photos by Nik Cotten
words by Michael Giotis
Community elders of a sort gathered Monday night in Petaluma’s Mystic Theatre to dance to the sound of rock titans laying down eternal grooves. It was Stick Men, with King Crimson DNA, and their noisy reprise of the 90s Crimson album, THRAK. They have released a new recording of their version of that album called, Let’s THRAK Again. Actually a double album; or one album and two productions. It’s conceptual.
I get it, not everybody can prog. But there is something that persists about this music. It’s crammed full without being bloated. Maybe I’m hallucinating, but it is almost as if the sharp technical edge of rock in the 70s was a response to all those wild 60s demi-gods dying young, like suddenly there might not be enough time, like in response, the next generation of instrumentalists desperately played through every note they had, before, you know…
Then 50 years later, Stick Men shred your local venue. It’s a natural and welcome consequence.
As befits those roots in King Crimson, this group is a non-standard formation. Pat Mastelotto plays a drum kit over electronic loops with the conviction of a pirate with a load of stolen gold in a storm, using every fiber of arm muscle to steady the tender, bring his mates back to the safety of shore between songs, only to reset, switch the patch on the e-drum pads, and set out back into the sea with another load of gold.
Rowing fiercely on the other side, to fully commit to the metaphor, Markus Reuter and Tony Levin balance each other’s efforts with their strange instruments. Reuter scaling away on an invented 8-string “touch guitar” and Levin laying down bass on the mysterious Chapman Stick, both furiously double tapping—no strumming here, just sets of fingers flowing up and down the fretboard on top of the strings, not unlike hands typing together over a keyboard, but with more grace and flow.
The result is hyper-structured but wild, vital, freaky, technically astounding, like the android in Aliens threading the knife in a blur between Bill Paxton’s trembling digits. At the very edge and totally in control.
If all this technique sounds cold and robotic, consider the opposite. Think Frank Zappa, who modeled his playing on the pure blues style of guitarists like Guitar Watson and Howlin’ Wolf which then got all mixed up in the unique mind-body distortion field that was Zappa’s signature, coming back out as nasty psychedelic blues licks.
Along with the jazz forms and mindset improv games, Stick Men keeps that blues right at the core of their sound, the funky groove often associated with disco and hip hop, but which was there in the solo blues masters right from the beginning, the hook, the lick, the ripping progression that gets people to move. This is what happens when white boys got rhythm and express it exactly how they want. The crowd got it. Or rather, the music got them, a couple of dozen contemporaries of the band up front, grooving, a carefully bobbing group of fans with living memory of the Watusi.
To be fair, the Mystic is a 21+ club, and a whole segment of new prog appreciators were excluded as such. I have confirmed reports that King Crimson streams through many a youth Spotify account.
My teenage son and I had a secret prog experience that sheds some light on the appeal of this style across generations. Just over a year ago we were at a family gathering in Greece, where a family friend, Vassilis Saleas, was booked to play the traditional clarinet music of Eipirus, where my family comes from. He is the undisputed master of the form, a national treasure.
What my family does not know is that Saleas is a prog rocker who has played with Oscar-winning soundtrack composer and fellow prog rocker Vangelis (of Bladerunner and Chariots of Fire fame, although I most love his album Heaven and Hell). So before the official set of folk music and the requisite dancing and occasional plate throwing, Saleas and his band played the most wicked and wonderful prog set off to the left of the banquet table, completely under the radar, like pirates, with only me and my boy, a bassist, locked in to every note. The squares had no clue.
Because if you don’t know prog is happening, you might miss it. But not at a Stick Men show. With Levin mastering the bass groove on his weird machine, Reuter wailing like the poltergeist-amalgum of every dead blues legend, and Mastelotto banging the drum to guide the crew through the must, trust that on this tour, they are gonna THRAK you over the head with prog, and you’re going to love it.
