Saturday, January 15, 2005
Improvisation...for permeseus.com
Having stoked their confidence with several yards of cheer and oft told tales of love and scorn, the trio boards the weathered stage like a gang of pirates lusting after a listing prize, its crew resigned to a familar fate in these bloody waters of rhythm and spew.
The Master Timber limbers up his battery, skin and brass, while his ragtop mate tweaks an amphibious amp, stomping his pedal board to life with a shoeless toe on the swabless deck. The Captain tumbles onto his keyboard throne and broadsides his prey with grin and glare in hopes that St. Christopher soon will be there.
For a journey this will be, a swashbuckling adventure of three for one on a ship at sea, a spiritual sea of pitch and roll and rock and swing, hippity hopping through spray and gale on an etherial ship of plank and nail.
The Timber, without so much as a whisper, brings his drums to bear and makes such a chatter, his harpoon tailored timing betrays an earlier era as sealer and whaler.
Ragtop responds with prickly wires poking through the texture, syncopated punctuations of heavily modulated fluxuations, at once clear and distorted, echoed in his gestures and facial contortions.
After this rollicking opening gambit, the Captain pauses a moment before seizing the torment and fires a volley of synthesized chaos into the onlooker’s ranks, cannister shots of furious folly sheering off ears, outrageously frank.
And so it proceeds, sound upon sound, sometimes soft more often loud. A 3-headed weaver looming large in a place made for madness and conjuring charms.
They build their concoction to a fast boiling stew of raw chunky bits and low rambling brew, rumbling through intestines, assaulting the heart, pistols flashing, steel balls crashing into boards, stirring stumbling feet, thrashing to the beat, throwing themselves into the breech and back.
If you listen closely, though few rarely try, you hear the collision of a hundred decisions, synaptic relays of a thousand incisions in the fabric of time. A split-second array of seamlessly frayed sensual treats intreating and retreating, revealing all the possibilities of this impossible music.
One brilliant spark appears in the midst of their slashing and grows amidst their trashing and smashing into a shining globe of such profound proportions, even the rantanctuous bartender stops her rhetorical banter and looks toward the stage with total absorption.
A pirate's fray is pirate play and on this deck the spray was never sweeter for sweeter notes were never shed in the service of the orb spinning overhead. A triple helix on a grand master scale creating a cascading parade of rampaging hues, chasing away all feelings weak and frail, stomping away a poor man's blues.
For one brief moment, the entire universe is suspended in amber as Kings and Pirates are shaped with one hammer from one metal poured from one giant forge. Twould make a Keller stare and a Webster stammer.
Yet it seemed to most, as soon as it started, it had taken its course and now was departed. No one talked of the vision, the crew or its mission, they turned to each other and compared their conditions...their jobs and their bosses, their gains and hair losses...what the pirates imparted in waters uncharted was miraculous, true, though nobody knew what to make of the sound, what to make of the sea, what to make of the orb since there was no melody.
Not one they could recognize or categorize or find in their files, this was a music of uncomfortable style. It had the smell of powder, the stink of blood, the fear of dragons in Lands Unknown. Invention is intention but what is it worth? Sail too far and you fall off the Earth.
Lucky are those who live well beyond well traveled shores, where pirates feed their treasure stores with fire and precision. Where energy flows through shoeless toes and miracles glow whether most folks know what it is or what it isnt.
The Master Timber limbers up his battery, skin and brass, while his ragtop mate tweaks an amphibious amp, stomping his pedal board to life with a shoeless toe on the swabless deck. The Captain tumbles onto his keyboard throne and broadsides his prey with grin and glare in hopes that St. Christopher soon will be there.
For a journey this will be, a swashbuckling adventure of three for one on a ship at sea, a spiritual sea of pitch and roll and rock and swing, hippity hopping through spray and gale on an etherial ship of plank and nail.
The Timber, without so much as a whisper, brings his drums to bear and makes such a chatter, his harpoon tailored timing betrays an earlier era as sealer and whaler.
Ragtop responds with prickly wires poking through the texture, syncopated punctuations of heavily modulated fluxuations, at once clear and distorted, echoed in his gestures and facial contortions.
After this rollicking opening gambit, the Captain pauses a moment before seizing the torment and fires a volley of synthesized chaos into the onlooker’s ranks, cannister shots of furious folly sheering off ears, outrageously frank.
And so it proceeds, sound upon sound, sometimes soft more often loud. A 3-headed weaver looming large in a place made for madness and conjuring charms.
They build their concoction to a fast boiling stew of raw chunky bits and low rambling brew, rumbling through intestines, assaulting the heart, pistols flashing, steel balls crashing into boards, stirring stumbling feet, thrashing to the beat, throwing themselves into the breech and back.
If you listen closely, though few rarely try, you hear the collision of a hundred decisions, synaptic relays of a thousand incisions in the fabric of time. A split-second array of seamlessly frayed sensual treats intreating and retreating, revealing all the possibilities of this impossible music.
One brilliant spark appears in the midst of their slashing and grows amidst their trashing and smashing into a shining globe of such profound proportions, even the rantanctuous bartender stops her rhetorical banter and looks toward the stage with total absorption.
A pirate's fray is pirate play and on this deck the spray was never sweeter for sweeter notes were never shed in the service of the orb spinning overhead. A triple helix on a grand master scale creating a cascading parade of rampaging hues, chasing away all feelings weak and frail, stomping away a poor man's blues.
For one brief moment, the entire universe is suspended in amber as Kings and Pirates are shaped with one hammer from one metal poured from one giant forge. Twould make a Keller stare and a Webster stammer.
Yet it seemed to most, as soon as it started, it had taken its course and now was departed. No one talked of the vision, the crew or its mission, they turned to each other and compared their conditions...their jobs and their bosses, their gains and hair losses...what the pirates imparted in waters uncharted was miraculous, true, though nobody knew what to make of the sound, what to make of the sea, what to make of the orb since there was no melody.
Not one they could recognize or categorize or find in their files, this was a music of uncomfortable style. It had the smell of powder, the stink of blood, the fear of dragons in Lands Unknown. Invention is intention but what is it worth? Sail too far and you fall off the Earth.
Lucky are those who live well beyond well traveled shores, where pirates feed their treasure stores with fire and precision. Where energy flows through shoeless toes and miracles glow whether most folks know what it is or what it isnt.
