Performance #3 – 02nd February 2004
2004-02-02 Knitting Factory (Performance 3), Los Angeles, CA [Ataxia]
Dust
The Sides
Attention
Jam
Addition
The Soldier
Montreal
Review by Jesse Voccia:
I wanted to share my experience with everyone else who is interested, but may not have been able to be there.
The Knitting Factory is a fairly small venue holding around 250 people on two levels a ground level for normal people and a balcony lounge for VIPs. It is located on Hollywood Blvd in the center of the tourist area, nestled in the heart of a gigantic complex that is also home to a mega movie theater and a very large gym. The sound system is excellent and much consideration has been taken to create a modern well laid out place to see live music. If you are in LA and you would like to see something interesting it is one of two places you could go. It is also overrun with the latte drinking art school dropout Hollywood hipster crowd. Enter at your own risk.
Tonight’s show was the third in a series of shows that feature different ensembles for each night and offer the audience a glimpse into the world of John Frusciante on the fly. He stated at the outset that all of the music was written in the last week in preparation for this show. He was clutching handfuls of paper with lyrics written on them and asked for more light because he had not learned them yet.
I was surprised to see how long his hair was. Last time I saw him in March of 2001 it was very short. Tonight it was down past his elbows. The group was made up of Joe Lally of Fugazi, and Josh Klinghoffer on drums. Joe was playing his very roadworn black MusicMan Stingray bass and was very very mellow, as one would expect. He seemed very detached and calm, extremely focused and very solid. Most of the songs revolved around a circular repeating bass line with very little variation. Nonetheless they were very compelling and of course brought to mind Fugazi’s graceful economy and distinctive harmony(think Long Division). He played with a pick on most songs with a slightly overdriven tone that filled the room very nicely.
Josh Klinghoffer’s drumming was very spirited. What he lacked in experience he made up in enthusiasm. He often made excellent use of the old Keith Moon move of standing up at key moments and then came crashing down onto his drums. He also used a synth drum on one song, it was very reminiscent of something you would hear on TROWFTD. He also used soft mallets on a couple of intro sections that conjured up a muscular Steven Perkins vibe. I found Josh to be a competent drummer with lots of drive. He started of the show wearing 3 sweatshirts and kept putting on and taking off his knit hat, but only between songs. Imagine a younger Dave Grohl with a James Brown addiction.
Finally John was playing his red Jaguar and his battered Tele Custom, through his usual array of pedals. He was alternating guitars on every song and was handed them by a mountain of a man named Dave. Dave is as big as 5 or 6 Johns put together. Overall his sound was very wet. With lots of reverb and delay on most songs. A lot of the songs featured delay soaked arpeggio rhythm parts played very high on the neck (above the 12th fret). It was very fun to watch him sing counter melodies to these very complex guitar parts. His devotion to technique in his formative years paid off. One of the songs featured a guitar part with a harmonic on a steady eigth note pattern, but then in a very hip and slippery way he would occasionally play a fretted chord around the 15th fret. All while singing something completely different. It sounded a lot like 2 or 3 people playing. Very impressive.
There were a couple of completely improvised pieces as well. John remarked that “tonight was a commercial as these [performances] had gotten and as commercial as they were gonna get.” Basically if you are a fan of his ‘guitar hero’ style of playing tonight was for you. The clips that are available for download on the official site painted a picture of a very ambient and experimental mood. Tonight was nothing like that, tonight was about rocking out. He even pulled out a whole bunch of his Jimmy Page licks, which the crowd went wild for. Of course there were equal doses of his crystalline, Fender clean tone, cascading melodic styling (think of his soloing on BTW, and David Gilmour).
There was also a lot of guitar stuff that sounded a lot like Kurt Cobain on the last Nirvana tour. With the extremely wide chorus setting and a lot of atonal guitar mangling. There was some really cool stuff he did with his delays behind the bridge on the Jaguar he kind of disappeared for a while as he knelt to mess with the pedals).
I have to admit that with the exception of a few of the tunes on Smile, I never really detected much of a Cobain influence, but tonight there was definitely some. His vocal delivery borrowed a lot. I guess it’s because we haven’t seen much of John in a total-rock-out-mode as the front man yet.
The show was great. It was really exciting to see JF in the stripped down lean and mean power trio without the burden of having restrictive song structures on him. He just let loose all night.
Now the bad news. On the second to the last song Josh went to a drum part too soon. The whole song had been building slowly and growing with more and more smoldering intensity. At a point obviously too soon for JF’s liking Josh broke into the full rock drum beat. JF immediately lost his concentration and looked across this stage and stopped playing. It was pretty awkward, I felt pretty bad for Joe and Josh. The room was silent. John then said “That’s what I was nervous about.” He seemed pretty agitated by the situation. Josh was really on the spot and did his best to continue the show. The next (last) song featured Joe on vocals. It was called Montreal. It was a slow driving number that only had two chords (played on the bass), leaving John free to color over the top. Obviously he was still shaken up over the song before and was making disapproving faces at his own playing and at Josh period. I think, and this is totally my opinion, that he felt bad about what he had just done and was growing increasingly distracted by it. He put the guitar down and knelt at a fairly elaborate analog synth setup. He couldn’t get anything to come out of it except a white noise like the ocean or rain hitting the pavement. I thought it sounding cool with what the other guys were doing but clearly he did not. Dave ran over to assist him but also could not get anything but white noise to come out. John then just ran off the stage and did not return, leaving Joe and Josh somewhat bewildered. Joe very gracefully stated “I guess that we are having some equipment problems” in a tone of voice that a very cool parent uses when his child is acting up. Unfortunately Joe’s comment wasn’t enough to satisfy the audience and things began to get ugly. The crowd began to chant and grumble, there was some booing and some people yelling “rip off”. Then the house music came on. Then the lights came on and the announcer said “thanks for coming, hope to see you tomorrow”. As we filed out everyone around me was discussing that they felt disappointing about how the show had ended. I wasn’t. I thought it was a great chance to see one of the greatest living rock guitar players stretch out and play some beautiful music, just because. It was so nice to see someone taking chances and play with their whole heart. Most of the time when you see a band in LA they are kissing *** so bad trying to get a record deal and every note is worked out to the point where you know nothing interesting could possibly happen. I think if he had come out and said goodnight it all would have been OK. Either way I had a great time and am very glad I went.
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