> There's a wonderful book entirely built around this premise (and full of
> excellent practical advice) by Eugene Chadbourne entitled _I Hate The Man
> Who Runs This Bar: The Survival Guide For Real Musicians_.
Are you a musician Michael?
I’ve heard Chadbourne too actually, he comes down to this part of the world from time to time. In fact he just released an album with a noise guy from Christchurch, Greg Malcolm. Sydney has a thriving improv scene, which I only check out occasionally.
Re: Doug’s tale of the electric rake. Chadbourne is OG, having been doing free improv since the early 70s (and he also does other stuff). But I do think the pure form of the genre at least has become pretty tired; when you take out structures of harmony and rhythm all you have left is timbre, which I guess is why build-your-own-instrument has become so important. I took my brother to a show last year where one act involved defunct trumpets muted with grocery bags (which sucked) and one with two people bowing cymbals (which was okay). He said “It’s like they have forgotten everything that makes music good, but it’s interesting to see the kind of people who come to hear it.”
Once the timbral point is made, there’s nowhere else to go... but as soon as someone makes a gesture towards tune or rhythm in that environment, it drives the audience wild (good wild). Just like noise has rediscovered tone and melody and become interesting again in the last few years, the most interesting stuff I’ve seen in the Sydney scene has come from people moving out of it, or who were always on the edges of it.
Mike Beggs