peterblegvad

Early in Henry Cow's Virgin days, when the company had just signed Faust, the then A&R man, Simon Draper played us a demo and asked what we thought of it. It was Slapphappy's Acnalbasac Noom. What we thought was that it was extraordinary. A little after this, Faust arrived in England and they and we embarked on a long co-billed tour together. Faust was missing two of its regular members - I think one had left and the other had tooth problems. As replacements they had invited the remarkable Uli Trepte (bass and short-wave radios) and Peter Blegvad - from Slapphappy- who played various guitars. Since we were touring together, we and Peter were soon making all sorts of plans. Meanwhile, Virgin decided to re-record all the songs on the Slapphappy demo we had heard instead of releasing it as it was - a crazy decision since the so-called demo had Faust on it and was as close to perfect as you can get. Still, it meant that members of Henry Cow got to play on the new version, as well as on radio broadcasts and hopeful singles. Something like a year later, Slapphappy arrived at the house most of Henry Cow were then living in, bearing many bottles, and asked if we'd be the band for their next LP. By the end of the evening, we had merged the two groups. Together, we made 2 LP's, Desperate Straights and In Praise of Learning, after which, although we rehearsed for concerts, we un-merged again - with Dagmar electing to stay with Henry Cow and John Greaves continuing to work with Peter. When John left Henry Cow a little over a year later, he and Peter made Kew:Rhone together. Peter began to work with John Zorn, Christian Marclay, The Golden Palominos and others; and he and John continued to work together intermittently on various other projects, including The Lodge and Peter's first solo record for Virgin The Naked Shaksepeare. When the Art Bears did their only tour, in 1978, Peter and Marc Hollander completed the performing group. Once Peter had moved to London and Virgin had decided that he wasn't going to make them rich, I took the opportunity to start building up a new Blegvad album, using time at This Heat's Cold Storage studio (in which I was then a partner). Over the next couple of years Downtime was recorded, with various bass-players- Pere Ubu's Tony Maimone', The Work's Mick Hobbs and John Greaves. There was a short break while Silvertone offered Peter a record deal, recorded and released King Strut, failed to get rich and then released Peter from his contract, leaving Peter, John Greaves and I free, as a basic trio, to make Just Woke Up, for ReR - with guest appearances by Stoffer Blegvad, B.J.Cole, Geraint Watkins, Jakko Jakszyk, Tim Hodgkinson and Phil Shaw. The Peter Blegavd Trio then started to do concerts, since when we have played all over Europe, America and Japan.

ReR released a third CD in 1998 and the following year organised a large-scale London concert The Woodcutter's Ball at which we expanded the trio with various guests, including B.J. Cole, Adam Phillips, Eddi Reader, Loudon Wainright III, Syd Straw, Stoffer Blegvad, Jakko Jakszyk and the Dear Janes. In 2004 we presented Peter's multi-media theatre piece On Imaginary Media at the De Balie Theatre in Amsterdam. Today, the trio has become a quintet, with Karen Mantler on organ, chromatic harmonica, voice and glockenspiel, and Bob Drake, guitar and voice added.

Peter Blegvad Quartet Bee Dream at RIO: John Greaves, Peter Blegvad, Bob Drake, CC

In 2011, I managed to assemble a one time project with Peter, David Thomas, John Edwards and myself to deliver an illustrated lecture on the three E's (Elvis, Edison & Einstein) called How I invented Time, at Cafe Oto in London. Offers didn't flood in. Otherwise ReR has published a number of Peter's stories and pictures. And he has designed several covers for ReR releases.

DAAN VANEWALLE

I met Daan when we worked together in Fred Frith's Tense Serenity in 1997. We shared a perverse interest in polyrythms - well not so much polyrythms as playing in different metres simultaneously, or in constantly varying metres. It's a practice we've chased through a lot of different projects, and is currently enthroned in Nimmersatt. After Fred, we played some duos and trios together, and one of the trios - with Jaques Palinckx - led on to (1) my purchase of a digitec whammy pedal and (2) an invitation for both of us (and DJ Donotask) to be in an extended version of his band, renamed Pa.Linck.Xl for the occasion. We toured across Europe and in Canada until maybe my wilful out of timing became too much. Daan and I, however, persisted and in 2009, with guitarist Jean-Marc Montera and Cellist Arne Deforce, we formed the Bad Boys Collective, to play a Cage programme at the Flanders Festival in 2009. The Bad Boys have gone on to play graphic scores, Stockhausen, Earle Brown and suchlike, whenever the opportunity has arisen. Daan and I had worked together before in Jean Marc's Ensemble d'Improvisateurs Européens, formed initially to play Cornelius Cardew's (probably unplayable) graphic score, Treatise. The band lasted several years, going on to commission new works by young composers. I wrote Life on Earth for them. Nimmersatt was Daan's brainchild - a simple concept, but not simple realise convincingly: bass, drums and organ have each to play in their own time, unrelentingly - accelerating, decelerating, switching tempi, changing dynamic and systematically adding and subtracting beats, remaining as unswerved as possible by what the others are doing. It's fun, and intense; and we have recently been joined by a perfect collaborator: Jon Rose, who's been playing out of time for years. Daan was also one of the soloists in a recent performance of p53 for Orchestra and soloists. We continue also to work together in the Bad Boys Collective.

JEAN-MARC MONTERA

I met Jean-Marc first in Fred's Graphic Scores Orchestra, in 1994. We didn't meet again until 1998, at Jacques di Donato's M'here Festival, in a quartet with Jacques di Donato and Jean Jacques Avenel. A second quartet - with Tony Buck and Jean Francois Pauvros - followed, which played a few times. Then, in 2001 Jean-Marc and Daan Vandewalle (who'd also been in the Graphic Scores Orchestra) and I were engaged to perform Christan Wolff's For 1,2,3 Players at a festival in Daan's hometown, Ghent. A year later we all swanned off to Corsica to study Treatise for a week as part of Jean Marc's Ensemble d'Improvisateurs Européens; and now we abet Arne Deforce in remodelling contemporary repertoire (if Cage, Brown, Wolff, Stockhausen and Fluxus are still contemporary) in The Bad Boys Collective .

WHAT'S IN A NAME? Hats off to George Antheil author of the autoboigraphy (and life) 'The bad boy of music'.

The Bad Boys: Out of their Heads, aka Graphic Instruction Process (download only) ReR BB1