{"id":19553,"date":"2026-04-25T18:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T18:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/19553\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T18:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T18:41:09","slug":"fred-frith-returns-to-vancouver-seditious-soccer-and-playful-perversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/19553\/","title":{"rendered":"Fred Frith returns to Vancouver: seditious soccer and playful perversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since the first Henry Cow album,\u00a0Leg End,\u00a0is where Fred Frith\u2019s recorded output begins, it makes natural sense to begin a retrospective feature on the man by starting there. The record\u00a0came out in 1973, when Frith was still based in the UK.<\/p>\n

Attentive listeners might note a debt to Frank Zappa. Frith, reached at his current home in Oakland, agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we owe an enormous debt to Zappa, especially the early years,” he tells the Straight. “Uncle Meat\u00a0was on repeated listening for a while when it came out! I admit I lost interest after\u00a0Hot Rats\u00a0when 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debt to Zappa is not as strongly noted in Frith\u2019s later composing or playing, but the guitarist did meet Zappa, \u201calmost by accident\u201d, he explains. Frith\u2019s late-’80s group, Keep the Dog, was performing in Moscow in 1989. That band repped, among other things repped, Frith\u2019s more song-based material from his Ralph Records years, more on which later. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cZappa happened to be there as part of his job as cultural attache to the Czech Republic under Vaclav Havel\u2014who 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.<\/p>\n

Frith continues with, “Anyway, he duly attended our concert which was a big success\u2014an audience that really seemed to hear and understand what we were doing. I didn\u2019t see him afterwards, but the promoter told me he\u2019d said something to the effect of \u2018Well, I know where that\u2019s coming from!\u2019 Sigh. Reminds me of when I gave a copy of\u00a0Guitar Solos\u00a0to 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: \u2018Check it out, he\u2019s ripping me off!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cDon\u201d there is Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, while John French is, of course, best known as Drumbo, the drummer for Beefheart\u2019s Magic Band on\u00a0Trout Mask Replica\u00a0and other key albums.\u00a0French 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\u2019s esteemed countryman Richard Thompson. (The latter legend is a sweetheart to work with, Frith says sincerely. He note that the \u00a0guitar playing on \u2018Too Much Too Little\u2019 from Frith’s 1983 album\u00a0Cheap at Half the Price\u00a0was intended as an homage to Thompson).<\/p>\n

The French Frith Kaiser Thompson albums, which feature compositions from all the players, include one of Frith\u2019s all-time funniest rock songs, \u201cWhere\u2019s the Money?\u201d<\/a>. On the track an\u00a0artist vents frustration at his economic circumstances, rhyming \u201cWhere\u2019s the money\u201d with \u201cIt isn\u2019t funny\u201d, a couplet so essential and obvious when it comes to the arts that we can\u2019t believe we haven\u2019t encountered it elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Fred Frith. <\/p>\n

So did he ever answer that question, that is, solve the problem of money?<\/p>\n

\u201cLike 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\u2014from 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!\u201d<\/p>\n

One aspect of Frith\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Paul Blaney, Fran\u00e7ois Houle, Peggy Lee, Ron Samworth, Stefan Smulovitz, Jesse Zubot and Dylan van der Schyff, workshopping a final concert.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s strengths and giving them feedback and direction. The final performance ended up highly reminiscent of the soundtrack to the Andy Goldsworthy documentary,\u00a0Rivers and Tides, which is some of Frith\u2019s most accessible and beautiful work.<\/p>\n

It was very satisfying, and as maximal an exposure to Frith\u2019s methods as a non-musician could wish. But the weirdest and most memorable part of it was learning somewhere, in passing, that Frith was\u00a0also a soccer coach,\u00a0at the same time as he was a professor of composition in the music department at Mills College in Oakland (Frith retired in 2018).<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

\u201cI coached my son Finn\u2019s team for six years,\u201d Frith responds. \u201cI 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 \u2018coach\u2019, 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\u2014they were British, French, Mexican, soccer playing nations, in other words!. He knew who I was and said to the kids \u2018Did you know your coach is famous?\u2019 After a slightly puzzled pause one of them said: \u2018Well, he\u2019s famous to us!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring 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\u2019re both dealing with a continuum of unpredictability, constant spontaneous adjustment to what you can and can\u2019t predict. That, and the process of learning that opportunities are more likely to come to you if you\u2019re not always trying to be wherever the ball is!<\/p>\n

“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\u2019ve always been drawn to sport of all kinds.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are, of course, multiple sports-based approaches to composition and playing, including the works of Billy Jenkins, David Moss, and Albert Marcoeur, whose\u00a0Sports et Percussions\u00a0is \u201ca classic\u201d, 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,\u00a0Hockey,\u00a0which Zorn\u2019s Tzadik website describes as producing \u201csome of the strangest music ever conceived.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201crules\u201d for musical behaviour are where the sports component lies, the notes further explain:\u00a0\u201cBy limiting each improviser\u2019s personal language to five sounds and carrying them through a complex structure of solos, duos and trios,\u00a0Hockey\u00a0forces its interpreters to focus on timing, economy and context.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frith says of Zorn\u2019s game pieces that they are a \u201cwhole genre unto themselves.\u201d 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\u2019s\u00a0Late Works,\u00a0with Frith on electric guitar and Zorn on alto sax. And some of the musicians on\u00a0Hockey\u00a0like Wayne Horvitz and Bob Ostertag would work with Frith in other contexts.<\/p>\n

The one I\u2019m most curious about, however, is Eugene Chadbourne, who, like Frith, put out albums, early on, of solo guitar. (Chadbourne\u2019s is called\u00a0Solo Acoustic Guitar, from 1976, his first album; Frith\u2019s, from 1974 is called Guitar Solos<\/a>.\u00a0Given that Frith\u2019s Vancouver date is being billed as \u201cSolo Guitar\u201d, we assume that recording may have some bearing on what we will hear?).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So did Frith and Chadbourne ever cross paths?<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u00a02000 Statues\u00a0project in New York the following year, which is how I met Zorn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chadbourne fans might know of that album as\u00a0The English Channel, and it can be purchased in CDr format through Chadbourne\u2019s 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\u00a0that Chadbourne\u2019s playing and his are \u201clight years apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Bugs Bunny, Boris Karloff, or Roger Miller don\u2019t play as large a part in Frith\u2019s musical world as they do in Chadbourne\u2019s, and I\u2019ve never seen Frith break out a banjo, let alone an electric rake).<\/p>\n

The only similarity I can note between the two is an element of deep playfulness, I observe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Video of The Residents – The Replacement<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Suburban Modern, contributing guitar solos to the tracks \u201cDumbo the Clown\u201d and \u201cTime\u2019s Up\u201d.\u00a0They must have been impressed, as Frith then continued to record with them on\u00a0The Commercial Album,\u00a0where he is credited as an \u201cExtra Hard Working Guest Musician\u201d.<\/p>\n

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? \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHardy 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\u2014they 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.<\/p>\n

“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<\/a>\u00a0shortly before Hardy passed. I was and am very grateful we had that last chance to work together\u201d.<\/p>\n

After Fox\u2019s death in October of 2018, Frith would compose and perform a minimal, mournful track, \u201cAlmost Certain\u201d for the Hardy Fox tribute album,\u00a0Godfather of Odd.<\/p>\n

Frith says the Ralph Records commissions for his 1980s run of solo albums,\u00a0Gravity, Speechless, and\u00a0Cheap at Half the Price\u00a0were life-changing for him. One song from those years has always stood out for me, from the more vocally-based third album: \u201cSome Clouds Don\u2019t\u201d.\u00a0It includes advice to \u201cbeware of the wise\u201d, which gets rhymed with \u201cLies! Lies!\u201d and the warning that \u201cThey\u2019ll make shoes that will fit any size\u201d. There\u2019s also a chorus that observes that some clouds don\u2019t have a silver lining. What\u2019s going on there?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the Reagan Era and there was an array of nutters in our faces every day\u2014Haig, Weinberger and so on. Very inspiring!\u201d<\/p>\n

Frith has occasionally been quite overtly political; as an example, he points to Henry Cow\u2019s 1975 album\u00a0In Praise of Learning.\u00a0(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).<\/p>\n

The lyrics \u201cdon\u2019t exactly pull any punches\u201d, Frith says. The opening track, \u201cWar\u201d, which would later be covered by The Fall, talks of how war appeared on earth, and features the motto, \u201cViolence completes the partial mind.\u201d Another track, \u201cBeautiful as the Moon\/Terrible as an Army with Banners\u201d sees guest vocalist Dagmar Krause, who would later form Art Bears with Frith, issuing the invocation\u00a0to \u201carise, work men, and seize the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lyrics are generally poetic, not didactic, but they are certainly not particularly subtle about the band\u2019s beliefs, which continues on Art Bears\u2019 subsequent\u00a0The World As It Is Today.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Hockey\u00a0and\u00a0The English Channel,\u00a0interviewed Frith when he first moved to America in the late 1970s.<\/p>\n

Ostertag would later record\u00a0Voice of America\u00a0with 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 \u201cYankee go home\u201d.<\/p>\n

But even though they are seldom worn as close to the skin as on these projects, there\u2019s a politic present throughout Frith\u2019s body of work. Skeleton Crew\u2014a project, undertaken in the early ’80s with New York multi-instrumentalist Tom\u00a0Cora\u2014was described by Robert Christgau as \u201cseditious\u201d, which Frith says sounds \u201cabout right\u201d. Readers are directed to try the particularly insane video for \u201cIt\u2019s Fine,\u201d\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4Opl4GNUq8U&list=RD4Opl4GNUq8U&start_radio=1<\/a>\u00a0off 1984\u2019s\u00a0Learn to Talk, for a memorable example.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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,\u00a0\u201cAll music is \u2018political’ whether overtly and intended or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been interested in propaganda, and I\u2019ve seen first hand how bands with a \u2018message\u2019 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.”<\/p>\n

Video of Fred Frith – Some Clouds Don’t<\/p>\n

There are songs on\u00a0his 2002 solo album\u00a0Prints,\u00a0and on his band project Cosa Brava\u2019s records that follow that path, a path that has always been there.<\/p>\n

“I believe in kindness, generosity, and tolerance, which makes the current political climate particularly galling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As a bigger fan of Frith\u2019s guitar than even, yes, Thompson\u2019s, I imagine this as an indignity, akin to being lucky enough to have Keith Moon\u00a0in your band and asking him to play tambourine. Does Frith mind being \u201crelegated\u201d to bass duties?<\/p>\n

Frith patiently adjusts my attitude.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’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\u2014I’m having a blast!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Larry Ochs on saxes and koto\/electronics player Miya Masaoka. <\/p>\n

Once\u2014we\u2019re not sure when\u2014 there was also a performance with Hans Reichel, part of a tour that stopped over in Victoria. This trip, however, will be Frith\u2019s first ever to feature shows in Nanaimo, Courtney and Kelowna. We wish him sunny weather, smooth drives, and full houses.<\/p>\n

But to help with that last, what can Vancouver audiences expect? What equipment\/techniques will he employ? Ever insecure, I\u2019m 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?<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that important?” he asks. “I have no idea what I’m doing, which is exactly the way I like it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Fred Frith plays the Revue Stage at Granville Island on Saturday (May 2). For tickets, go here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. \u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[415,17,412,413,418,407,414,420,416,423,226,389,419,422,421,417,95],"class_list":{"0":"post-19553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-dining","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-events","15":"tag-fashion","16":"tag-film","17":"tag-food","18":"tag-lifestyle","19":"tag-music","20":"tag-nightlife","21":"tag-restaurants","22":"tag-shopping","23":"tag-tv","24":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}