Radio Gig

Our first ever gig… and first ever day playing as a trio (rehearsals included… our sole one as a trio was three hours before this set). Performed onstage at the Manhattan on Friday, July 17th, 2009, as part of an evening of experimental music organized by Paul Goguen (aka Paranerd). We were followed by electronic musique concrète artist Ghistlain Roy (from Montréal) and Paranerd himself. Visuals were provided (via Nintendo NES console and LCD projector) by Heosphoros (which I believe is pronounced “He is for us” in a German-like accent).

Although HGH is commonly known as the acronym for “Human Growth Hormone(s)”, it also comprises my first initial with the other two members’ family initial. The three of us first played together during the community performance of Terry Riley’s “In C” (see Performance #1 of “My 7 Performances”), organized by Frédérick “Fred” Hétu (who plays computer-based samples and keyboards here). André Hébert was the guy who helped me into the performance, by collaborating on rehearsal and showing up at the same time (he plays a Telecaster guitar, or maybe a Stratocaster… it’s hard to see on this video… with only an amp and a volume pedal). I, over-achiever and with a hidden inferiority complex, showed up with Gibson Les Paul, Yamaha 5-string bass, Roland RC-300 MIDI programmer (which I forgot to touch during the _entire_ performance, despite testing it several times during soundcheck), CASIO MIDI-capable keyboard (from the late ’80s), and a rented Roland RC-50 loop pedal combo (which may become my new pet plugin). The RC-50 is why I am frequently crouched down during the set.

We quickly found out during our sole rehearsal (we believe in speed ) that we have a penchant for Henry Cow, early Tangerine Dream, .”Ummagumma”-era Pink Floyd, “Starless and Bible Black”-era King Crimson (”We’ll Let You Know”), and Quebec’s Dionne-Brégent and René Lussier (even though we may not actually listen to those groups… No wait, I listen to everything but Henry Cow on a semi-regular basis, and André loves the Henry Cow and René Lussier).

Enchant’ment (with the apostrophe to reflect both the English and French spelling of the word) is named as such because of the inclusion of a testimonial on old-time sorcery, a talk on positive thinking and action (which probably was considered sorcery back in the day), a child’s enchanting verbalizations, and my singing (which is “chant”, or “chanter”, in French). Part 3 brings the somewhat accessible final nature of our first publicly-performed collaborative piece to the fore. If you can only interest yourself to listen to one part of this performance, I believe this would be it. Call this the Radio Edit.

PS: Okay, fine, I ran out of space on this one. Read the PS on the other ones.

Duration : 0:7:23

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