Fifty-four years after the day my mother came and picked me up from middle school to tell me Jimi Hendrix had passed, I listened to Band of Gypsys and read a retired library copy of Greg Tate's Hendrix book (Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience) while pondering how yesterday's innovators become the club reactionaries use to beat up on bringers of the new breed thing. With 50 days to go until the election, I'm writing postcards to voters and signed up online to make phone calls for the Dems -- when I went to pick up our Colin Allred sign, a worker at the local headquarters told me 145,000 voters have been dropped from the rolls in Tarrant County, so they're trying to alert them and remind them early voting starts October 21.
When my buddy Mike and I rolled up at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios for this month's edition of Molten Plains, we could hear a band in the tower in the parking lot playing something that sounded like Pere Ubu's "Street Waves," and once inside, Chad Withers pointed out the shelf he'd constructed to hold the VHS tape collection I sold him for the price of a nice dinner for my wife. Apparently, Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits has been a staff favorite. Later, it was interesting to hear some patrons remarking on how their parents loved Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, seeing Iggy and Tom Waits on the box, and remembering some of my early cinephile experiences (watching Satyricon over a New York bar fight while on LSD, only later realizing that it wasn't the acid, the continuity really was that fucked up; seeing Casanova with my bad-acting buddies in some South Dallas strip mall).
For the evening's first set, the room was configured with chairs in a circle around two tables where Rachel Weaver and James Talambas sat facing each other with the concentration of chess players. Weaver is a Molten Plains stalwart who always brings something interesting to the table, here collaborating for the first time with New Media Contemporary honcho Talambas, who just concluded a seven year stint on the Fort Worth Art Commission (a body of whose existence I, as a Panther City resident, am ashamed to say I was unaware), on laptop. From the first moments, the two blended their sounds as though they had been playing together for years, mixing sounds from nature with static and electronic pulses, joining up to flow together like the tides, pulled by the moon, sweeping back and forth in stereo picture to create an effect that was quite transporting.
Next on line was Houston's Enemy Goddess, who after an initial stop (cotton gloves don't work well with touch screens) built a tripartite wall of harsh noise, altering textures and rhythms as they went (putting me in mind of dancer Sarah Gamblin's remark last month that every movement creates a problem to be solved), adding the sounds of bells and electronically treated voice. After the set, ritual jane spoke quite disarmingly of having started playing while working for H-Town's Nameless Sound (and mindful of the Pauline Oliveros heritage there), initially on percussion but gradually supplanting that with electronics "because you can't really do percussion living in an apartment." Their initial forays into electronic music were abandoned for noise when "everyone said it sounded like video game music." Now they create a huge sound of dark menace that my buddy Mike said would take a few minutes to recover from -- which ritual jane took as a compliment.
The evening's final set featured the first collaboration between two duos, Monte Espina and Sin Razon. On this occasion, the confluence of Molten Plains co-curator Ernesto Montiel's treated guitar and Miguel Espinel's percussion, wind instruments, and electronic treatments with Lo Ramirez's powerful voice and electronics and Julio A. Sanchez's guitar and effects combined to create a teeming, primordial soundscape, replete with the rumbling of shifting tectonic plates and cries of new life awakening. Watching Sanchez (with whom I had a chance to perform during the Improv Lotto back in July) bending down repeatedly to tweak his effects, I couldn't help worrying about his back (although he's young and doesn't have these concerns). I meant to suggest that he try performing seated, or put his pedals on a stand. Maybe next time.
Next Molten Plains will be October 30, featuring Australian percussionist Will Guthrie, and this year's Molten Plains Fest will be December 14-15, with a lineup to be announced. This Friday, I'll be checking out guitarist extraordinaire Gregg Prickett's birthday at Full City Rooster in Dallas, with performances by his ensembles Sawtooth Dolls, Trio du Sang, and Monks of Saturnalia. Then Saturday, I'll head for Growl Records in Arlington to catch Trio Glossia (who are now featuring Matthew Frerck on guitar for a new number) on an eclectic bill at an all ages show. And I'm hoping my new batch of postcards arrives so I can join in a Postcards To Voters campaign for Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, fighting against the racist targeting of Haitian immigrants in Springfield. Got to do something.
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