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BEANBENDERS
February 13, 2007
February 20, 2008
In the mid-90s, shortly after
Dangerbaby and I met, we picked DANGERBABY
up the habit of going to
"Beanbenders" in Berkeley every
Wednesday night.
KLEE
We actually met at "The
Dark Circle Lounge" It turned out that Klee of KZSU
series held in SF at was one of the organizing forces
The Hotel Utah. behind Beanbenders in the early
days, though I didn't know that at
DANGER the time. The more public face of
the event was (and remains) Dan
And early on, we were Plonsey, a reed player who I knew
hanging around at the of as a member of the trio "The
Sunday night series over Manufacturing of Humidifiers".
at Radio Valencia.
But somehow, the Beanbenders
series won us over as our Our first night there was
regular event, where we the third event of the
could be found more often than series: March 15, 1995, the
not on Wednesday (and later, "Big Music, Little Muscians"
on Sunday when they changed group of kids under the
nights). direction of Randy Porter.
The mid-90s in retrospect was a
good time for music in general
(say what you will about the
Clinton years -- and there's
plenty to say about them -- at
least they left space in your
brain to do something besides
shake your head at the state of
the country). Also, in Or whatever awkward,
retrospect, it was a good time unsatisfying synonym
for "the improv scene": in you prefer for
addition to some great "improv scene":
established players (Splatter
Trio, ROVA, Dan Plonsey, etc) IMP_PERVERSE
there were some up-and-coming new
kids around that Beanbenders was
happy to give space to (Moe!
Staihano, Matt Ingalls, Morgan
Guberman, Zen Cohen, Carla
Kilhstedht, Damon Smith...).
I wouldn't say that I expected this to
be The Next Big Thing or anything like
that, but at least it wasn't absurd to
think that it might be the case -- and
certainly Dangerbaby had the feeling
that there was something important
going on: she set about doing
photographic documentation of the
scene, in the form of a long series
of black and white double-exposures
of musicians in action....
And Beanbenders itself seemed like the
center of the scene: it was a place
where I saw some of the best music
performances I'd ever seen in my
life... some of them I doubt I'll ever
see equaled.
The space itself had a certain magic
about it: it was a really large former
bank that had gone out of use and been It still had
taken over by a non-profit that had a gigantic
yet to find a "real" use for the bank vault
space, and Plonsey and company had in one corner,
somehow managed to get use of the it's foot-thick
whole thing one night a week. stainless
steel door
An architectural quirk swung permanently
of the place was that open.
there was a symmetric
row of supporting pillars
on either side of the
seating area, which gave
the room a kind of
rubbery quality: if only
a few dozen people showed
up it seemed like it was
full, but if a few I don't know what a
hundred people showed up-- real musician would
and there were some say about the sound
nights that they did-- of the room, but it
the audience could expand sounded pretty good
out the sides and back to me: neither
without the place "dead" nor too echoey.
seeming crowded.
Just as an example, one night
they persuaded Fred Frith to
do a rare solo guitar performance. There were some
Hundreds of people showed up, kids in the
to listen raptly as he did audience I knew
many strange, and often very (members of the
subtle things with his duo Nothing,
guitar, e.g. gently squeaking sometimes
his finger across the front. Mandible Chatter
co-horts),
It's the kind of thing that who reacted
you might think would only something like
work in an "intimate" "I don't know
setting that couldn't if this makes
possibly accomodate a crowd me what to take
of that size -- but at up the guitar,
Beanbenders, it worked. or just forget
about it
completely."
My reaction was something like:
"I've seen people mess with the
tuning pegs while they were
playing before, but *he* can do
it and end up on a note."
He was changing the tuning
of the guitar while he
was playing it...
I see that was June 3, 1995.
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