This was our only live show. We hung out (practiced if you can call it that) on Landsdown Street, which is directly behind Fenway Park. It’s the ‘club district’ street, the perfect place to have a rehearsal studio. We were practicing in a rented space four floors up a huge manual elevator above a dance club.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (somewhat famous in 90’s ska band [average but very successful recording and touring band]) practiced in the room next to us and suggested we play a gig with them at Emerson. Initially we declined. They were really into us apparently, shocking to us cause we were clowns… so eventually we agreed.
Emerson College is a theatre performing arts college. Look it up, very cool. We played in the round theater directly behind the ‘Cheers’ bar across from Boston commons swan pond. Cool place.
We weren’t really into doing much except taking acid all night and recording our musical and conversational happenings and experiences etc… Mostly we had blueberry ale at Boston Beerworks and nachos and talked.
We talked much more than we played I think. Regardless, we were discovering and reaching for new music we felt we were honestly creating. We were and are lovers of science. Science as the blueprint, ever evolving, and growing towards potentials yet unreached. Unlimited capabilities!
Our rehearsal studio was awash with gear and draped in tapestries. We tripped countless nights talking and creating. This concert was one step in what, if I hadn’t fucked up by starting at Berklee months after this show, would have been probably a long recording and playing career as a band.
After this show we were offered a recording contract on EMI by an A&R lady who was there to see the Bosstones playing upstairs after us. It was a 40-50 person crowd sitting down or acting weird in a round theater with us set up in the middle of the circle. A really cool cool room. Whoa!
This show is from video and recorded (audio and video) solely on a handheld camera. Hence the romantic (to me anyway) cassette-like audio. I will share the video some other time once I have it digitized. Shockingly good recording for a camera truly.
Liz is now a professional studio bass player living in Seattle. Brooks is also a studio session guitarist for hire around Seattle. I, am your friend I guess doing my thing? What is that?
So, the piece was from our second set, and meant to be heard as one whole movement. It was and is Sadhana’s (meaning in Sanskrit: a way to accomplish something) main piece written from a mash of our ‘acid jams’.
It’s a collection of earth grooves spaced by airy space jams, each logically progressing from one to the next. Honestly we put it together because we eventually agreed to play this show. It’s meant to be our soundtrack to the pre-universe, the creation, and the evolution of our known universe up to the present day. We watched a lot of 2001 in our studio, read a lot of physics theory books together, etc…
The grooves are so different and funky. A lot based on “implied rhythm” influenced heavily by my obsession with Jamaican and African rhythm, but on a traditional drum set, using every edge and every sound I could get out of it. All with Liz’s Geddy Lee-esque bass playing (while playing keyboards!!); prodigious she is truly!! Playing music with her was beyond intuitive. It came more naturally than I have ever experienced with anyone. Almost telepathic. She gave me a canvas on which Brooks painted a brilliant brilliant brilliant (!!!) floating implied melodic line with me free to go anywhere in short rhythm statements. Just listen to Brooks man. Wow! What a band.
Unfortunately I started at Berklee and started playing jazz and thought I had to conform to those rules. They got so mad at my closed minded new attitude they left town and didn’t speak to me for many years. Many.
We have been back in constant contact since 2004. Close to 10 years they wouldn’t speak to me thinking, rightfully so, that I ruined, by my “new Berklee attitude”, what was a career in a band. A true band. The likes of which my man, I haven’t heard before at least. We were on to something.
It’s a life’s work for me. Something I’m very very proud of.
There are four main grooves. But better than the grooves Liz and I came up with is the airy deeply melodic and spiritually advanced tapestry they, when playing alone, wove.
I hope you enjoy.
./john
Sadhana at Emerson College 1992 – Main Movement
M1 – tension as branes meet
M2 – impact resonance
M3 – familiarity lament (core formation)
M4 – clusters and borders
M5 – water on worlds
M6 – seeds sown riddim
M7 – release of goo
M8 – hunt and gather ourselves
M9 – the flux
M10 – age of waterbearer
M11 – bell of the 60’s
M12 – industrial society and it’s future
M13 – endeavor (bo bo bo-gat)
M14 – the future is yet to be written (make it happen)
Brooks Clark – Guitar/Effects
Lizzy Daymont – Bass/Synths
John Burke – Drums
