A few months ago, in my discussion of bootleg albums, I made the distinction between bands who play the same set every night, and bands who mix it up, play a different show for every audience. Now I need to make another distinction, between bands who merely alter which songs they play on given night, and bands who alter how they play their songs. That is, bands who actually improvise on stage.
Improvisation is, of course, one of the fundamentals of jazz music. It is a skill honed by the performers, and appreciated by the audience. In rock music, however, its position is much more tenuous. While there is a small group of listeners who appreciate it, most rock fans have no time for improvisation. They neither appreciate it nor even understand it. Many not only don't want to hear improvisations, they have the potential to ruin their entire concert going experience.
It wasn't always this way. There was a brief period when improvisation was revered, when it almost became as much of a standard in rock music as it is in jazz. The heyday for improvisation in rock music was, without a doubt, the late '60s. It was pretty much a requirement for the San Francisco bands; their tripped out audiences demanded long, improvised jams to space out on. It wasn't just bands like The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, now revered for their jamming abilities; even Jefferson Airplane, remembered now primarily for such hits as "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," included long improvisations in their concerts (see "Bear Melt" on their live album, Bless Its Pointed Little Head). But improvisation was not limited to San Francisco. Many of the top bands like Cream, Jimi Hendrix and even the Doors would include improvised segments in their concerts.
Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the spirit of freedom, but improvisation seemed very much a product of the '60s. As a primary component of rock concerts it barely outlasted that decade. Sure, bands like Led Zeppelin, King Crimson and Deep Purple kept it alive into the '70s, but audiences not only no longer demanded it, they often were confused by it. Nowadays, it survives primarily in the realm of "jam bands." While that's a bit of an exaggeration, it's only a bit; bands such as Godspeed You Black Emperor and even Linkin Park, certainly not classified as jam bands, do a fair amount of improv, but they are the exceptions. What was the last concert you saw where the band actually cut loose and improvised any portion of the show?
Just to be clear, what I'm talking about here is not the guitarist (or any other instrument) improvising a solo while the band chugs along behind him. I'm talking about true improvisation by the band as a whole, veering into uncharted territory, making it up wholesale as they go. Improvisation like this takes a certain quality of musician, one who can not only follow what the others are playing, and fit into it, but who can sense what they are going to play next.
It's not surprising that improv has a limited appeal. Improvisation is challenging, to the musicians and to the audience. To really appreciate improv, an audience member has to be able to listen like a musician, to be able to anticipate the band, to hear not just where it is, but where it is aiming, so as to appreciate it when they get there.
As Lob, head of the improvisational project Instagon (more on them in just a second), says, "The average rock fan just wants to rock."
Now, I may get in trouble for saying this, but "rocking" is actually a pretty passive way to enjoy an concert. Sure, it doesn't feel passive; truly "rocking" at a concert feels about as active as one can get (especially if you consider a mosh pit the epitome of rocking out). What I mean by passive is you are giving yourself over to the concert, specifically to the energy put out by the band. You don't think, you just follow. To truly enjoy improvisation, you have to really pay attention.
But for those willing to take the challenge, the rewards of improv are great. And not just because it relieves the boredom of hearing the same thing over and over again. The thrill of hearing a band nail an improvised segment, when they are locked in together and playing on a single musical wavelength, is incomparable (and nearly indescribable).
Of course, the risk is that the band will fail to mesh, and instead of transcendence, they will produce garbage. It is not just a risk, it is often a reality. Attempts at improvisation often produce garbage. One of my favorite jams is "N.S.U." on the first Cream Live album. You can hear the band teetering on the edge of chaos. On that version, they avoid the plunge, but I have no doubt that on many other nights, they fell over the edge.
This is another reason why improvisation has a limited audience. Garbage is inevitable. To listen to improv is to be willing to tolerate a certain amount of garbage for the sake of hearing moments of genius. The average rock fan, not unreasonably, is not willing to do that. Nothing gets in the way of rocking out like hearing garbage. But for a few of us, the trade-off—some garbage and some genius, instead of consistent mediocrity—is worth it.
My first, dawning appreciation of improvisation came from watching bar bands mix it up night after night. Not that bar bands are usually given much room to really improvise, but I learned to watch for how they altered the show. But it was watching the aforementioned Instagon which really taught me to appreciate improvisation.
To call Instagon a band is a bit of a misnomer; it's more a musical project, a project dedicated to improvisation. The idea behind Instagon is to have every performance improvised. To guarantee this, Instagon never rehearses, and never performs with the exact same line-up of musicians twice. An individual musician may play on any number of Instagon performances, but he always plays with a different set of fellow musicians.
Now, this may strike you as an interesting concept, but not one that could be sustained beyond a handful of shows. To the contrary, Instagon has been going for 15 years now, and has played over 465 shows, including somewhere around 500 different musicians.
Instagon is the brainchild of Lob, musician/poet/all-around promoter of creativity. "Instagon began more or less as a conceptual project, with no determined end date, in 1993," he explains. "Instagon takes the idea of a band, and with the application of Chaos Theory, and the notion of improvisation, something unique was created." The name Instagon refers to the inevitably temporary nature of such performances. "It's a word to describe the moment of spontaneity, the moment of true improv, the passing of time in the second called live. It happens, then it's gone in an instant… Instagon."
(Full disclosure: I have known Lob for years, and we have been involved in a number of poetry related projects together. He played bass and was the musical director of my own band, Murray. Murray backed me up while I performed spoken word. All of its members played in Instagon at various times. Although we had set structures for my various poems, they acted more as frameworks that solid arrangements. Murray incorporated a lot of improvisation in our shows.)
Lob, the one musician who has participated in every Instagon, serves as its core. Among regular players, drummer Cary Pealer has played in more ensembles than any other person. Strong threads of appearances include Robert Fisher, Scott Heustis, Sean Campeau, Dan Kaufman, Rob Barton and Matt Kretaman, all on guitar. Well-known musicians who have performed with Instagon include Greg Ginn (Black Flag), Rikk Agnew (Adolescents), Jim Kaa (The Crowd), Dave Wright (Not Breathing) and Rent Romus (Lords of Outland).
Initially (and perhaps not surprisingly) Instagon was a noise project. (If you are unfamiliar with "noise" as a form of music, it is basically what it sounds like—compositions created out of sounds devoid of normal musical attributes.) Over the years, Instagon became more and more musical; by the late 90's it was playing (mostly) a particularly mutant form of space rock. Other shows veered, as one might expect, into the territory of free form jazz. But it never gave up its noise roots; one performance, in a laundromat, consisted of the sounds of various items placed in the dryers. Nowadays, Instagon, based in Sacramento, may play rock, jazz, noise or any combination thereof, depending on which musicians are on stage on a given night.
An Instagon performance does have a structure. In most shows (the non-noise shows), Lob leads the group with his bass. He plays a bass riff, and the other musicians lock onto it, and then take the song wherever it might go. Each bass riff has a name, so the band could be said to be playing a set of songs, although each song is completely different each evening. Instagon also does "cover songs," where Lob plays a recognizable riff (such as Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" or Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused"), and the band improvises off that, inevitably producing something which bears little resemblance to the original song.
I have seen a number of Instagon performances over the years (more than I can keep track of), and, as I have indicated, developed much of my appreciation for improvisation through them. I remember the night when I first really clued in to what was going on. It was in 1999, at Club Mesa, a total dive bar in Costa Mesa (which has since had a face-lift and personality transplant to become Detroit). Lob was running a weekly poetry reading there, which often included Instagon performances. That night, I was one of the few people left listening when Instagon took the stage (they used to joke, especially in the noise days, that the name also referred to their audience—they would start playing and the audience was Insta-GONE!) The band hit a groove, and it suddenly all made sense to me.
I could tell they were hitting exactly what they were striving for. There was a moment of magic on stage. I remember thinking that everyone who had gone outside, to smoke or whatever, was really missing out. And yet I was aware that it wasn't that simple, that even if they were inside, they might still be missing out. Not to get too egotistical about it, but I was catching this moment not only because I had stayed inside to listen, but because I was really doing that—listening.
Not that I put it all into words like that. But I realized I'd seen something special, and I started making the effort to catch something like it again. And the more shows I went to, the more I was able to appreciate what was happening. It was a question of training my ear, of learning to pick up what was happening on stage, when it was clicking. And when they were missing, when they were completely falling apart.
Lob says, "A rock fan with an open ear, and some exposure to a little more than just average rock seems to progress into more jam based or improvisational based bands." I would agree with that.
Gradually, my ears grew more talented at this, from watching Instagon, and applying it to other bands. In some ways, it's surprising it took me that long to develop a real appreciation for the improvisational side of rock music, especially with my long history of concert attendance. On the one hand, it really was a question of finally realizing what to listen for me, and training my ear to hear that.
On the other hand, I have had a long history of appreciating spontaneity on stage, even if I wasn't exactly following what the band was doing. It goes back to my appreciation of bar bands mixing it up, playing a different set every night. There was that moment of musical transcendence at the King Crimson concert—even if they weren't improvising at the time, they were certainly locked in together, and I was locked in with them. Also, over the years I have had a number of friends in bands, and have watched a number of jam sessions/rehearsals. Most bands are willing to take risks in rehearsal that they wouldn't take on stage. I'm sure that helped train my ear as well.
I realize that, not only do most people not listen to music this closely, most of them have no desire to. It all comes down to the question of what you want out of your musical listening experience. Music performs so many functions in our lives, from simple entertainment to emotional catharsis, from merely filling the silence of life to transporting us to a different consciousness.
Do we want music to take us somewhere new, or somewhere familiar? Music can do both, and both are equally valid ways to enjoy it. If you go to a concert, and the band plays all their hits, and plays them exactly like on the records, it takes you somewhere familiar. It may be back to the first time you heard the song, or the last time, or to that tragic break-up which you only got through by listening to that song, over and over again for a week straight. Either way, you thoroughly enjoy the concert (you even enjoy remembering the break-up, for it reminds you that you did get through it).
If, however, the band plays songs you don't know, or familiar songs in a new way, it takes you somewhere new. It even forces you to listen to the music in a new way. Now, again, both are valid ways to listen to music. And both can be enjoyable—do you want to go home for Christmas, or take an ocean cruise? But, for me at least, having music take me somewhere new is more interesting, and more exciting. (Not that I'm going to deny the thrill that ran through my whole body when I heard the Who play the opening chords to "I Can See For Miles.")
I would also argue that letting music take you somewhere new brings you closer to the musicians. Listening to music which takes you somewhere familiar inevitably becomes about you—your emotions (as triggered by the songs), your memories, your ideas about the band.
But when you go somewhere new, you are inevitably being lead there by the band. Especially if they are going somewhere new themselves. You are traveling together. That's where the feeling of communion comes from in those who follow their favorite jam band.
(Not that the two modes of listening are mutually exclusive. Say you were at a Grateful Dead concert, and they were off on one of their spacey jams, and you were totally lost in it, just flowing along with them. And then it turns into "Truckin'" or "Sugar Magnolia" or whatever your favorite Dead tune was. Then it's like you were wandering in some lush, unfamiliar park, and then ended up at your house anyway. You get the best of both worlds.
Let me emphasize that how you listen to music, where you let it take it you, is a choice you can make. But it is also a choice which bands make. Every time they step on stage, they are making a choice between nostalgia and adventure, or ideally some balance between the two.
Why do I like improv? Because I like adventure, I like going someplace new. Especially if I'm paying for, with my money or my time. If I want nostalgia, well, I've got a pretty extensive CD collection, with all (or almost all) my favorite memory triggers available pretty much anytime.
For more information on Instagon, including samples of past performances, and a calendar of upcoming appearances, visit www.instagon.com or www.myspace.com/instagon.
G. Murray Thomas writes and performs poetry because he can't sing. He can be found at myspace.com/gmurraythomas
