Sunday 11.15, Cafe Pumperie, Main Drag, Old Quebec.
Today is the first performance of the first leg of G3’s North American tour. There are four guitarists and, as G4, I play first as the doors open. A scalding mouthful from a bowl of coffee au lait threatens to ignite my brain into pitiful sentience and I ponder: what am I doing here?
I have no idea why Joe Satriani and Steve Vai would have me bleeping and droning away at the beginning of their show. Sharper readers might have a ready answer: how better to present another guitarist in a good light than have Fripp feebling away with Soundscapes?
The tour began for me in as dreadful a manner as possible; that is, in the precise and exact manner I defined as being the one I should not, must not, could not be put in. Strange, whenever one precisely defines a condition which-must-not-occur, universal laws slip remorselessly and inevitably into place, construct that situation and bring it about.
My requirements when arriving to stay for five days in a strange city, vulnerable from exhaustion & jet lag, unfamiliar with places to nourish the spirit, and practising and preparation for the performances waiting, are these:
1. A clean hotel with a room large enough to open both my suitcase and guitar case simultaneously, and with its own telephone (28 years of un/Happy Gigster traveling experience has shown these simple rules to be necessary).
2. The hotel to be in easy walking distance of civilization; for example, coffee shop, restaurant, even bookshop, maybe movie house.
In Quebec, I considered hiring a car so I would be able to drive from any miserable pit-in-the-earth-equipped-with-bedding to a place of greater happiness. No need, I was assured: your hotel is in the Old Town. Surprise, therefore, when Michael the Promoter (who has been bringing KC/RF to Quebec for over 18 years) should meet me at the airport, after 22.5 hours of traveling, with an expression of surprise and dismay on his face: why might Robert be staying at such an awful hotel? Michael’s doomy presentiment of the Ramada Pit Of Doom erred on the favourable side. Imprisoned in my room at 01.30, I dreamt of fleeing.
Few things reduce me to rage. Being placed in a hotel that matched every detail I had described as being Not - To The Max! and then assured that this was an hotel-to-make-me-a-happy-boy, really pissed me off.
At 07.05 I entered the lift on the 16th.floor, joining a party of German tourists who filled all available space, and stopped at every floor until we reached the lobby. Then all of us went into the dining room where we all claimed our breakfast buffet. The buffet made modest claims for itself and met them all.
In the early 1980s TLev mentioned to me that with a good hotel, the players are happy. At the time, I was amazed that a hotel might be so important and so fundamental. No longer.
Reading: Post Modernism And The Social Sciences by Pauline Marie Rosenau.
My current concern for the tour has been the G3 jam that concludes the shows. Going Down, My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama and Red House are the current three encore titles. In a post-modern world, where all versions of the truth have equal validity, I have no doubt that serial substitution and rhythmic displacement are every bit as worthwhile as the blues and rock vocabulary usually associated with those pieces.
Also, I have no doubt about the generosity of Joe and Steve in embracing deviant and subversive musical commentaries as much as those more firmly within the canon. But I have yet to meet a rock and/or guitar audience prepared to debate the niceties of post-modern verities (which are not themselves privileged, of course), or to waive their value judgements in favour of an objectless-subjectless non-discursive dialogue. Rather, with the directness that I love and trust in rock audiences, I anticipate modernistic and exclusive judgement more along the lines of you suck, dude.
"Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated."
