In our previous feature on Fred Frith, the veteran guitarist was reluctant to describe what, precisely, he would be doing during his solo sets on his ongoing B.C. tour. We pestered for details—tools, techniques, end results—and he simply wouldn’t go there.
We discovered on Wednesday night in Nanaimo, when Frith played the Vault, that there was a very good reason for that: the techniques and tools Frith employed in his approach to the guitar were varied in the extreme, so much so they were also kind of impossible to do justice to in words. And even if he had shared what he planned to do in detail, it wouldn’t capture the magic of seeing him do it live, let alone the sonic effect of it.
The set was dizzyingly delightful, but really, it’s best experienced, well, live.
If I told you, for instance, that at one point during his performance, Frith had two metal bowls—which might have been ashtrays? Hubcaps? Some sort of meditation tool? Possibly even some sort of actual percussion instrument?
And that for a few minutes, he alternated placing one on the strings of his guitar (which he had laid flat on his lap) while pouring from one of the bowls some sort of particulate substance. Was it sand? Pebbles? Beads? David Cronenberg’s kidney stone collection? The process created sounds we cannot begin to describe—a percussive micro-cascade, perhaps.
What about if I added that he also sometimes played the rims of said bowls with a cello bow?
It’s rather like the old saying about dissecting a joke being rather like dissecting a frog: you might get a fine piece of description from the effort, but you also end up with a dead frog.
Plus, the above was just one short, if magical, segment of the set—never-repeated, though the bowls were used in other ways during the night, as were brushes and batons. He also had an array of little instruments and tools laid out on a table to one side, and pedals at his feet, and would set things in motion while selecting whatever new tool or toy he wanted to use next, seeming to follow no specific plan but the one dictated on the spot by his intuitions.
Nevermind explanations, though ttrepidatious readers scared that such a night might be too difficult or or too cerebral or too abstract or so forth should note that, besides being joyfully playful, it was also, in the end, very much musical. Notes were played and sung. There was one lick that sure sounded like a playful nod to the soundtrack work of Ry Cooder, even, though that might have been entirely an accident.
And there was a rocking out, freeform electric encore, though of course, Frith having done that on Wednesday night does not mean that he will do the same thing on Saturday when he plays Vancouver.
There was one question on which we did ask for clarifcation from Frith.
Neptoon proprietor Rob Frith has long wondered if he and Fred Frith are related. Rob Frith’s forbears are, indeed, British, and came to the Americas via the Turks and Caicos Islands. So did Fred’s family tree have a branch that-a-way?
Not as far as he knows. “I think my branch of the Friths has been entirely based in England from the depths of history until now!” the guitarist said. “A cousin did emigrate to B.C in the 70s but…”
One final note about Saturday’s Vancouver show which, like Nanaimo’s, will see phipps pt perform opening duties. The band, in addition to sometimes B.C.-based vocalist Lovage Sharrock, featured Jon “Wobbly” Leidecker of Negativland. Their set was transfixing, too.
We only hope the Vancouver crowd is as attentive, silent, and respectful as the one at Nanaimo’s the Vault. The listening on Wednesday was as skillful as the musicianship!
Fred Frith plays Granville Island’s Revue Stage on Saturday (May ). Go here for tickets.