[atsonicpark]

I love Guitar Trio, I've always toyed with the idea of putting out a covers/tribute album to it. Essential. Band of Susans' cover is great.

Anyone got a tab?

[scott v]

I have the actual "score" that Rhys gave us when i performed in Guitar Trio in Buffalo last year, fairly simple E chord and variants... its more about strumming patterns, tremelo picking attack on that chord and the guitar overtones developed from it.

that was the one time performing where i thought my ears were gonna start bleeding, and personally i thought i've played in louder noise type shows and seen louder shows. i think alot of it had to do with those overtones developed and rhys had us play a very treble-heavy sound only using the bridge pickups on our guitars.

[atsonicpark]

fucking amazing.

[Moshe]

Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Godspeed Folk on Chatham Set
Plus: Final Fantasy, Tony Conrad, Lichens, members of Hüsker Dü, U.S. Maple, Fog

One man, one chord, and a pretty enviable list of collaborators: Guitar Trio, perhaps Rhys Chatham's trademark piece, is minimal music deployed on a maximal scale.

Chatham celebrated the iconic composition's 30th birthday early last year by taking it on tour across North America with members of Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Godspeed You! Black Emperor/A Silver Mt. Zion, Hüsker Dü, Fog, Final Fantasy, and more joining in at various stops. Most performances stretched the Trio to include upwards of seven or eight guitarists-- one (Toronto) even featured a six-piece string section-- and by all accounts "epic" was the word.

Those who missed out and those who long to relive the experience alike, you're in luck. On March 4, Table of the Elements will issue "GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE!" from Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars, a massive three-disc set collecting performances of the famed piece from across last year's tour. The set draws its name from an exclamation made by a particularly zealous fan during a previous Guitar Trio performance.

Featured on the release: Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth (in Brooklyn), John McEntire, Jeff Parker, and Doug McCombs of Tortoise (Chicago), Efrim Menuck and Thierry Amar of Godspeed You! Black Emperor/A Silver Mt. Zion (Montreal), Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy (Toronto), Rob Lowe of Lichens (Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis), Andrew Broder of Fog (Minneapolis), Greg Norton of Hüsker Dü (Minneapolis), and tons more. Check out the city-by-city breakdown here, and while you're at it, have a look at the score. Not so simple after all, eh?

"GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE!":

Disc one:

01 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Brooklyn
02 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Chicago
03 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Buffalo

Disc two:

01 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Toronto
02 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Montreal
03 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Cleveland
04 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Minneapolis

Disc three:

01 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Milwaukee
02 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Chicago
03 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Brookyn

[scott v]

Originally Posted by Moshe

Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Godspeed Folk on Chatham Set
Plus: Final Fantasy, Tony Conrad, Lichens, members of Hüsker Dü, U.S. Maple, Fog

One man, one chord, and a pretty enviable list of collaborators: Guitar Trio, perhaps Rhys Chatham's trademark piece, is minimal music deployed on a maximal scale.

Chatham celebrated the iconic composition's 30th birthday early last year by taking it on tour across North America with members of Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Godspeed You! Black Emperor/A Silver Mt. Zion, Hüsker Dü, Fog, Final Fantasy, and more joining in at various stops. Most performances stretched the Trio to include upwards of seven or eight guitarists-- one (Toronto) even featured a six-piece string section-- and by all accounts "epic" was the word.

Those who missed out and those who long to relive the experience alike, you're in luck. On March 4, Table of the Elements will issue "GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE!" from Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars, a massive three-disc set collecting performances of the famed piece from across last year's tour. The set draws its name from an exclamation made by a particularly zealous fan during a previous Guitar Trio performance.

Featured on the release: Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth (in Brooklyn), John McEntire, Jeff Parker, and Doug McCombs of Tortoise (Chicago), Efrim Menuck and Thierry Amar of Godspeed You! Black Emperor/A Silver Mt. Zion (Montreal), Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy (Toronto), Rob Lowe of Lichens (Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis), Andrew Broder of Fog (Minneapolis), Greg Norton of Hüsker Dü (Minneapolis), and tons more. Check out the city-by-city breakdown here, and while you're at it, have a look at the score. Not so simple after all, eh?

"GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE!":

Disc one:

01 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Brooklyn
02 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Chicago
03 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Buffalo

Disc two:

01 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Toronto
02 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Montreal
03 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Cleveland
04 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Minneapolis

Disc three:

01 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Milwaukee
02 Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Chicago
03 Guitar Trio Pt. 2, Brookyn

Well! isn't this a pleasant suprise! I'M ON DISC ONE! Buffalo... (btw, Tony Conrad is on the Buffalo set)
glad Rhys choose part one from the Buffalo set, from memory it was better of the two except i think the finale of pt. 2 which was for me the most intense guitar playing moment i've ever experienced!!! exciting and scary (because i never had so much ringing in my left ear after playing a show, luckily it didn't turn into permanent tinnitus!)
didn't know the score was up on his site too...

i never imagined that i'd be on a cd boxset with all these wonderful musicians... thanks rhys!

[Magic Wheel Memory]

Originally Posted by scott v

I have the actual "score" that Rhys gave us when i performed in Guitar Trio in Buffalo last year, fairly simple E chord and variants... its more about strumming patterns, tremelo picking attack on that chord and the guitar overtones developed from it.

Thanks, Scott! The score is an interesting read. So, during the one-string section, the low E is played open the whole time, but you pluck the string over various frets on the fretboard instead of down near the pickups? I was at the Brooklyn show, but I never noticed that.

[Moshe]

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Guitar Trio Is My Life (G3) Radium release, Essentialist release.
Category: Music
As most of you know, Front Porch Productions produced a tour of G3 (Guitar Trio with a minimum of 6 electric guitars) in the USA last year. We called this tour "Guitar Trio Is My Life"

In each city we played with local luminaries, including band members of Birdshow, Collection of Colonies of Bees, Devil Music, Die Kruezen, February, Godspeed You ! Black Emperor, Hüsker Dü, Lichens, San Agustin, Sonic Youth, Tortoise, USAisamonster and US Maple, as well as being joined by such musicians as Josh Abrams, Anne Bourne, Ernie Brooks, Bill Brovold, Jonathan Kane, Alan Licht, Jon Mueller, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and many other fine people.

We played in 12 cities in North America, and the Table of the Elements Records recorded all the concerts.

For more information, as well as full frontal photos and recordings of this tour, please visit:

http://www.rhyschatham.net/G3ismylife/index2.html

Radium Records, a subsidiary of the Table of the Elements, is releasing a selection of these concerts on 3 separate CDs, the release date is 4 March. We plan to tour G3 in Belgium and Italy in March in support of the release, as well as in other cities throughout the spring and summer and indeed the rest of 2008.

If you are a concert producer and would like to have G3 in your city, don't hesitate to contact Front Porch Productions, who does our booking. The contact person is Regina Greene: frontporchproductionsrg@gmail.com

Regarding Essentialist, my band with David Daniell, Joe Stickney, Byron Westbrook, and Adam Wills:

I have been getting messages asking me when the Essentialist release is going to come out. I've got good news, the CD mix has been completed, at last!

In discussion with the record company, Radium Records, we've decided to release the tour of GUITAR TRIO we did in the States first. As I've already said, it will be out on 3 separate CDs on 4 March.

We will be releasing the Essentialist record later on in 2008. I will let you know as soon as I have a firm date.

Thanks so much for your interest and support.

Warm regards

Rhys Chatham

[scott v]

hmm, interesting that its 3 seperate cds and not as a boxset???

[scott v]

Originally Posted by Magic Wheel Memory

Thanks, Scott! The score is an interesting read. So, during the one-string section, the low E is played open the whole time, but you pluck the string over various frets on the fretboard instead of down near the pickups? I was at the Brooklyn show, but I never noticed that.

well, during the one string section Rhys pretty much left it to the players (despite alot of the other very specific type of requirements) as to when and at what degree to either pluck traditionally over the pickups on the body or at harmonic intervals on the neck of the guitar which is either above the 12th fret, 9th fret, 7th fret, 5th fret, etc etc... i think, i'm basing this off memory, but it does state specifically on the score over which frets to hit the strings... the point in doing this is to create different overtones and not just the fundamental E chord, of course the key is that this needs to occur at a high volume level also... so knowing that i presume the best way to listen to these cds is LOUD!!! (brings me back to the feeling i had when Rhy's treble charged fender amp was blasting into my left ear the whole time... ah yes!)

Its possible that he didn't go into great detail in rehearsing w/ the Brooklyn group because they were well, all quite experienced players and he didn't want to tell them "how to play", thats what i guess... I remembered that in Buffalo, we rehearsed for nearly an hour prior to performing that nite. (some of that had to do w/ the issues concerning Tony Conrad's setup and his untunable harmony/sears roebuck guitar circa the 60's, that was quite funny!)

[Moshe]

Guitar Trio is My Life!
February 24, 2008

 

On January 27th 2007, Rhys Chatham performed his legendary composition "Guitar Trio" in Brooklyn, NY.
For this special concert Chatham has invited some of NYC finest musician including Lee, Thurston and Kim to play the piece.
A documentation of this concert among other live performances of this piece will be released on a 3 CD box set out on March 4th.
More info about the NYC performance here:
http://www.rhyschatham.net/G3ismylife/Brooklyn.html

 

Moshe

[Moshe]

Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars
Guitar Trio Is My Life! [Table of the Elements; 2008]
Rating: 8.7

If the most pure rock'n'roll is all about excess, emancipation, and sexuality, then 55-year-old Parisian composer Rhys Chatham makes Mick Jagger seem like a Sunday school teacher: Chatham's second 3xCD box set for Table of the Elements, Guitar Trio is My Life!, collects 10 performances from Chatham's 2007 14-city North American tour. Every night, Chatham and a different ensemble of musicians performed his most famous work, 1977's "Guitar Trio", twice. It's about time: For too long, Chatham's massed guitars have been a footnote to those of the more famous Glenn Branca. But Branca--- like Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, Swans' Michael Gira and Jonathan Kane, and the Modern Lovers' Ernie Brooks, many of whom appear here-- was an early student of and member in Chatham's New York ensembles. This exhausting, exhilarating collection, though, should confirm both Chatham and "Guitar Trio" as staples in the rock and 20th cenury composition canons. At the very least, from the first E note to the last E chord three hours later, it proves that Chatham-- also significant for his curatorial role at New York's The Kitchen in the 70s and in the establishment of No Wave later that decade-- fucking rocks.
The "Guitar Trio" score is deceptively simple: "In this century, it has never taken more than an hour to teach 'Guitar Trio' to everyone's satisfaction and comfort level," Chatham wrote in the score notes circulated for the 2007 tour documented by Guitar Trio Is My Life! "So please don't worry about anything." Several guitar players gather around a drummer and an electronic bassist. Their amps are clean, loud, and high on treble. The drummer counts off, and Chatham strums an open low E string, his rhythm a bit like a jumpy 60s Brit Invasion tune. The drummer plays a cantering, steady rhythm restricted to the hi-hat. One by one, Chatham signals each guitarist to join. The bassist enters. After several minutes, Chatham begins strumming the top three strings and then signals each guitarist to do the same. Later, Chatham begins strumming all six strings, fretting only the second string to B. Eventually everyone stops playing except the drummer, still using only hi-hat, and Chatham, again playing one string. The entire process repeats, and it's generally a bit briefer the second time around. The music fades out with a final chord played on a conclusive downbeat. Chatham announces the ensemble, bows, turns to his band, and starts again in the exact same way. Except this time, the drummer is given use of his full kit, especially the snare and kick drums. The only previous version of "Guitar Trio" (available on the long-since out-of-print 2002 box set An Angel Moves Too Fast to See and on the 2006 disc Die Donnergötter) was eight minutes long (first cycle only). The shortest take on Guitar Trio Is My Life! is the second Brooklyn cycle, which ends after 16 driving minutes.
But the "Guitar Trio" sound is surprisingly dynamic: Chatham does not specify when any given player should play above any given fret or for what length of time. Such inherent indeterminacy means that what begins as a stately, strummed guitar pattern begins to mutate and grow into surprising shapes. This variety of sounds builds cumulatively into a thick swath of high and low overtones bouncing off of each other like long-lost kin at a crowded family reunion. All of the sounds are made from the same E string or E chord, but none of them are exactly the same. By the time "Guitar Trio" hits its six-string segment, it's as thick as a furious blizzard. When the notes really come down, it's beautiful and overwhelming.
Still, 10 versions of the same 16-to-30 minute piece of music? Boring, right? Perhaps were it not for the musicians included here-- from members of Tortoise, Sonic Youth, and Thee Silver Mt. Zion to an unknown but incredible Buffalo drummer named Jim Abramson, who gloriously mauls his 21 minutes of Table of the Elements time on Disc One. "Guitar Trio" ingests individual talents and funnels them into a composition loose enough for new ideas but tough enough to test physical and mental limits: On the full-drum version from Toronto, then, you get a six-piece string section (including Final Fantasy's Owen Pallet), thickening the guitar sound into a viscous smear. But after the one-string turnaround, it sounds like Chatham's worn them out. Same for Tortoise's John McEntire, who turns in the best brass-only drumming with his Chicago performance, riding his hi-hat with impeccable time and finesse. But he gets lost inside the nine-guitar storm on the full-kit version, unlike improvisational heavyweight and Collections of Colonies of Bees drummer Jon Mueller. Like he does on this year's solo drum Table of the Elements release Metals, Mueller rattles speakers from the frame. His kick drum and heavy snare slap fearlessly. They lash at the six guitars like the only way out is revenge. Same for Ernie Brooks' bristling bass pops on the second set from Brooklyn: With a rhythmic sense that sounds like whiplash must feel, he folds his own aesthetic beneath Chatham's masterful umbrella work.
When considered alongside Chatham's statement that he can teach anyone this piece in an hour, such variety is exhilarating. "Guitar Trio" was composed after Chatham, then a New York composer taking a somewhat academic approach to minimalism, saw the Ramones play CBGB. Their music shocked him into redirecting his sonic approach within his own pre-existing ideas. The result is glorious, one-chord, electro-orchestral, garage-band minimalism. Anyone can learn this music. Anyone can play this music. Anyone can enjoy this music, rhythmically and tonally electrified as it is. This is a popular inroad for both understanding and participating in sound fields generally relegated to academia. "Guitar Trio" suggests infinite possibilities for this music, for all music, really: If you can combine basic "punk" ideas with basic "classical" ideas to create something that will forever alter the shape of both memes (see Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca), what can't you do?

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl...rio-is-my-life

[scott v]

ah yes good words and props for jim abramson, my friend and bandmate... he performed in the "77" Boredom show in Brooklyn last year, was drummer and played other instrumentation in nyc bands Autobody and Dymaxion (and a few others), the latter had a 7" on Stereolab's label back in the 90's and had toured w/ Stereolab and the High Llamas... indeed an incredible drummer and now a little less "unknown".

[SYRFox]

I think I'm going to buy this. But is it really worth the 24€ it costs to hear every time the same track? Are the versions really different from each other?

[atsonicpark]

I'm going to get this too.

Chatham is amazing. Like, seriously amazing.

[atsonicpark]

Oh, also want to reccomend band of susans' cover of guitar trio to anyone who hasn't heard it...