For the uninitiated, I play in a couple of bands: Korperschwache, a solo venture that has been around long enough to celebrate its 20th anniversary in January (which in turn will coincide with my 50th birthday), and Patient O.T., a loud and strange band consisting of four very different people playing vastly different styles of music at the same time. Both are kind of an acquired taste. The methods and number of players may differ, but the goal is the same: to play strange, noisy anti-music at really high volume. Both bands are very different, but since I'm in both, that means a large no-wave influence is probably happening.
Earlier tonight, Korperschwache played at Cherry Park, a house owned by a few noise-friendly friends. They frequently hold noise shows featuring their own bands plus various others, usually between six to eight bands, all playing short sets (mine was probably no more than ten minutes, if even that). These shows are always a laid-back, casual gathering of like-minded people hanging out between sets of loud noise. House shows are the shows I like best. Playing shows at real venues like Club 1808 is fine, but they tend to have rules and issues that simply aren't present at house shows, at least in my experience.
Most of the people involved in Austin's noise scene, men and women alike, are young, in their 20s and early 30s, which means in a lot of cases I'm old enough to be (and maybe older than) their dad. I don't have a problem with this -- I don't care about age any more than I care about looks or whatever, and there are remarkably few assholes in the scene, so everybody's usually easy to get along with regardless of age. It does occasionally mean that I think of some of the musicians in the scene as the sons or daughters I might have had if I'd gotten around to that in my 20s, but I'm okay with that too. Music is always a great bridge over the age barrier; we might not all be the same age, but we're all more or less in agreement about noise and surprisingly varied in our non-noise music tastes. Justin Fritsche of Grandpa Lies Again drove us to the set we played last week at Trailer Space Records, and we had R.E.M.'s OUT OF TIME playing the whole way there. This this time on the way, it was drone and noisecore bands (imagine a series of brief bursts of noise and howling.). For people playing such a supposedly monochromatic form of music, we sure do listen to a lot of different stuff in just about every genre imaginable, and some that probably aren't.
One of the things I like best about these shows is being in the houses of other people. Houses are kind of a novelty to me; the last time I lived in a house was 1983, and since then all my living has been done in small two-room apartments. The largest place I've lived since I moved out at 18 was 880 square feet. For many years now I've been living in places around 525-545 square feet; the current place is 535, I think. So being in houses, with so many more rooms and much more room to move around, is a nice departure from living in a shoebox. It's also really fascinating to see the different knickknacks, books, and art on display in different houses. Residents leave interesting things lying around, and houses eventually take on a personality that reflects its owners, so there are always interesting things to see.
A lot of people -- especially people I date, as it often happens -- find the noise thing inexplicable. I can sympathize with that; it takes a special kind of person to stand around in a room watching pasty white dudes (and dudettes) use various gadgets and big amplifiers to make loud, horrible noises. But for people into it, the appeal of noise is largely rooted in the fact that it's a form of music that anyone can play, and its very simplicity leaves lots of room to do different, interesting things. All you need are some noise-making gadgets, maybe a microphone, and an amp or PA, and you're ready to go. Noise is the one form of music that requires absolutely no physical dexterity or knowledge of fancy chords and shit to play. If you can turn pedals on and off, you can do it. Of course, with such a simple starting point, the real talent is in making versions of noise that sound different. That's more about imagination and picking the right equipment than being able to play conventional music with rules and scales and all that hoohah.
It's also about tone. Noise shares with free jazz the attention to actual tones, sounds, and improvisational skills, and some bands (including Korperschwache, to a degree) are essentially free jazz bands with distortion pedals. This is the kind of music where how it sounds, how you got that sound, and what you do with that sound, are all way more important than anything as dull as actually knowing the "right" way to play something. Tone is especially important to Korperschwache live, especially during the guitar feedback parts.
The band's output varies wildly in style (although always with at least some noise content, and often really, really slow), but Korperschwache live is strictly about the relationship between a boy and his guitar, with a really loud amplifier involved. The amplifier in question is a 120-watt Crate that is very, very, *very* loud, especially in small contained spaces. It is turned all the way up. The guitar is a cheap Epiphone Les Paul knockoff that is very, very loud, holds much tone-shaping potential when turned all the way up. The amplifier vibrates so much that I can't leave anything sitting it on it, because it will vibrate across the amp and onto the floor. It vibrates so much that the floor and walls shake. All this happens while the guitar (laid out on a floor monitor or something similar) is feeding back at a volume that would drown out a fire alarm or, when actually played, emitting bass-heavy sonic waves or high-pitched wailing. Due to a bad back, over the years I've gotten used to playing all shows sitting on one corner of that amp, and when the guitar is playing, it's like sitting on the world's loudest vibrator.
While playing at this volume I often reach a surprisingly meditative state. The more I play live, the more I wish I could play this loud for fifteen minutes every day as a form of meditation. Maybe when I have real $$$ again I'll rent a lockout space at Music Lab and do just that.
