DKV
Millvale Industrial Theater-MIT
July 11,1998
By Alan Saul
After getting my 7-year old taken care of, I treated myself to a late Saturday night of music. It's a drag getting old, but we seniors can stillappreciate hot stuff when we find it.
I drove off in pursuit of the Millvale Industrial Theater, and only got lost 3 times before discovering the approximate location, from where somebody kindly directed me to the "theater" which is housed in one of the old buildings in the ancient industrial park right off a main highway along the river. I wisely missed the opening act, but did catch the 2nd act,
Siamese Twins, a duo of saxophone with electronics and trap set. I dozed a lot, but they were ok, if not as together as they hopefully will get. The room is half-wrecked or really half-restored to some slight order, but there were 3 gentlemen audio- and videotaping the proceedings, an interesting high tech intrusion into the decrepit feel of the place.
I got to catch up with Ben Opie, back from the bay area where he
participated in a Sun Ra tribute and several other gigs. Did anyone catch those? Also heard about the Braxton Ghost Trance concert I missed here, apparently excellent, especially if you like quarter notes. :-) Very trance-inducing, and good playing, I was told. He's putting out 10 discs of it soon they said. Sounds like a big seller. Not. Also told that Sunny Murray and Sonny Simmons were pretty good. And drunk. Who was our famous
correspondent who told us stories about Sonny Simmons a couple years ago? At least he showed up here. I didn't.
Anyway, DKV played a wonderful set of Chicago blues. Ken Vandermark opened with a couple minutes of circular breathing through some minor blues that were very expressive, and was soon joined by Hamid Drake and Kent Kessler. After the second blues tune, Drake soloed magnificently and they went into a familiar tune, I'm pretty sure a Monk tune I should know. But I'm old and
my memory doesn't work.
They played a long set until midnight that was almost all blues, very contemporary in the best sense, but definitely something Johnny Griffin and the like would be proud of. Fred Anderson perhaps. They came back for a short encore: Complete Communion (Don Cherry). Drake came out from behind his drum set to play an african drum (and an american drum) and Vandermark played some clarinet, pretty good though after a very peaceful section
Drake soloed and built up away from the contemplative state in a fairly trite way. It would have been nice to keep the mood for awhile, at least for us old sleepyheads. Drake chanted AllahuAkbar etc. for a while, and Vandermark trotted out his bass clarinet to accompany that. He is a fine player, but seemed less interesting to me on clarinets than on tenor sax, where his playing is really strong. His phrasing is mostly classic and
always right on. Seldom did he get explicitly outside, despite the audience which was oriented that way. Maybe because of that.
There was a guy who I initially thought was for security who actually represented Okka Disk. He was selling a huge variety of CDs, including a big box set of the Peter Brotzmann tentet in numbered copies. I didn't even ask how much.
DKV is in the middle of a tour, and hope to hear how other people enjoyed them. Never heard from the person asking what was happening around here. Doubt she was among the 50 or so postindustrial youngsters there.
Her loss. Or hair loss.
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