Grey Pavilion Part 1

At Club 88 in Los Angeles, 1980-81? Mary on the Vocals and I on the Korg and drum machine

Start a band? Well, we were in one for 12 years. It was a great time. I don’t know if I could pull it off now, probably would need a chair. I do miss playing music though. In a perfect world, I would have a piano, and one of my old synthesizers that I let go nearly 30 years ago. A part of me went silent when I no longer played. It is a bit complicated in that my playing was tied to song writing. After years of writing music, one day I sat down at the keyboards and I was absolutely dry. I tried repeatedly over the next year, but it was gone. (I held on to all of the equipment for years until one day I needed money to support the family.)

My Instrument of Choice back when: The Korg 3100 (The very first fully polyphonic synthesizer in the world… It was really more for the studio than playing live. with that said I just saw that they now sell for around 32K. <sigh>

Still, I transitioned back and in ways forward to visual art and writing. The two disciplines have served me well over the years, and I have had leaps of creativity since. Yet there is that siren song of the keyboard, the string, the pipe. From busking as a young lad to get money to eat, later on to recording studios, playing clubs etc. does have a beguiling effect on the heart.

I was very lucky to have the people I worked with musically over the years. Phil Lithman (AKA SnakeFingers) who I collaborated with for live shows back in the late 1970s. He is largely responsible for getting me up on stage and performing back when. Phil, being from the UK on finding out that I was going there, suggested that I contact Jake Riviera, then the head guy at Stiff Records (It it ain’t Stiff it ain’t worth a fuck/their logo statement). I didn’t connect with Jake, but I stayed with Fizzle who worked at Stiff and who I had met through Phil in LA. A wonderful person. She lived in a Commune in Brixton, I stayed a week or so on her floor, and then off to the Isle of Dogs to a Punk Squat, then… Amsterdam, Freiburg, and back to London where I met my lovely Mary. When I met her, she had been a sound engineer off and on, working in theatres, tours, recording studios. (Down the road she taught me everything about recording. A sad aside: When arriving in Los Angeles, she took her CV/Resume around to several studios. Not one wanted to hire or even try her out. The reason? She was a woman. It boggles the mind…

Mary & I moved to the US, we were both enamored with the various bands using synthesizers, the usual suspects: Kraftwerk of course, Ultravox, Roxy, Brian Eno’s solo work and so much more.

Our new friend Nels Cline at that time was working at Rhino Records. Across the street was Westwood Music, run by Fred Walecki. One day after visiting Nels at Rhino, we went across the street on a whim. I walked in, saw the Korg (picture above), and fell in love. Fred treated us to the tale of who the Korg was originally intended for: Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues. Fred had purchased it, Mike had come in, looked at it and said “Nah, not for me” or something to that effect. It was a moment of instantly falling in love. The Korg was also, massively expensive (at least in my mind) $3200.00 in 1979.

So, Fred let us pay that puppy off over a few months. We ended up spending lots of time at the store, even volunteering on the weekends. When we finally came in to pay off the Korg, Fred met us with a bottle of Champagne. He was and is that kind of guy.

We took to hanging out at Westwood music on Saturdays for a few hours to help out. This went on for several years until we moved back to the UK. I met some incredible people at Westwood Music, T-Bone Burnett, Jaco Pastorius, and many others at that time. One of the most memorable moments was sitting with Brian Wilson and talking music. He was sweetness personified. I bought all of my instruments at Westwood Music over the years, except of course for the time we were back living in the UK (and those instruments were all string instruments, Hammer Dulcimer, Psaltery… I am eternally grateful for the time we spent at Freds’ Westwood Music. There will be a bit more details on the interactions there in the next missive.

After that we went through various evolutions as a band. Our friend Ley came over from London with his niece Linda in tow. We settled on a name at Ley’s suggestion “U-Bahn” derived from his time in Berlin I posit. We hung around L.A. for a couple of days and then headed north. First to San Francisco to see SnakeFingers, and then up to deep Northern California to my Stepfather’s and Mother’s place in the mountains.

Whilst in San Francisco we had all kinds of adventures. City Lights, The Castro, hanging out with SnakeFingers and The Residents. Checking out a gig of SnakeFingers, where Linda pulled him later on to much hilarity. Good Times. Eventually we made it to the deep North of California.

The two of us outside of The Residents Studio. Not our Car, sad to say. We were driving a 1969 Ford Woodie Station Wagon. It was a Beast.

Further hilarity ensued when we got North. We set up the instruments at the folk’s house. On the main rehearsals were a farce, my mother, who had started a career early on as a Jazz Pianist would come rushing in, wanting to join in. I got it, but it wasn’t conducive to where we wanted to go with the music.

We lasted a couple of weeks up there, hustled back to L.A. and Ley & Linda headed back to the UK.

After that we tried out new names, “The Voice” then “Sinfonia”. That lasted a few months as we fooled around with a Tascam 4 track cassette recorder, a Roland CR-78 Drum machine and a microphone that I can’t remember. We started putting songs together, using the bathroom as a vocal booth due to the ambience/slight reverb of it. Mary taught me how to run the board, and then with another regular cassette deck we started layering tracks.

The Tascam Cassette 4 Track

The CR-78 Roland Drum Machine. Made adjustments on it to make it… more pliable.

Mary worked her magic with our recordings, and as she was at that point working at a Music Agency (for the life of me I cannot remember the name of it) took some of the tracks into their AR department. “This is fantastic, great sound and where was this studio, the recording is dynamite!” was the first statement I remember… “But can you do some Country and Western?” This being 1980… and Urban Cowboy being a… thing.

We realized we had the chops and that the studio was perhaps our native grounds. Still, I had my background in live performance and thought we needed to form a band. We slowly assembled one. First on was a young neighbor, Deirdre Dooley who lived in the building across the lawn from our apartment. She was and is a sweet person. Classically trained pianist. My approach to music (my lack of discipline more like it) drove her crazy. I couldn’t notate for her so had to show her the parts she needed to play by example. That worked. We needed a bass player. We took on Tim Ferris who I had worked with in a Pizza Parlor in Santa Monica. He was full of energy and was a wild man. After our engagement music wise, he moved on to the band, “Celebrity Skin” along with Pat Smears who was in “The Germs” previously. (Pat later on joined Dave Grohl in the “Foo Fighters” (we had a history with The Germs which was less than pleasant. Someday I will relay the tale…) We brought on Mike Conner, a dear friend of mine who I have known since I was 17 years old to play keyboard. Last but not least we asked our neighbor Craig Kitson to be our sound guy. Craig later went on to work with William Friedkin the director on several of his films. Truly we had a very creative crew!

The Line Up was thus:

Mary - Vocals

Gwyllm - Keyboards/Vocals

Deirdre - Keyboard

Tim - Bass

Mike - Keyboard

Craig - Soundboard

and the trusty CR-78 as our drummer.

We took on the name “Grey Pavilion” Why, I have no idea. I was and am obsessed with architecture, especially classical.

More in the next posting!

___

The Absinthe Drinker

- Arthur Symons, 1865 - 1945

Arthur Symons was a British poet and critic. In his early works he was strongly influenced by French poets such as Verlaine and Rimbaud which is very evident in his poem The Absinthe Drinker, part of his book Silhouettes, published in 1892.

Clockwork Daemons (published elsewhere a couple of month or so ago)

Perhaps I am now old and in the way. I am still in love with the human spirit, and the acts of creation that humans do.

I do not want a corporate intermediary/ a difference engine between myself and what I want to create. I hold that the Muse visits the writer, the artist. It does not reside in a machine, in a program, but in the spirit of the human and the world around it. It is an entity, as real as you or me but probably more so.

I do not see AI as creating, but regurgitating works stolen by corporations. If you are using AI in so called artistic endeavors whether in visual, music or in writing, (among other arts) you are participating in that theft as well. Talking about standing on the shoulders of giants, one is standing on the shoulders of countless writers and artist whose work was stolen without renumeration.

Live your full potential as a human being. Create. It does not matter if you are not Michelangelo or Frida Kahlo. Create Dammit. Throwing a few phrases out to a Clockwork Daemon does not an artist, musician, filmmaker, poet, writer make. Do not limit yourself to a computer program. Think for yourself and others for fuck’s sake.

To fuel the drive for AI these corporations are restarting Atomic Reactors. Doesn’t that say enough to you? The fact that Ai sucks water resources up doesn’t concern you? What side of this are you on?

I side with that which breathes, lives, and expresses consciousness. I side with a human future.

Rant Mode Off.

G

If I were to start another band: Pagan Baby Collective - As A Band Name.

One of our inspirations…. back then.