participant. The oohga! introduces bagpipes and a lot of pipe-banging percussion sounds. A moment of silence is followed by a martial screaming voice. It doesn’t sound quite like Hitler, but it’s very close, martial German uber-blather. Unintelligible PA announcements follow with plenty of drums. The piece ebbs into a tape of some major key orchestral thing and then stops with a voice announcing “we’re going to take a break”.
“Eternity” (Post-Architects)
EC:
Recorded at the “Halls Of Genius”, as if that was itself a live venue. There was likely no audience to speak of, only participants. But, yes, it was recorded live, un-mediated and un-modified by any overdubbing. This piece begins with Evan on bass and Frank Zygmunt’s plastic sheet very prominently (a photograph of David with the plastic sheet appears in the scrapbook with Miracle). David is playing a very rhythmic part with the sheet of plastic. Keyboards are doing a typically Walls of Genius minor-key 2-chord thing and then expand from that. The synth is moaning and squalling and whining. The keyboard sounds like it is playing classical music. This could have been Charlie Verrette, Peter Saucier, Gary or Georg, but I don’t remember. It sounds like I am playing the bass and drums simultaneously, banging on the body of the bass with one hand to create a low rumble and playing the drums with the other hand. Ed Fowler’s electric guitar makes its only appearance on this release and he takes a terrific lead while the keyboard plays classical sounding motifs behind him. He starts out very restrained and then goes whole hog, ramping up to finish up the piece.
LF:
The Post-Architects session was a bit of a cheat in that it wasn’t really “live” but rather just a jam at the Hall Of Genius with some folks we knew from the Architects Office scene, one or more of whom were or had been in AO. Charlie Verrette was the only one who played in AO at the same time we did. I’m guessing Georg (pronounced, “gay-org”; he hailed from Austria) was probably in AO at some point as I know he co- founded a band called The Functional Replacement of the Ear which I recall as being something of an AO spin-off. Peter Saucier made his own electronic music cassette releases as Industrial Music Complex (or alternately Music Industrial Complex) which I thought were pretty good and one sported a stern looking Eisenhower on the cover. I can picture Gary in my mind but there’s little I can say about him other than that he was a good looking dude (not that I’m gay!) who was good friends with Charlie and Peter. I believe he was also something of a vagrant (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), maybe in league with Peter? (Not that they were gay, not that, oh nevermind!) Charlie, who has been mentioned numerous times in this archive and who did some other recording with Evan on the four track and who later became my roommate at the ex-Hall Of Genius after Evan had moved out and broken up WoG, was a common enough visitor to the Hall, but it was a rarer occasion to get these other AO oriented types AND Ed all there at once. I’m going to guess and say that Ed’s presence especially motivated Evan to instigate a jam and record the results (I know Charlie was a big fan of Ed’s too, even as he generally dismissed all things Classic Rock). So instruments were manned and the tape machine was set in motion and “Eternity” happened, in typical WoG fashion, where everyone did whatever using whatever was available. Except for Ed playing his guitar in a rather abstract and heavily flanged fashion, I’m really hard pressed to say who is doing what. It’s probably me or Evan playing the plastic sheet that Frank Zygmunt had found for us (that whopping whooshing sound), cause that’s something we would do. I later made more focused use of that plastic sheet on my Little Fyodor solo piece, “Those Three Little Words”. About six minutes into the song, Ed turns off his flanger and plays more discernible notes. I hear slide whistle in the background which, typically, could very well be me, but then with so many loonies about…. Ed starts turning his individuated notes into a bit of rocking out workout, damn the abstract musical environs! Well, he’s playing fast at times, but he’s trying to be sensitive to what’s going on around him, too. Obviously someone is making use of the Farfisa organ to spacey effect, but I have no idea who. I’ll guess that was Charlie. Then the flanger comes back on right before the boys sign off....
“Pure Happenstance, Part I”
(Timm Lenk, David Lichtenberg & Evan Cantor)
EC:
We credited this performance simply to the three of us. Timm Lenk was a KGNU deejay who hosted an avant-garde classical music radio show. He was also an avant-garde classical composer himself, so we were interested in what he was up to, and vice-versa. This performance, at the Brilligworks (now Illegal Pete’s burrito shop), features David on synth, me on bass and Timm on keyboard. It is most atmospheric. There is some percussion, sounding like drums and cymbal. This is likely me reaching over from the bass, as I had bought a drum-set from Timm for $100. It was a beat-to-shit old drum set, but what the hell, it was a drum-set and now I owned one. Which meant I had drums and cymbals at my command. Not that I could play the drums in any tradition rock-music sense. The audience doesn’t seem to notice that the music has stopped…The Brilligworks Café was a three-story coffee-house on The Hill (student section) in Boulder. We had played there as Walls of Genius previously and the performances all took place on the second of the three floors. It was not a large space, so these performances were rather intimate. We never had very large audiences for our shows, so that wasn’t a problem. It’s worth noting that we were not participating members of the mainstream “scene” that is associated with Boulder, starting in the 70s with Zephyr, a band that featured Tommy Bolin on guitar and Candy Givens on Janis-Joplinesque vocals, nor any of the later incarnations of local bands, such as Freddi-Henchi or The 4-Nikators. These bands are all remembered quite fondly and proudly by many Boulderites, but for the most part, they were all just party bands doing cover songs and we were contemptuous of that at the time. The scenes associated with Gold Hill and the Caribou Ranch, near Nederland, included a lot of famous people such as Steven Stills, the Dillards, Elton John and Chicago, but we never knew any of the people left-over from that crowd, nor would they have likely been interested in our music. We were self-consciously segregated from the mainstream.
LF:
I’m pretty amazed when I note that we did our “Pure Happenstance” jam at the Brillig Works coffeehouse just two days after our Fur-Balls From Outer-Space gala performance at the same venue! I think we had a lot of chutzpah to book an obscure three piece improv band at a coffeehouse on a Tuesday night! I really don’t remember, but we couldn’t have had much of an audience. The liner notes imply one or more of our KGNU friends made it to at least one of these shows, probably this one and/or Space Probe. We may have been happy to down-low this performance anyway as I don’t believe we had ever played with Timm Lenk before this evening.
We knew Timm from KGNU, where he founded a program called The Present Edge on which he played nothing but contemporary classical, or modern Serious, or academic avant-garde, or whatever you wanna call that stuff. Y’know, Stockhausen and Cage, etc. Timm later joined WoG, over a year later actually, when he was tapped by Evan to be a permanent member of our live ensemble – on drums! He warned us he was no Ginger Baker, but he did fine for us, holding down the beat for our last three live shows all while smoking a pipe (or at least that’s the image I have of him, it might not be true!). His biggest kick playing with us was being told by a young punk kid “You suck!” after our opening set (along with four or five other bands) for the Dead Kennedys at a club called the Blue Note on the Boulder Mall. During one practice during that later time he offered us a composition of his in the tradition of the material he played on his radio show called 6 Celebrations, which had all manner of wacky instructions, like repeat what the other guy just played only backwards, or astound yourself and others, or play a beautiful note or chord as if it were your last, or choose any one of the previous several instructions, etc. I have nothing but love and respect for Timm, but I’ve also always been a little skeptical about the idea of using a composition to be instructed in this manner. Like I need compositional instructions to tell me to be free or to do crazy stuff? I wasn’t sure if Ed understood the implications of this type of composition when he asked if Timm could play a little of it for us to give us an idea of what it sounded like! Well, we never played his composition (and I don’t believe he ever made it onto any WoG release but this one), but he did play drums with us for our last three gigs, and for this earlier live date he brought his Fender Rhodes electric piano to the Brillig Works for he and Evan and I to engage in some “Pure Happenstance”.
The name obviously refers to the completely improvised nature of the experience. It doesn’t sound like an Evan type name so I’m going to guess (aligned with the vaguest of memories) that Timm may have suggested it. One can see from the reel box associated with this performance that a few names were kicked around, mostly puns based on Timm’s surname (that sounds more like Evan!). At the beginning of the piece you can hear Timm’s Fender Rhodes while my synthesizer is making sireny sounds. Then we hear some arpeggios on my synth, which I may have accomplished either by programming my computer or simply by holding down some notes with the arpeggio button turned on (the latter procedure requires one’s hand to continue holding the keys down to keep the arpeggio going, while the former doesn’t, allowing both hands to be free to do other stuff). There’s some other sounds in there which must have been Evan’s doing, but I really can’t identify them. The piece ends with audience chatter, reflecting our interest in naturalistic or candid recordings….
EC:
Recorded at the “Halls Of Genius”, as if that was itself a live venue. There was likely no audience to speak of, only participants. But, yes, it was recorded live, un-mediated and un-modified by any overdubbing. This piece begins with Evan on bass and Frank Zygmunt’s plastic sheet very prominently (a photograph of David with the plastic sheet appears in the scrapbook with Miracle). David is playing a very rhythmic part with the sheet of plastic. Keyboards are doing a typically Walls of Genius minor-key 2-chord thing and then expand from that. The synth is moaning and squalling and whining. The keyboard sounds like it is playing classical music. This could have been Charlie Verrette, Peter Saucier, Gary or Georg, but I don’t remember. It sounds like I am playing the bass and drums simultaneously, banging on the body of the bass with one hand to create a low rumble and playing the drums with the other hand. Ed Fowler’s electric guitar makes its only appearance on this release and he takes a terrific lead while the keyboard plays classical sounding motifs behind him. He starts out very restrained and then goes whole hog, ramping up to finish up the piece.
LF:
The Post-Architects session was a bit of a cheat in that it wasn’t really “live” but rather just a jam at the Hall Of Genius with some folks we knew from the Architects Office scene, one or more of whom were or had been in AO. Charlie Verrette was the only one who played in AO at the same time we did. I’m guessing Georg (pronounced, “gay-org”; he hailed from Austria) was probably in AO at some point as I know he co- founded a band called The Functional Replacement of the Ear which I recall as being something of an AO spin-off. Peter Saucier made his own electronic music cassette releases as Industrial Music Complex (or alternately Music Industrial Complex) which I thought were pretty good and one sported a stern looking Eisenhower on the cover. I can picture Gary in my mind but there’s little I can say about him other than that he was a good looking dude (not that I’m gay!) who was good friends with Charlie and Peter. I believe he was also something of a vagrant (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), maybe in league with Peter? (Not that they were gay, not that, oh nevermind!) Charlie, who has been mentioned numerous times in this archive and who did some other recording with Evan on the four track and who later became my roommate at the ex-Hall Of Genius after Evan had moved out and broken up WoG, was a common enough visitor to the Hall, but it was a rarer occasion to get these other AO oriented types AND Ed all there at once. I’m going to guess and say that Ed’s presence especially motivated Evan to instigate a jam and record the results (I know Charlie was a big fan of Ed’s too, even as he generally dismissed all things Classic Rock). So instruments were manned and the tape machine was set in motion and “Eternity” happened, in typical WoG fashion, where everyone did whatever using whatever was available. Except for Ed playing his guitar in a rather abstract and heavily flanged fashion, I’m really hard pressed to say who is doing what. It’s probably me or Evan playing the plastic sheet that Frank Zygmunt had found for us (that whopping whooshing sound), cause that’s something we would do. I later made more focused use of that plastic sheet on my Little Fyodor solo piece, “Those Three Little Words”. About six minutes into the song, Ed turns off his flanger and plays more discernible notes. I hear slide whistle in the background which, typically, could very well be me, but then with so many loonies about…. Ed starts turning his individuated notes into a bit of rocking out workout, damn the abstract musical environs! Well, he’s playing fast at times, but he’s trying to be sensitive to what’s going on around him, too. Obviously someone is making use of the Farfisa organ to spacey effect, but I have no idea who. I’ll guess that was Charlie. Then the flanger comes back on right before the boys sign off....
“Pure Happenstance, Part I”
(Timm Lenk, David Lichtenberg & Evan Cantor)
EC:
We credited this performance simply to the three of us. Timm Lenk was a KGNU deejay who hosted an avant-garde classical music radio show. He was also an avant-garde classical composer himself, so we were interested in what he was up to, and vice-versa. This performance, at the Brilligworks (now Illegal Pete’s burrito shop), features David on synth, me on bass and Timm on keyboard. It is most atmospheric. There is some percussion, sounding like drums and cymbal. This is likely me reaching over from the bass, as I had bought a drum-set from Timm for $100. It was a beat-to-shit old drum set, but what the hell, it was a drum-set and now I owned one. Which meant I had drums and cymbals at my command. Not that I could play the drums in any tradition rock-music sense. The audience doesn’t seem to notice that the music has stopped…The Brilligworks Café was a three-story coffee-house on The Hill (student section) in Boulder. We had played there as Walls of Genius previously and the performances all took place on the second of the three floors. It was not a large space, so these performances were rather intimate. We never had very large audiences for our shows, so that wasn’t a problem. It’s worth noting that we were not participating members of the mainstream “scene” that is associated with Boulder, starting in the 70s with Zephyr, a band that featured Tommy Bolin on guitar and Candy Givens on Janis-Joplinesque vocals, nor any of the later incarnations of local bands, such as Freddi-Henchi or The 4-Nikators. These bands are all remembered quite fondly and proudly by many Boulderites, but for the most part, they were all just party bands doing cover songs and we were contemptuous of that at the time. The scenes associated with Gold Hill and the Caribou Ranch, near Nederland, included a lot of famous people such as Steven Stills, the Dillards, Elton John and Chicago, but we never knew any of the people left-over from that crowd, nor would they have likely been interested in our music. We were self-consciously segregated from the mainstream.
LF:
I’m pretty amazed when I note that we did our “Pure Happenstance” jam at the Brillig Works coffeehouse just two days after our Fur-Balls From Outer-Space gala performance at the same venue! I think we had a lot of chutzpah to book an obscure three piece improv band at a coffeehouse on a Tuesday night! I really don’t remember, but we couldn’t have had much of an audience. The liner notes imply one or more of our KGNU friends made it to at least one of these shows, probably this one and/or Space Probe. We may have been happy to down-low this performance anyway as I don’t believe we had ever played with Timm Lenk before this evening.
We knew Timm from KGNU, where he founded a program called The Present Edge on which he played nothing but contemporary classical, or modern Serious, or academic avant-garde, or whatever you wanna call that stuff. Y’know, Stockhausen and Cage, etc. Timm later joined WoG, over a year later actually, when he was tapped by Evan to be a permanent member of our live ensemble – on drums! He warned us he was no Ginger Baker, but he did fine for us, holding down the beat for our last three live shows all while smoking a pipe (or at least that’s the image I have of him, it might not be true!). His biggest kick playing with us was being told by a young punk kid “You suck!” after our opening set (along with four or five other bands) for the Dead Kennedys at a club called the Blue Note on the Boulder Mall. During one practice during that later time he offered us a composition of his in the tradition of the material he played on his radio show called 6 Celebrations, which had all manner of wacky instructions, like repeat what the other guy just played only backwards, or astound yourself and others, or play a beautiful note or chord as if it were your last, or choose any one of the previous several instructions, etc. I have nothing but love and respect for Timm, but I’ve also always been a little skeptical about the idea of using a composition to be instructed in this manner. Like I need compositional instructions to tell me to be free or to do crazy stuff? I wasn’t sure if Ed understood the implications of this type of composition when he asked if Timm could play a little of it for us to give us an idea of what it sounded like! Well, we never played his composition (and I don’t believe he ever made it onto any WoG release but this one), but he did play drums with us for our last three gigs, and for this earlier live date he brought his Fender Rhodes electric piano to the Brillig Works for he and Evan and I to engage in some “Pure Happenstance”.
The name obviously refers to the completely improvised nature of the experience. It doesn’t sound like an Evan type name so I’m going to guess (aligned with the vaguest of memories) that Timm may have suggested it. One can see from the reel box associated with this performance that a few names were kicked around, mostly puns based on Timm’s surname (that sounds more like Evan!). At the beginning of the piece you can hear Timm’s Fender Rhodes while my synthesizer is making sireny sounds. Then we hear some arpeggios on my synth, which I may have accomplished either by programming my computer or simply by holding down some notes with the arpeggio button turned on (the latter procedure requires one’s hand to continue holding the keys down to keep the arpeggio going, while the former doesn’t, allowing both hands to be free to do other stuff). There’s some other sounds in there which must have been Evan’s doing, but I really can’t identify them. The piece ends with audience chatter, reflecting our interest in naturalistic or candid recordings….
Side B
Space Probe - "Improvisations I & II"
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor - "Pure Happenstance, Part II"
Space Probe - "Improvisations I & II"
Timm Lenk, David Lichtenverg & Evan Cantor - "Pure Happenstance, Part II"
“Improvisations I & II” (Space Probe)
LF:
I remember that the name “Space Probe” was my idea, not that I’m excruciatingly proud of it, as it's a little banal. I did focus a bit on spacey sounds from my synthesizer for the show.
We first jammed with Alsatian immigrant Claude Martz, who played bass clarinet, during the Clovis Point Remains session released on Little Victor Meets Violent Vince (and then again on The WoG Sampler!). We also jammed with him again (before this) in the context of Architects Office. Claude was also congenial and open-minded and provided us with more of a link to, um, traditional modes of free improvisation.
I don’t really remember the circumstances under which this or the “Pure Happenstance” gigs were conceived or booked, so I’ll make an estimated guess and say that it was mostly Evan’s doing. I start out with a programmed pattern on my synth that I leave be to repeat as is much of the time but also make occasional manipulations to. Evan was clearly following my synthesizer on his bass while Claude plays his bass clarinet. My synthesizer kept playing the same pattern but I tried to manipulate that constant pattern into continually sounding different. Evan seems to be trying to follow my inevitable synth pattern but also in various and different ways. I finally drop that synth pattern about nine minutes in. It was often a bit of a quandary for me to decide what to do with a pattern I had setup in a jam, whether to just droop it suddenly or try to find a way to transition out of it…. At just under 12 minutes in, there’s a strange vocal sound, which may have been Evan live, but it may also have been on a tape he had prepared ahead of time, in Architects Office fashion, that the promo for the show alludes to (“Assorted Sound Recordings”). I know I didn't make this pre-recorded tape, so it must have been Evan's doing. In the 13 or so minute range I hear sounds that clearly must have come from a pre-recorded source. In the next minute’s zone, I’m using the volume knob on my synth for white noise dynamics. At about 18 minutes, we hear some pronounced percussion that must be on the prepared tape. About 20 minutes in, I start playing a manual staccato rhythm on my synth, following the aforementioned taped percussion, and then I switch to all manners of different ways to play it, following Evan’s slowly rhythmic bass chords even after the rhythm on the prepared tape has ceased. At times, the prepared tape sounds are very subtle and at times they practically take over! At about 23 minutes, Evan introduces a rhythm on his bass and Claude and I follow along. Then Evan starts going all over on the bass, but when the prepared tape asserts itself, he lays back a little. But then we all get loud again as if to compete with the tape! And then the prepared tape sound fades away, and then returns. Sounds like I’m playing some sloppy percussion at this point, and then it sounds like a TV show on the prepared tape. I switch back to synth, and some guitar sounds are heard. Again, since Evan is still playing bass, I assume the guitar is on the tape! (Plus Claude is still playing low notes on his bass clarinet!) (And then higher ones!) As I said, I believe Evan created the prepared tape, and as such, he was the only who knew what was on it.
Ah, and about the 34 minute mark brings Evan's Beckett reading (on the prepared tape). I thought I remembered Evan saying not very complimentary things about Beckett's writings, but either I remember wrong or maybe Evan thought it would be useful for this purpose regardless of his overall opinion of it. And then the prepared percussion comes back, and with it my staccato synth playing! We're almost at the end, and I'm afraid I never noticed where Improvisation I turned into Improvisation II. Maybe when the tapes came in?
EC:
Again, at the Brilligworks, this is David on synth, myself on bass and taped material and Claude Martz on the bass clarinet.
As it begins, it is both a melodic and rhythmic jam, utilizing a regular bass line. The bass line changes-up at intervals, but always finding, very quickly, a new groove to interact with the contrapuntal synthesizer line. The synth comes up after a while to dominate and I suspect that David had it programmed to play itself while he attacked the drums. There is good call-and-response between the bass and the clarinet/synth combination. The synth quiets down for a bit and then returns with a flanged effect. You hear some volume knob effects on the bass, one of my old favorite abstract sound tricks. There is some kind of sound going on now, something that sounds like tin-foil being crumpled in front of a microphone, likely on the tapes that I prepared for the performance. David comes in with drums and percussion and then returns to the synth. Jane Carpenter’s machines come on next, moaning and whining (on tapes) and the bass leads a rhythmic section. The bass has been relentless throughout. Nice chords on a bass line at this point and the clarinet follows along. Tapes of voices come in, from television perhaps, and a sound like the ocean. Then Evan’s guitar comes in, clearly on tape, because the bass, being performed live, hasn’t given an inch. Then you hear my voice reading a selection from Samuel Beckett’s “Watt”, again, on tapes. The reading is a tribute to one of literature’s great avant-garde modernists, definitely a tip-o-the-hat to a powerful influence. It’s mostly unintelligible stuff though, a rather meaningless dialogue between “Mr. Debaker” and some others. Drums come roaring in after the reading while the synth plays itself and then the piece ends, to applause.
LF:
I remember that the name “Space Probe” was my idea, not that I’m excruciatingly proud of it, as it's a little banal. I did focus a bit on spacey sounds from my synthesizer for the show.
We first jammed with Alsatian immigrant Claude Martz, who played bass clarinet, during the Clovis Point Remains session released on Little Victor Meets Violent Vince (and then again on The WoG Sampler!). We also jammed with him again (before this) in the context of Architects Office. Claude was also congenial and open-minded and provided us with more of a link to, um, traditional modes of free improvisation.
I don’t really remember the circumstances under which this or the “Pure Happenstance” gigs were conceived or booked, so I’ll make an estimated guess and say that it was mostly Evan’s doing. I start out with a programmed pattern on my synth that I leave be to repeat as is much of the time but also make occasional manipulations to. Evan was clearly following my synthesizer on his bass while Claude plays his bass clarinet. My synthesizer kept playing the same pattern but I tried to manipulate that constant pattern into continually sounding different. Evan seems to be trying to follow my inevitable synth pattern but also in various and different ways. I finally drop that synth pattern about nine minutes in. It was often a bit of a quandary for me to decide what to do with a pattern I had setup in a jam, whether to just droop it suddenly or try to find a way to transition out of it…. At just under 12 minutes in, there’s a strange vocal sound, which may have been Evan live, but it may also have been on a tape he had prepared ahead of time, in Architects Office fashion, that the promo for the show alludes to (“Assorted Sound Recordings”). I know I didn't make this pre-recorded tape, so it must have been Evan's doing. In the 13 or so minute range I hear sounds that clearly must have come from a pre-recorded source. In the next minute’s zone, I’m using the volume knob on my synth for white noise dynamics. At about 18 minutes, we hear some pronounced percussion that must be on the prepared tape. About 20 minutes in, I start playing a manual staccato rhythm on my synth, following the aforementioned taped percussion, and then I switch to all manners of different ways to play it, following Evan’s slowly rhythmic bass chords even after the rhythm on the prepared tape has ceased. At times, the prepared tape sounds are very subtle and at times they practically take over! At about 23 minutes, Evan introduces a rhythm on his bass and Claude and I follow along. Then Evan starts going all over on the bass, but when the prepared tape asserts itself, he lays back a little. But then we all get loud again as if to compete with the tape! And then the prepared tape sound fades away, and then returns. Sounds like I’m playing some sloppy percussion at this point, and then it sounds like a TV show on the prepared tape. I switch back to synth, and some guitar sounds are heard. Again, since Evan is still playing bass, I assume the guitar is on the tape! (Plus Claude is still playing low notes on his bass clarinet!) (And then higher ones!) As I said, I believe Evan created the prepared tape, and as such, he was the only who knew what was on it.
Ah, and about the 34 minute mark brings Evan's Beckett reading (on the prepared tape). I thought I remembered Evan saying not very complimentary things about Beckett's writings, but either I remember wrong or maybe Evan thought it would be useful for this purpose regardless of his overall opinion of it. And then the prepared percussion comes back, and with it my staccato synth playing! We're almost at the end, and I'm afraid I never noticed where Improvisation I turned into Improvisation II. Maybe when the tapes came in?
EC:
Again, at the Brilligworks, this is David on synth, myself on bass and taped material and Claude Martz on the bass clarinet.
As it begins, it is both a melodic and rhythmic jam, utilizing a regular bass line. The bass line changes-up at intervals, but always finding, very quickly, a new groove to interact with the contrapuntal synthesizer line. The synth comes up after a while to dominate and I suspect that David had it programmed to play itself while he attacked the drums. There is good call-and-response between the bass and the clarinet/synth combination. The synth quiets down for a bit and then returns with a flanged effect. You hear some volume knob effects on the bass, one of my old favorite abstract sound tricks. There is some kind of sound going on now, something that sounds like tin-foil being crumpled in front of a microphone, likely on the tapes that I prepared for the performance. David comes in with drums and percussion and then returns to the synth. Jane Carpenter’s machines come on next, moaning and whining (on tapes) and the bass leads a rhythmic section. The bass has been relentless throughout. Nice chords on a bass line at this point and the clarinet follows along. Tapes of voices come in, from television perhaps, and a sound like the ocean. Then Evan’s guitar comes in, clearly on tape, because the bass, being performed live, hasn’t given an inch. Then you hear my voice reading a selection from Samuel Beckett’s “Watt”, again, on tapes. The reading is a tribute to one of literature’s great avant-garde modernists, definitely a tip-o-the-hat to a powerful influence. It’s mostly unintelligible stuff though, a rather meaningless dialogue between “Mr. Debaker” and some others. Drums come roaring in after the reading while the synth plays itself and then the piece ends, to applause.
“Pure Happenstance, Part II” (Timm Lenk, David L. & Evan C.)
EC:
There’s a lot of sound on the opening of this one, likely more tapes prepared in advance for performance. A bass line comes in behind the synthesizer and Timm is playing some John Cage-sounding piano. Evan is playing some heavily flanged guitar single-note runs. Then the piece cuts off abruptly. It’s the end of the tape, so this was likely intentional, designed to fill the space at the end of a cassette. The intentional cut-off is another tip-o-the-hat, this time to the Beatles’ track “I Want You” on Abbey Road.
LF:
And finally back to some more “Pure Happenstance” with Timm Lenk (who by the way goes by Thomas Lenk nowadays, Thomas being his first name and Timothy being his middle; on the front page of the aforementioned “6 Celebrations” composition, he signed it T. Timothy Lenk). Well, I recognize my synth in its white noise setting right towards the start, but there's a whole bunch of sounds (again) that I don't recognize. I wish I could read somebody's else's notes telling me what the hell was going on! Did Evan bring another synthesizer, maybe? Finally I recognize Evan's guitar playing underneath Timm's Fender Rhodes. And then it all ends with ye olde abrupt ending! No more "artificial" than a fade out, perhaps less so….
EC:
There’s a lot of sound on the opening of this one, likely more tapes prepared in advance for performance. A bass line comes in behind the synthesizer and Timm is playing some John Cage-sounding piano. Evan is playing some heavily flanged guitar single-note runs. Then the piece cuts off abruptly. It’s the end of the tape, so this was likely intentional, designed to fill the space at the end of a cassette. The intentional cut-off is another tip-o-the-hat, this time to the Beatles’ track “I Want You” on Abbey Road.
LF:
And finally back to some more “Pure Happenstance” with Timm Lenk (who by the way goes by Thomas Lenk nowadays, Thomas being his first name and Timothy being his middle; on the front page of the aforementioned “6 Celebrations” composition, he signed it T. Timothy Lenk). Well, I recognize my synth in its white noise setting right towards the start, but there's a whole bunch of sounds (again) that I don't recognize. I wish I could read somebody's else's notes telling me what the hell was going on! Did Evan bring another synthesizer, maybe? Finally I recognize Evan's guitar playing underneath Timm's Fender Rhodes. And then it all ends with ye olde abrupt ending! No more "artificial" than a fade out, perhaps less so….
