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was in Glasgow last night attending the Triptych 'free noise' night which featured Yellow Swans, Evan Parkers, C Spencer Yeh, John Wiese, Culver, John Hession, Metalux....
thing is, I figured that it would be like a festival style thing with each artist playing a set... the £15 entry fee helped further this expectation...
so when I went in and found the stage crammed full of everyone in some sort of spontaneous ensemble jam, I figured it was just a whimsical start to the night. Then it began dragging on for a while and I became nervous.
It ended and I discovered there was a twenty minute intermission before more of the same.
Me and my pal went to wet our throats and noticed a poster near the bar advertising a James Chance and Les Contortions gig at Optimio club later that very same night. We opted to attend that in a bid to try and save the night.
Free Noise part 2 was slightly better although the overall set-up still left a bad taste in my mouth. A lot of the time, the music was meandering, sloppy as hell.. Everyone was self-consciously delving in and out of the jam.. the dude from Yellow Swans looked morose as hell.. he just sat there most of the time looking bored... meanwhile, the YS guitarist was swaying about, nodding his head, occasionally contributing some hesitant, gentle skronk...
Parker hung back a lot of the time as well, but he seemed to come in at the right moments and the other musicians seemed to ease off a bit, perhaps out of deference or some damn thing...
We had reservations about Optimo - my friend made a comment about an 'arthritic' James Chance and it made me laugh nervously.. I wasn't all that sure this was gonna be good but I had been looking forward to the free noise night and somehow needed to rectify my evening of entertainment.
We queued outside Optimo for a bit, went inside, paid our £14 (!) and hit the bar again. Optimo is a really hip club. At the start of the night they play no-wave and post punk. AS the night wears on they tend to veer towards more dancable stuff but good stuff like Can and shit. It's also full of intimidating, sexy hipsters. It's fun to lurk in the shadows and watch them dance to the Pop Group for example, whilst sucking on a cold brew.
A little after midnight, Chance hit the stage. He looked like a re-animated corpse! He was prancing about in a baggy suit with bow tie, his grey hair in a quiff. Then he started to blow and I'll be damned if he still couldn't belt it out! His vocals were spot on as well. I have a live CD of the Contortions from the late 70s and I have to say, I couldn't hear much difference between that and what went down last night.
They played Contort Yourself and the crowd went apeshit. They also played Jaded from the No New York LP which prompted me to shout out a request for Flip Your Face later on. A lass in the crowd turned to me and said 'good choice but I doubt he'll play it.'
She was correct.
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