Detritus

In my now twice daily attempt to keep my work email with the size/space guidelines (or else they start whacking features like fwding or attachment, kind of lobbing off functionality appendages...), I came across a bit I wrote in 2005 about the closing of Penny Lane, the neo-Beat coffee shop down on Pearl St that fell not unexpectedly 5 years ago to rent pressures.

It was a short recollection of a Fred Frith show I saw there, prompted by a request from Pete Miller to write something like an RIP. The show was sometime in the late eighties - I want to say 1987.

I had the paragraph stored in my drafts for some reason, and oddly, I felt a momentary pang of fear that I could lose it, just like that - and it's a neat little remembrance.

So, here it is.

The crowd, 30 or so of us, were equally constitued of guitar geeks, live music junkies and the usual smattering of East Pearl counterculture undead. Frith, bearing the demeanor of a semi-retired British literature professor, took his place on a stool and proceeded to launch his uniquely merciless assault on twentieth century harmony, an hour or so of bouyant neo-Celt/folk figures adrift in an ocean of ecstatic sonic agony. It was like touring the cosmos from seat of a jalopy amusement park spin-you ride, and you either walked out profoundly confused or profoundly changed, or you weren't paying attention.