FraKctured

November 6, 2000 Majestic Theater show #1 / Detroit, MI

on the speakers: Rimitti "Nousar"

on the bookshelf: W.G. Sebald "The Rings of Saturn"

Well, I eventually got my room. Decent enough for a King Crimson hotel. (Bill Bruford use to always joke that King Crimson was the only band that you could play in eleven and still stay in a nice hotel!) The management is obviously absent from the organization, but hey! I have my room and I am happy.

This was a rock and roll performance in a rock and roll venue. Need I say more? OK. This performance space is actually a whole complex. (Or is it a performance space with a complex? I'm not sure?) There is the main theater, a swanky (and very good!) restaurant/bar, a bowling alley, a funky bar, and another bar/gig upstairs called The Magic Stick where I played with The Trey Gunn Band in September. Aside from the restaurant there is a pretty grungy feel to the place. Lets just say that the couches in the dressing room don't shout out and say "sit on me."

There was a lot of tension in the air today. Our crew hit it as soon as they arrived at the venue. I could feel it the second we arrived. EVERYONE was having a hard time doing their job. It was as if every small task had an obstacle thrown up in front of it. So, we set up the pyro cannons and blew everything out of the water.

We KNEW this would be a rock and roll gig. Robert, Adrian and myself played here a few years ago with Projekct Two and it was very rock and roll! The vibe even caught the band by surprise. Here we were a funky little loungy, space jam outfit and suddenly we became transported to the planet 'Monsters of Rock.' And yet, we delivered.

But, I can't say that I was entirely prepared for the Rock vibe that we stepped into with Crimson. We opted for the power set for this first night. All the heavy instrumentals were included and stacked at the front of the show. We left out One Time, Cage and a few others that don't come immediately to mind. We rocked and the audience sucked it up.

There was an intense moment during the earliest improv segment. A flash photo went off during the middle of it and it completely froze the music. ALL four of us were suddenly stopped in our tracks, cold. The timing of the flash couldn't have been better for stopping the flow of the music. It was almost as if it had been calculated from outside of the music. The music was growing and growing and growing... and then we could feel a shift taking place... a transitional moment began to emerge while some new seeds were getting planted for a change in the aural landscape.... and then right as it was about to emerge.... Bam! the flash went off. An abrupt, and uncomfortable, moment of quiet took over. We recovered wonderfully (as we have had a lot of 'recovery practice' with this group), but never got to where we were going. It was a such a quick moment that we all 'let it go' as suddenly as it had arrived.

It was, generally, a fairly wasted audience. Definitely a lot of drinking going on, which also leads to a lot of shouting. Pot smoking doesn't seem to have the same effect. I am fairly ambivalent about the shouting. I don't find it distracting and I don't find it helpful. I guess, I just find it kind of stupid. And since I tend to tune out the 'stupid' during a show, I tune this out as well. The only time in the show where I feel that it needs to be dealt with is at the beginning of "Thrush." My way of 'dealing with it' is to just stand as still as I can and not begin my contribution to the beginning of the piece until the right moment. Sometimes this feels to come sooner because it can help quiet the hoots. Sometimes it feels to come later so that the band's presence can still the hooters. Other times it seems fairly arbitrary where I begin, so I just start. Either way this piece works it's magic and we end up with real listeners. Music CAN be so wonderful!

After the show we had a great dinner in the cafe and went bowling. Josh, Adrian, Laurie and myself. Now we're talking some serious fun here. I have only bowled twice in the last ten years. And the last time was in Phoenix, Arizona with Adrian. We had gone out to dinner with Alice Cooper (A personal hero of mine!) and, afterwards, went out for a game or two. I love to bowl, but the price I had to pay with my hand was tremendous. My right hand was sore for a week. So, I was trying to be careful this time. The hero of the night was Laurie who had never bowled before -- spare, spare, spare and two strikes. Damn this newbie is good! We played until they closed the place at 2:00am. Then it was out to an after-hours club for dancing, cocaine, orgies, daiquiris and more coke. Oh wait, wrong band. For a second there I thought I was in the "Queens of the Stone Age."