Exploratory Rock at Outsound Summit

Vegan Butcher members Angela Coon, Wil Hendrick, Suki O’Kane, and John Shiurba (photograph by Stephen Smoliar)

Last night in the Mission, the Community Music Center (CMC) hosted the second concert in the 18th annual offering of the Outsound New Music Summit. The title for the evening was Rocket, clarified by the phrase “a night of exploratory rock.” Given that we are less than a month away from the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, described “officially” (i.e., on its poster) as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music,” I suppose it would be fair to say that last night was definitely not your grandfather’s rock music.

The more imaginative of the two groups that provided the sets for the program was Vegan Butcher (and not just for its name). Since the beginning of 2012, leader John Shiurba has limited himself to working with a nine-note scale, which he calls The January Scale (perhaps because it was conceived in the month of January). Regular readers are now probably wondering whether this was yet another approach to working with just intonation. However, the scale has nothing to do with the integer ratios of the overtone series; nor is it an unconventional approach to equal temperament. Rather, it is the equal-tempered chromatic scale with three notes missing: F-sharp, C-sharp, and A-sharp. (Think of it as chromatic orthodontia.)

As might be guessed, there is an interesting story behind the invention of The January Scale. Shiurba was inspired by the French novelist George Perec, who took some rather bizarre approaches to imposing constraints on his writing technique. He may be best know for La disparition (the disappearance), a 300-page novel in which the letter “e” does not appear in any of the words. (To appreciate the challenge, remember that the masculine form of “the” in French is “le,” meaning that Perec could not use this word. Those who cannot read French may be interested in the fact that Gilbert Adair prepared a translation entitled A Void in which the letter “e” is also absent.)

In a conversation I had with Shiurba before the concert, he told me that omitting a single pitch from the chromatic scale would probably not be noticed. After some experimentation, he decided that three provided the “critical mass’ of missing notes. As might be imagined, honoring this constraint while improvising is no mean feat; but the group as a whole seems to have settled into working with this gamut. Experienced listeners will probably recognize that they are dealing with a vocabulary that almost sounds as if it were modal but is definitely not modal.

That said, not all was well in last night’s garden. Most important was that Angela Coon, the vocal in the group, never held its own against the guitar (Shiurba), bass (Wil Hendricks), and drums (Suki O’Kane). She had a microphone (of course); but her diction was not up to the stream-of-consciousness flow of words she was supposed to deliver. The other shortcoming came from Shiurba’s own guitar work, which suggested that, while he had learned how to honor his self-imposed limitations, the result was more that a little too much sameness that cut across his selections.

The good news, however, was that thematic content, such as it was, could register with the attentive listener. The opening set, taken by a trio called Gentleman Surfer, was another matter. This was a trio led by drummer Jon Bafus joined by Barry McDaniel on guitar and Zack Bissell on synthesizers. As just about anyone knows, when the drummer is in charge, things get loud very quickly and stay that way very long. The onslaught of decibels was so overwhelming that any sense of thematic material from the other two instruments (or, for that matter, basic rhythm) could only really be apprehended by sitting in the patio outside the theater itself. Everything registered out there, even when the doors were closed; and one could recognize that there were actually some tunes hiding out behind the wall of sound. (Given that, sitting in the patio, one also heard two different CMC classes, one a women’s chorus and the other a Latin combo, the entire listening experience triggered fond memories of the music of Charles Ives!)

Gentleman Surfer may be the ultimate tribute band for Spinal Tap, and they even have amplifiers that go up to twelve!