Preparations for the May 30 Che Underground reunion at San Diego’s Casbah are picking up steam and uniting musical collaborators separated by miles and decades.
Last weekend marked the first studio reunion of the Northern California contingent of Noise 292, comprising four of the five musicians who played together at the Che Cafe in July 1983: vocalist/ bassist/ guitarist Kristin Martin; vocalist/ guitarist David “Kavika” Rives; percussionist Hobie Hodge; and the Answers’ Dave Fleminger, who reprised his historical role as substitute drummer. (The San Diego faction — drummer Joanne Norris and percussionist Wendell Kling — are on deck to join the festivities in time for the May performance.)
From Maplewood, N.J., vocalist/ bassist/ guitarist Matthew Rothenberg (that would be me!) participated vicariously and telephonically. Over the phone, I listened to crackling performances of “Stupid Future” and “Mr. Pumpkin,” and even got to participate long-distance in run-throughs of “Chanson Dada,” “Eyesight” and “Sister Ray.”
I can’t wait to try it again up close and personal!
Noise 292 MP3s:
- Noise 292 plays “The Assassin”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Chanson Dada”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Stupid Future”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Talking in Circles”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Subterranean Homesick Blues”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Sister Ray”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Mr. Pumpkin”: Listen now!
- Noise 292 plays “Eyesight”: Listen now!
yippee!!! check out mama k, rocking the strings! you guys kill me. i can’t wait.
Looks like a lot of fun!
I was over the moon after hearing them … No idea what my end of the phone line sounded like to them — not like much, I’ll wager — but man! The band sounded fierce.
Matthew, how did you play along with the rest of the band?
>>Matthew, how did you play along with the rest of the band?
Paul: BADLY. /rimshot 🙂
My participation was short and pretty dang mystifying from my end … We activated speaker phones on either end, and I played and sang — they amplified it … I couldn’t hear a blessed thing they were doing, but I’m hoping this all made it onto MP3. It would be awesome to work out a better teleconferencing option for real-time collaboration; some sort of feedback suppressor in Dave’s cell phone apparently kept clipping me.
The posse in Mr. Fleminger’s SF toy shop gets the real props; they put in a lotta hours last weekend! At least I’ve been practicing seriously on my own, and I anticipate using their files as fodder. Worst comes to worst, I’ll just Danny Bonaduce all over the Casbah! LOL
David, Kavika and Kristin are great musicians. It did not take long to rebuild those brain pathways and revive the music. I was thrilled to participate and look forward to round 2. David mentioned a compilation cd might be in the offing, so we gotta pick one song to add. Votes?
>>My participation was short and pretty dang mystifying from my end … We activated speaker phones on either end, and I played and sang — they amplified it … I couldn’t hear a blessed thing they were doing, but I’m hoping this all made it onto MP3.
Matt: If the Beatles could record “Free As a Bird” with John Lennon, you all should be able to work something out.
>>Matt: If the Beatles could record “Free As a Bird” with John Lennon, you all should be able to work something out.
When Hobie insisted Jeff Lynne produce, I was rollin’ in me fookin’ grave!
Beyond getting around the cellphone feedback protection circuit, we’d have a time delay issue, be it by phone or internet. It’s actually better if Matthew can’t hear the band, as we’d appear to be playing behind him. Granted, I’m talking out of an auxiliary orifice at the moment as we couldn’t get the whole shebang up and running enough to test its full use as a remote rehearsal tool (I’d luv to be proven wrong, and we’ll try again next time too)…It was certainly fun to play along with the disembodied Matthew voice and bass guitar coming across the PA! Reminded me of some Negativland performances with The Weatherman piped into the mix.
Ironic that it’s easier for the Beatles to sync up with John from beyond the grave than for Noise 292 to sync with Matthew from New Jersey, but unfortunately the Fab Four were moving the project along a one-way street at that point (with lovely results of course).
Perhaps we could try hooking up our faraway member (heh) with a breakout cable…Hobie said there were some solutions out there and indeed I found this one:
http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=4571
As far as feedback suppression, one theory I’ve read online is that the iphone’s mic and speakers are too close together, so hopefully splitting out the signal (via the aforementioned cable) and physically separating the ins and the outs may solve the iphone’s annoying need to shut down its audio when it hears itself talking (it’s self-conscious, I can relate).
Of course, it’s still the next best (by a long shot) to being there…perhaps a vid-conference too would help shorten the distance a tiny bit…
Scotty, energize!!
I can’t wait to witness Noise 292 in action! Thumbs up to your coming together-I’m sure it was invigorating to get plugged into one another!
Mathew--you must come out to NorCal…maybe when JoAnne drives up to rehearse with Noise 292 and Everybody Violet, too!
Matthew-
Is drummer Joanne Norris the same gal who was on skins for the Injections? If so, how’s she doing?
Yeah Joanne was our drummer. I hope she’s well; I’m planning a big Injections reunion in SD this spring. We need everyone who was alive in ’79. My e-mail is Sailor@surfglobal.net.
Bruce