Venue: Teatro Miela / Trieste / Italy
Concert date: 16.02.2007
Attendance: 350
Ticket price: 15.00€
Wow! No way. This superb trio of acoustic folk guitars, right in the middle of Trieste. And on top of that, with one of the greatest bassists crawling around planet Earth today, Tony Levin, longtime bassist for Peter Gabriel and King Crimson.
California Guitar Trio are three guys: Hideyo Moriya from Japan, Bert Lams from Belgium and Paul Richards from the US. Since the boys showed huge talent from a young age when it came to spinning their fingers around a guitar, the great guru Robert Fripp (King Crimson) took them under his wing, and they got forged in his school for exceptionally gifted guitarists (Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft Courses). And thoroughly hardened. They poured all their know-how, with the undeniable implants of Fripp’s brilliant and one-of-a-kind mind, into a musical confession all their own, which is the fruit of their own songwriting on one hand and, on the other, of decoding some of the most interesting musical evergreens into their own musical language. A musical language that takes your breath away when you listen to it.
Let me throw in that California Guitar Trio are no slouches, having shared the stage on various tours over the past 14 years with many acclaimed top-tier acts such as: King Crimson, Jon Anderson, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Tito Puente, Taj Mahal, Peter Rowan and Tony Rice, Dark Star Orchestra, Leftover Salmon, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Steve Lukather, Simon Phillips, David Sylvian, Adrian Legg, Kaki King and many others.
In short, the tried-and-tested RockLine trio of spoiled ears, who had the honor of seeing California Guitar Trio for the first time on 15.10.2003 in Munich, as the opener for the progressive jesters Spock’s Beard, was honored once again with the opportunity and a trip to nearby Trieste, and so got to enjoy a set that ran an hour and three quarters. The Teatro Miela hall was packed to the last corner, which spoke volumes about the huge interest in California Guitar Trio. The seats had run out ages ago (on the balcony and in the stalls). Still, we found our way nicely, lounging comfortably on the balcony railing against the wall on the far right side (looking toward the stage).
The guys served up a mix of their own material and covers of a few classics that most music lovers know. They kicked off their set with the sparkling and playful Skyline. Three guitars, loads of effects pedals all over the floor, and from left to right stand Moriya, Richards, Lams, and in the back a one-of-a-kind alien in dark glasses, long trousers and a black leather jacket, Tony Levin with his bass guitar. Every gourmet’s dream. The guys never eased off the gas or dropped out of top gear, and poured oil on the fire with a unique blend of King Crimson classicism (the basic motif taken from 21st Century Schizoid Man, plus the transition) and oriental musical touches, underpinned by a daft surf rock beat, in Zundoko Bushi! They repeated something similar next with Melrose Ave. A start loaded with intensity, which in Train To Lamy Suite pt. 1-3 practically hit the first atmospheric boiling point, when the hall was first engulfed by venomously “overdistorted” “black blues guitar slides” played by Richards with a slide, and for a moment I thought it was a cover of In My Time Of Dying (Led Zeppelin).
Lams took care of all the fastest and most complex solos. It’s unbelievable what his left-hand pinky can do. Moriya was mostly in charge of the calm passages! The left (Moriya) and right (Lams) guitars formed an excellent contrast, which went down especially well in the encore and the superb rendition of Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody. Picture three guys transcribing literally every element of the original into the musical vocabulary available to three acoustic guitars. Richards handled the bulk of the special effects. He used both a slide and a distortion effect, which served as a special spice added only at select moments of the show. Richards is the boss of the trio, the connector, a kind of adhesive element that the other two members are attached to.
While building their three-part harmonies, the guys often also took parts they had played first, stored them in the multi-effects unit’s memory and triggered harmonic curtains of “delay” sounds from them, which then served in the rest of the songs as an atmospheric embrace for the basic motifs that these fast-fingered players kept weaving throughout their performance. One of the peaks seasoned this way was undoubtedly the rendition of the legendary Mike Oldfield tune Tubular Bells, which was literally breathtaking given how brilliantly the guys managed to “translate” the lines of all the motifs of this otherwise complex piece into the language of acoustic guitar.
From their current studio album “White Water” (2004), the guys set the place on fire with the highly atmospheric Cosmo Calypso, the bonkers Red Iguana and, among all of those, the most emotional moment of the entire show, the song The Marsh, which Richards in his introduction described as a big dedication to their teacher Robert Fripp. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful, most fragile and most sensitive pieces ever to come from this trio’s fingers. Intense melancholy and sensual tenderness, longing. A one-of-a-kind beauty.
The trio also presented a brand-new song called Andromeda. They also played a hiking number (about two alpinists climbing a mountain in the Italian Alps, as Richards announced) called Punta Patri, written by Bert Lams and also featured in the soundtrack for a film whose script follows the climb of those two alpinists.
So the whole thing wouldn’t come off too serious, the guys took care of that in the ideal way. They put a whole bunch of covers in the set. There were the already mentioned Tubular Bells and Bohemian Rhapsody, then the fantastic and witty rendition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Ennio Morricone) from their studio album “Invitation” (1995) and Hideyo’s especially fast specialty, a surf-style take on a snippet of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony called “Unmei”. The guys especially won over all the fans of Yes when they played the whole of Heart Of The Sunrise, where Levin put sticks on the index and middle fingers of his right hand and hammered the bass strings with them. People especially dug the “surf rocker” Misirlou (the main theme from the film Pulp Fiction), where Moriya skillfully proved his great affinity for surf rock. The trio showed they can also damn well “rock out” in a special version of their own making of Freebird (Lynyard Skynyard). In short, it was one big party at every point of the show.
In the encore Moriya pointed the mic at the audience and signaled for the folks to sing, because the trio was playing Bohemian Rhapsody, a Queen “evergreen” that every grade-schooler is supposed to know by heart. The Italian audience by no means left the trio in the lurch and gloriously chipped in with the accompaniment of its own choir.
The audience was thrilled. It rewarded the trio and Levin with applause even before individual numbers, and during the material itself many a cry of huge enthusiasm rang out.
In their overall musical expression the guys absolutely don’t hide the influence of King Crimson; even the “Yes-ish” Heart Of The Sunrise sounded as if King Crimson themselves had written a new arrangement for it. Still, the most beautiful and most direct example of the presence of the “Crimson” element and a touch of the world of “Crimson” music is the original song Red Iguana.
The show was over too soon! The guys announced a CD signing after the gig. The crowd literally snatched up the CDs after the show and stormed the guys when they came out from backstage. Naturally, Tony Levin had the most work “fending off the flies”. The three of us quickly seized the chance too, picked up autographs, immortalized ourselves with Tony, swapped a few thoughts and good wishes, and then slipped off home. Tony is an incredibly kind and fun guy, with a very curious mind.
An event for 15.00€ that, judging by the experience, was worth far more! The guys left for Venice the next day for the last day of the European leg of the tour, which comprised just 6 shows across Italy, and the Venice gig is the trio’s fifth show overall with Tony Levin as special guest. After that California Guitar Trio head off to North America. An even more extensive tour awaits them there, but without Tony Levin, and only the devil and the archangel Gabriel can tell when they’ll be back on the European map. I don’t even know how to wrap up this happy confluence of circumstances, with CGT and Levin playing practically on your doorstep. Maybe Caesar’s famous observation is enough: “Veni vidi vici!” (We came, we saw, we conquered).
Words: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Thomas Breznik
Setlist
1. Skyline
2. Zundoko Bushi
3. Melrose Ave.
4. Blockhead
5. Train To Lamy Suite pt. 1-3
6. Misirlou
7. Cosmo Calypso
8. Red Iguana
9. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (without T. Levin)
10. The Marsh (without T. Levin)
11. Andromeda (without T. Levin)
12. Unmei (Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, without T. Levin)
13. Tubular Bells
14. Freebird
15. Punta Patri
16. Heart Of The Sunrise
—encore—
17. Bohemian Rhapsody (without T. Levin)
18. Eve
Photo Gallery
