Three down

Of the four grappa glasses brought back either by me or to me from Glasklar (Knesebeckstr. 13, near many bookstores, a couple of indian restaurants, a record store that had some bizarre LP covers up, and, I think, Schwarzes Café!), three are now broken.  I'll get the last one yet.

I have recently seen Gino Robair twice, once performing in a duo with Carl Ludwig Hübsch and once as part of the sfSound collective performing with John Butcher (who was absolutely fantastic, both in the group improv and in the two solo improvs, one on tenor and one on soprano sax, and who in addition to being a virtuosic and creative improviser also has a PhD in physics—Brian May also has a PhD in, I think, astrophysics—what's next, Damon Albarn wins the Fields Medal?). I suppose I also saw him as I was walking out of a different concert, in which Carla Kihlstedt sucked it up to high heaven by doing an nth-rate impersonation of Iva Bittová in a duo with Fred Frith, pissing me off to no end (I was already inclined to be displeased by the extremely breathy, fit for NPR in tone and content introduction she gave to her first set, with a band whose most interesting member by far was Chris Sipe)—but I was talking about performance contexts. The duo with Hübsch was ok; he seemed hampered by the extraordinary amount of stuff he had, and what he could do with it, as if he had to fit it all into the set, a problem that did not seem to arise with the Butcher set, even though a decent enough portion of it (hard to judge time, really, but maybe ten minutes?) was spent in a duo with Butcher. In fact during a large part of that duet he was only using one implement, a thin rod of some sort (wooden? metal?) which he would hold upright on the drumhead and rub in a downward motion continuously first with one hand and then the other, creating a drone whose volume and tone he could vary by its position on the drum and the vigor of the rubbing—quite effective, really.

Anyway, sfSound's started up again doing monthly concerts, and the one on October 12 lists in the program: local percussionist Gino Robair performs Potluck Percussion (you bring it, he'll play it—guaranteed!), which is obviously a challenge, not to Robair, but to the audience. After some thought, the two best things I can think to bring are:

1. A raw egg.

2. Water. Not a water bottle filled with water, or a bowl filled with water, but just water. Of course one must bring it in a container of some sort, but I imagine that there will be a table or whatnot on which people bringing things can deposit their items. One would simply pour the water onto the table.  This is potentially messy, but that's art.

But I'm not convinced that these are really the best possibilities.  Obviously one must exclude the puerile (uncleaned fish!) or potentially hazardous (ground glass!).

Comments

[Jacob Haller]

How about some sort of small, cute animal? A human baby might be ideal in some ways but you probably wouldn't want to leave it on the table.

If you wanted to be a jerk you could bring a snare drum or something.

[ben wolfson]

I certainly do want to be a jerk.

[abc]

grains like rice for example or nuts could be a good sound making tool, no?

[madamechauchat]

Ben, ich hoffe doch sehr, daß das verbleibende Glas das Glas ist, welches ich Dir mitbegracht hatte? Welchenfalls es richtiger wäre zu sagen, daß alle diejenigen Gläser, welche Du aus Berlin mitgebracht hattest, jetzt zerbrochen sind, jedoch nicht das Glas, welches Dir aus Berlin mitgebracht wurde!

[Vance Maverick]

Is that Clawdia? I thought you always wrote in strangely stilted French.

[ben wolfson]

Sicher; und als ich den obenen Text geschrieben habe, war es möglich möglich, die Antwort deiner Frage zu bestimmen. (Nur möglich möglich, weil die Antwort nur dem Gestalt des Glases nach bestimmt werden kann, und eins der von dir mitgebrachten Gläser hat (oder vielleicht jetzt hatte) das gleiche Gestalt als die von mir.) Aber jetzt sind ungefähr 400 Meilen zwischen ihm und mir, und meine Augen sind schwach.

Selbst im jeden Fall bin ich doch unüberzeugt, daß (hmmm..) deiner Ausdruck (?) richtiger ist.

(Jetzt daß ich weiß, wer madame chauchat ist, scheint es mir selbstverständlich, und als ob, hätte ich nur Augen, ich an fast allem von jenem Blog ihre Identität hätte erkennen können, selbst dem Stil.)