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Since the first Henry Cow album, Leg End, is where Fred Frith’s recorded output begins, it makes natural sense to begin a retrospective feature on the man by starting there. The record came out in 1973, when Frith was still based in the UK.
Attentive listeners might note a debt to Frank Zappa. Frith, reached at his current home in Oakland, agrees.
“I think we owe an enormous debt to Zappa, especially the early years,” he tells the Straight. “Uncle Meat was on repeated listening for a while when it came out! I admit I lost interest after Hot Rats when it seemed to become more about tastelessness combined with killer chops and a certain disdain for the audience, but that would be a longer and more nuanced conversation.”
The debt to Zappa is not as strongly noted in Frith’s later composing or playing, but the guitarist did meet Zappa, “almost by accident”, he explains. Frith’s late-’80s group, Keep the Dog, was performing in Moscow in 1989. That band repped, among other things repped, Frith’s more song-based material from his Ralph Records years, more on which later.
“Zappa happened to be there as part of his job as cultural attache to the Czech Republic under Vaclav Havel—who was a huge Henry Cow fan, incidentally!” he recalls. “We found ourselves ordering coffee at the same cafe in the foyer and had a brief but friendly conversation, mostly about the Synclavier, an instrument which I found it impossible to like but which he apparently trusted more than real musicians. The owners of Synclaviers tended to know each other so we had mutual friends like Henry Kaiser and Laurie Anderson.
Frith continues with, “Anyway, he duly attended our concert which was a big success—an audience that really seemed to hear and understand what we were doing. I didn’t see him afterwards, but the promoter told me he’d said something to the effect of ‘Well, I know where that’s coming from!’ Sigh. Reminds me of when I gave a copy of Guitar Solos to Captain Beefheart when we were touring together in 1974. Many years later John French told me with much amusement that Don had passed the record on to him and said: ‘Check it out, he’s ripping me off!’”
The “Don” there is Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, while John French is, of course, best known as Drumbo, the drummer for Beefheart’s Magic Band on Trout Mask Replica and other key albums. French and Frith collaborated on two records under the title of French Frith Kaiser Thompson records, in 1987 and 1990, with Kaiser being the aforesaid Henry Kaiser and Thompson being Frith’s esteemed countryman Richard Thompson. (The latter legend is a sweetheart to work with, Frith says sincerely. He note that the guitar playing on ‘Too Much Too Little’ from Frith’s 1983 album Cheap at Half the Price was intended as an homage to Thompson).
The French Frith Kaiser Thompson albums, which feature compositions from all the players, include one of Frith’s all-time funniest rock songs, “Where’s the Money?”. On the track an artist vents frustration at his economic circumstances, rhyming “Where’s the money” with “It isn’t funny”, a couplet so essential and obvious when it comes to the arts that we can’t believe we haven’t encountered it elsewhere.
Fred Frith.
So did he ever answer that question, that is, solve the problem of money?
“Like most musicians, I make a living by having a diverse skill set,” Frith reveals. “I improvise, I play composed music, and I compose for other people—from soloists up to orchestras. I write film soundtracks and dance scores, I teach, I work with visual artists, and I enjoy doing all of those things. I regard it as nothing if not a privileged existence, being able to make a living doing what I love with the people I love!”
One aspect of Frith’s history as a teacher rather blew me away. The side hustle came up when he was last in Vancouver, at a week-long 2005 Vancouver New Music event.
Over the course of that week, in-between performances with Quebec musicians Jean Derome and Pierre Tanguay, Frith coached and led an ensemble of local improvisers, including Paul Blaney, François Houle, Peggy Lee, Ron Samworth, Stefan Smulovitz, Jesse Zubot and Dylan van der Schyff, workshopping a final concert.
At least some of these workshops, audience members were able to attend and observe, because I remember witnessing one, watching Frith test out each player’s strengths and giving them feedback and direction. The final performance ended up highly reminiscent of the soundtrack to the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, Rivers and Tides, which is some of Frith’s most accessible and beautiful work.
It was very satisfying, and as maximal an exposure to Frith’s methods as a non-musician could wish. But the weirdest and most memorable part of it was learning somewhere, in passing, that Frith was also a soccer coach, at the same time as he was a professor of composition in the music department at Mills College in Oakland (Frith retired in 2018).
With Frith returning to Vancouver for the first time since then (and mounting a small tour around other B.C. locations), I can finally ask about that. How did he become a soccer coach, and did that ever overlap in any way with is musical career?
“I coached my son Finn’s team for six years,” Frith responds. “I was roped into it by a colleague at Mills whose son was also playing soccer and I kind of took it over from him. At this age there was no particular interest on the part of my players about what I did in real life. To them I was ‘coach’, which is as it should be. I remember we had a ref for one game who was English, as many of the refs and coaches in our league were not from the US—they were British, French, Mexican, soccer playing nations, in other words!. He knew who I was and said to the kids ‘Did you know your coach is famous?’ After a slightly puzzled pause one of them said: ‘Well, he’s famous to us!’”
That was about the only external point of overlap Frith can think of between his soccer coaching and his music, but the two did overlap in his mind.
“During these years I was also teaching improvisation and I found the parallels between soccer and music quite compelling,” he shares. “First of all because they’re both dealing with a continuum of unpredictability, constant spontaneous adjustment to what you can and can’t predict. That, and the process of learning that opportunities are more likely to come to you if you’re not always trying to be wherever the ball is!
“But I find that most colleagues throughout my musical life,” Frith continues, “have had little interest in sport of any kind, with a few exceptions, whereas Finn can still tell me the names of all the players in some baseball team from 20 years ago. I played cricket and rugby at school and my older son Yui played basketball right through college. I’ve always been drawn to sport of all kinds.”
There are, of course, multiple sports-based approaches to composition and playing, including the works of Billy Jenkins, David Moss, and Albert Marcoeur, whose Sports et Percussions is “a classic”, Frith observes. But the sports-themed pieces that spring to mind most readily are maybe those John Zorn was involved with in the 1970s. Take, for example, Hockey, which Zorn’s Tzadik website describes as producing “some of the strangest music ever conceived.”
The “rules” for musical behaviour are where the sports component lies, the notes further explain: “By limiting each improviser’s personal language to five sounds and carrying them through a complex structure of solos, duos and trios, Hockey forces its interpreters to focus on timing, economy and context.”
Frith says of Zorn’s game pieces that they are a “whole genre unto themselves.” And of course, Frith has collaborated with Zorn on multiple occasions, from playing bass on the albums released under the Naked City banner, to recording albums of improvisations like 2010’s Late Works, with Frith on electric guitar and Zorn on alto sax. And some of the musicians on Hockey like Wayne Horvitz and Bob Ostertag would work with Frith in other contexts.
The one I’m most curious about, however, is Eugene Chadbourne, who, like Frith, put out albums, early on, of solo guitar. (Chadbourne’s is called Solo Acoustic Guitar, from 1976, his first album; Frith’s, from 1974 is called Guitar Solos. Given that Frith’s Vancouver date is being billed as “Solo Guitar”, we assume that recording may have some bearing on what we will hear?).
So did Frith and Chadbourne ever cross paths?
“I met Eugene in 1978, he sent me his first album and later introduced himself to me in Paris,” he says. “People playing guitar differently tended to know of each other, I also met Hans Reichel and Davey Williams in much the same way. I drove Eugene to London in my VW van and we laughed a lot! Invited him to perform with me at the London Musician’s Collective, and then he returned the invitation so I played in his 2000 Statues project in New York the following year, which is how I met Zorn.”
Chadbourne fans might know of that album as The English Channel, and it can be purchased in CDr format through Chadbourne’s House of Chadula website. It is a reconstruction, as the original master tapes are long gone. Frith notes that there is a “healthy respect” between himself and Chadbourne (“I’ve seen extraordinary concerts of his over the years”), but adds that Chadbourne’s playing and his are “light years apart.”
(Bugs Bunny, Boris Karloff, or Roger Miller don’t play as large a part in Frith’s musical world as they do in Chadbourne’s, and I’ve never seen Frith break out a banjo, let alone an electric rake).
The only similarity I can note between the two is an element of deep playfulness, I observe.
“I think Richard Long had it right.” he says, “when he said that the difference between artists and everyone else is that artists are still in touch with the same curiosity and energy they had when they were kids! Though the results may be totally different, which is a reflection of all kinds of cultural and historical questions, we probably still approach our instrument in the same playful manner.”
Video of The Residents – The Replacement
Speaking of playfulness, we would be remiss in not asking Frith about his work with the Residents. Frith began his recordings with them on the 1979 compilation album Suburban Modern, contributing guitar solos to the tracks “Dumbo the Clown” and “Time’s Up”. They must have been impressed, as Frith then continued to record with them on The Commercial Album, where he is credited as an “Extra Hard Working Guest Musician”.
Of course, much that surrounds the Residents remains unknown (including whether they will re-book their recently-cancelled tour to include a Vancouver date). But since Hardy Fox has passed, no one is pretending he wasn’t the musical force behind the band. Does Frith have Hardy stories?
“Hardy and I were pretty close,” he says.”Always enjoyed working with him from the very beginning. We embarked on a collaboration back in the early ’90s—they gave me lyrics, I composed all the music, recorded it in their studio using only a MIDI violin, and then Hardy went to work orchestrating it via MIDI. It was then lost, and when the technology changed it was no longer accessible anyway.
“After Hardy left the Residents,” Frith continues, “he found the recording in a box, and figured out a way to play it. He sent it over and I then finished it off, but since the original words were lost I replaced them with new ones by Lebanese singer Zeina Nasr, and sang them myself. This was released as A Day Hanging Dead Between Heaven and Earth shortly before Hardy passed. I was and am very grateful we had that last chance to work together”.
After Fox’s death in October of 2018, Frith would compose and perform a minimal, mournful track, “Almost Certain” for the Hardy Fox tribute album, Godfather of Odd.
Frith says the Ralph Records commissions for his 1980s run of solo albums, Gravity, Speechless, and Cheap at Half the Price were life-changing for him. One song from those years has always stood out for me, from the more vocally-based third album: “Some Clouds Don’t”. It includes advice to “beware of the wise”, which gets rhymed with “Lies! Lies!” and the warning that “They’ll make shoes that will fit any size”. There’s also a chorus that observes that some clouds don’t have a silver lining. What’s going on there?
“This was the Reagan Era and there was an array of nutters in our faces every day—Haig, Weinberger and so on. Very inspiring!”
Frith has occasionally been quite overtly political; as an example, he points to Henry Cow’s 1975 album In Praise of Learning. (Henry Cow album covers tend to feature the same artful representation of a sock on the front, but people familiar with them will know this as the red one).
The lyrics “don’t exactly pull any punches”, Frith says. The opening track, “War”, which would later be covered by The Fall, talks of how war appeared on earth, and features the motto, “Violence completes the partial mind.” Another track, “Beautiful as the Moon/Terrible as an Army with Banners” sees guest vocalist Dagmar Krause, who would later form Art Bears with Frith, issuing the invocation to “arise, work men, and seize the future.”
The lyrics are generally poetic, not didactic, but they are certainly not particularly subtle about the band’s beliefs, which continues on Art Bears’ subsequent The World As It Is Today.
It was projects like these that brought Frith to the attention of electronics artist/tape manipulator (and Yes Men affiliate) Bob Ostertag, who besides appearing with Frith on Hockey and The English Channel, interviewed Frith when he first moved to America in the late 1970s.
Ostertag would later record Voice of America with Frith and Phil Minton, an album which takes on imperialism in Latin America in the 1980s; the album includes, at one point, a sample of a Spanish-speaker singing “Yankee go home”.
But even though they are seldom worn as close to the skin as on these projects, there’s a politic present throughout Frith’s body of work. Skeleton Crew—a project, undertaken in the early ’80s with New York multi-instrumentalist Tom Cora—was described by Robert Christgau as “seditious”, which Frith says sounds “about right”. Readers are directed to try the particularly insane video for “It’s Fine,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Opl4GNUq8U&list=RD4Opl4GNUq8U&start_radio=1 off 1984’s Learn to Talk, for a memorable example.
It’s not a sedition aimed at overthrowing this particular government or that, but tackling head-on audience expectations of what a normal musical performance should consist of, and thereby potentially upending other aspects of their perceptions. As Frith observes, “All music is ‘political’ whether overtly and intended or not.
“I’ve never been interested in propaganda, and I’ve seen first hand how bands with a ‘message’ may completely fail to grasp how irrelevant it is to their audience,” he says. “But in the end like any other artist I try to make sense of the world I inhabit.”
Video of Fred Frith – Some Clouds Don’t
There are songs on his 2002 solo album Prints, and on his band project Cosa Brava’s records that follow that path, a path that has always been there.
“I believe in kindness, generosity, and tolerance, which makes the current political climate particularly galling.”
A final question remains: given how adept and inventive a guitarist Frith is, it has always puzzled me, that in units like French Frith Kaiser Thompson or Naked City, Frith plays bass while the three other guitarists take the guitar. After all, French, Kaiser, and Thompson, whatever their virtuosity, approach their instrument in less idiosyncratic and playfully perverse ways than Frith.
As a bigger fan of Frith’s guitar than even, yes, Thompson’s, I imagine this as an indignity, akin to being lucky enough to have Keith Moon in your band and asking him to play tambourine. Does Frith mind being “relegated” to bass duties?
Frith patiently adjusts my attitude.
“That’s a strange way to think of it,” he suggests. “Relegated? I’ve always played bass, and I love it. And I think my approach is quite unique and recognizable. I played bass in the latter days of Henry Cow, in Art Bears, in Aksak Maboul, with the Residents, with Naked City, the quartet you mention, and countless movie soundtracks. It’s only challenging the way anything is challenging, when you’re being asked to do something difficult that you have to practice! In my new band Fremakajo I play bass and viola, no guitar—I’m having a blast!”
Though he has not been here in years, Frith has played Vancouver multiple times besides his tenure with Vancouver New Music. There was a solo appearance in 1988, a 1984 performance with Tom Cora, and 1998 set of truly inspired improvised fury with Maybe Monday, featuring ROVA’s Larry Ochs on saxes and koto/electronics player Miya Masaoka.
Once—we’re not sure when— there was also a performance with Hans Reichel, part of a tour that stopped over in Victoria. This trip, however, will be Frith’s first ever to feature shows in Nanaimo, Courtney and Kelowna. We wish him sunny weather, smooth drives, and full houses.
But to help with that last, what can Vancouver audiences expect? What equipment/techniques will he employ? Ever insecure, I’m looking for a cheat sheet from Frith. Will it be all texture, noise, and swirl, or will he incorporate any elements of “songs” or repeated themes?
“Is that important?” he asks. “I have no idea what I’m doing, which is exactly the way I like it!”
Fred Frith plays the Revue Stage at Granville Island on Saturday (May 2). For tickets, go here.