Three noise bands and Gary Higgins walk into the Flywheel...

My review of last week's show Man Forever show at the Flywheel is up now at Blurt:

I'm driving to Indiana tomorrow and will be online intermittently at best.

Man Forever Live

So I went last night down to the Flywheel in Easthampton to see Man Forever and Gary Higgins and a couple of other bands.  Man Forever, you might have heard, is John Colpitts' mostly drumming project (he's also Kid Millions in Oneida), while Gary Higgins is the man behind lovely, shadowy, long-lost Red Hash, one of the great unjustly buried folk rock albums from the early 1970s.  You might not think they have much in common, but actually I think they're from the same town in Connecticut.  Anyway, I'm writing about this for Blurt, so I don't want to shoot my whole wad here, but it was a very interesting night. 

I have not written anything about Man Forever (yet, working on it), but I interviewed Gary Higgins for Splendid when Drag City finally located him and reissued Red Hash a few years ago.  Here's the piece, if you want to read it. 

Also on the bill a kind of cool saxiophone/feedback/tape fuckery/film imagery project from a guy named Benjamin Miller and a local improv/experimental outfit (with Chris Cooper, who has been in a million bands and is also the fire marshall at the Flywheel, apparently) called Barn Owl.  This is not the drony, hazy Barn Owl now on Thrill Jockey, but another thing entirely.  There, I'm going to go write something intelligble about this whole evening now...just wanted to put the photos up. 

Man Forever

Man Forever is an experimental, mostly-drumming project from John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions from Oneida), whose third album Pansophical Cataract came out last month on Thrill Jockey. It is not, I think, for everyone -- you have to really like drums, for one thing -- but it is pretty visceral. My friend Bill Meyer, who is much smarter about improv than I am, said, "There's more to Man Forever than manic bashing. There’s a science to these sounds. The drum skins are tuned to ensure the presence of certain frequencies, so that tones dance and weave between the beats." Read more here.

I'm thinking about going to see Man Forever at the Flywheel next month, but I'm not sure I can get anyone to go with me.