Location: Trieste / Teatro Miela (Port Workers’ Hall) / Italy
Date: Saturday, February 17, 2007
Wow! This can’t be real. That superb trio of acoustic folk guitars, right in the middle of Trieste. And on top of that, with one of the greatest bass players currently roaming planet Earth, Tony Levin, longtime bassist for Peter Gabriel and King Crimson.
California Guitar Trio are three guys: Japan’s Hideyo Moriya, Belgium’s Bert Lams and America’s Paul Richards. Since they showed huge talent for finger-twirling on the guitar from an early age, the great guru Robert Fripp (King Crimson) took them under his wing, and the guys got tempered in his school for exceptionally gifted guitarists (Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft Courses). And tempered they were, thoroughly. All their know-how, with the undeniable implants of Fripp’s brilliant and unique mind, they poured into a musical confession all their own, which is the fruit of their own songwriting on the one hand, and on the other of decoding some of the most interesting musical evergreens into their very own musical language. A musical language that takes your breath away when you listen to it.
Let me add that California Guitar Trio are no slouches, having toured over the past 14 years with many renowned 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, a seasoned RockLine trio of spoiled ears, who had first had the honor of seeing California Guitar Trio on October 15, 2003 in Munich, as the opener for the prog jokers Spock’s Beard, was honored once more with the chance and a trip to nearby Trieste, and so got to enjoy an hour-and-three-quarters-long set. Teatro Miela was packed to the last corner, which spoke volumes about the huge interest in California Guitar Trio. The seats had been gone long ago (on the balcony and in the stalls). Still, we managed just fine, lounging comfortably on the balcony railing against the wall at the far right side (as seen from the stage).
The guys served up a mix of their own material and covers of a few classics that most music lovers know well. They kicked off their set with the sparkling and playful Skyline. Three guitars, the floor packed with effects pedals, and from left to right stand Moriya, Richards, Lams, with the one and only spaceman in dark sunglasses, ankle-length pants and a black leather jacket, Tony Levin, on bass in the background. A gourmet’s dream. The guys didn’t ease off the gas for a second, staying in top gear and pouring oil on the fire with a fantastic fusion of King Crimson classicism (the main motif lifted from 21st Century Schizoid Man, plus the transition) and oriental musical touches, underpinned by a goofy surf rock beat, in Zundoko Bushi! They did something similar again later with Melrose Ave. An intensity-packed start that practically hit its first boiling point of atmosphere in Train To Lamy Suite pt. 1-3, when the hall was initially 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 pinky can do. Moriya was mostly in charge of the calm passages! The left (Moriya) and right (Lams) guitars formed an exceptional contrast, which worked especially well in the encore and the splendid rendition of Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody. Picture three guys transcribing every single element of the original into the available musical understanding of three acoustic guitars. Richards handled most of the special effects. He used both the 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 and a kind of adhesive that the other two members are bound to.
While developing their three-part harmonies, the guys often added parts they had played first, stored them in the memory of a multi-effects unit and triggered harmonic curtains of “delay” sounds from them, which served as an atmospheric embrace for the basic motifs that these fast-fingered wizards kept weaving throughout their performance. One of the peaks seasoned in this way was undoubtedly the rendition of the legendary Mike Oldfield piece 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 the acoustic guitar.
From their current studio album “White Water” (2004), the guys set the place on fire with the highly atmospheric Cosmo Calypso, the quirky Red Iguana and, among all of these, the most emotional moment of the entire show, 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 sensitive pieces ever to come out from under this trio’s fingers. Intense melancholy and sensual tenderness, yearning. A one-of-a-kind beauty.
The trio also presented a brand-new song in the set, titled Andromeda. They also played a mountaineering piece called Punta Patri (it tells of two alpinists climbing a mountain in the Italian Alps, as Richards announced), written by Bert Lams and included in the soundtrack of a film whose script depicts the climb of those two alpinists.
So that the whole thing wouldn’t come off too serious, the guys handled it in the perfect way. They packed the set with a bunch of covers. There were the already mentioned Tubular Bells and Bohemian Rhapsody, then a fantastic and witty rendition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Ennio Morricone) from their studio album “Invitation” (1995), and Hideyo’s extra-fast specialty, a surf version of a snippet of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony called “Unmei”. The guys especially conquered all the fans of Yes when they played the whole of Heart Of The Sunrise, with Levin putting drumsticks on his right index and middle fingers and hammering the bass strings with them. People especially went wild for the “surf rocker” Misirlou (the main theme from the film Pulp Fiction), where Moriya skillfully proved his great affinity for surf rock. That the trio can also rock like hell they showed in a special version of Freebird (Lynyrd Skynyrd) done their own way. In short, it was one big party at every point of the show.
In the encore, Moriya pointed the microphone at the audience and signaled the crowd to sing, because the trio was playing Bohemian Rhapsody, a Queen “evergreen” that every grade-schooler is supposed to know by heart. The Italian crowd definitely didn’t leave the trio hanging and chipped in with a commendable backing track from its very own choir.
The audience was thrilled. They rewarded the trio and Levin with applause even before the individual numbers, and plenty of shouts of huge enthusiasm rang out during the performances themselves.
In their overall musical expression, these guys absolutely don’t hide the influence of King Crimson; even the “Yes-ish” Heart Of The Sunrise sounded like King Crimson themselves had written a new arrangement for it. Still, the most beautiful and direct example of the presence of the “Crimson” element and a touch of the world of “Crimson” music is the original piece Red Iguana.
The show was over way too fast! The guys had announced a CD signing after the gig. The crowd literally snapped up the CDs after the show and swarmed the guys as they came out from backstage. Naturally, Tony Levin had the most work “swatting away the flies”. The three of us quickly seized the opportunity too, grabbed autographs, got immortalized with Tony, exchanged a few thoughts and good wishes, and then slipped off home. Tony is an incredibly friendly and fun guy, with a very curious mind.
An event for €15.00 that was worth far more than that for the experience! The next day the guys traveled to Venice for the last date of the European leg of the tour, which spanned just 6 shows across Italy, and the Venice gig was the trio’s fifth show in total 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 know when they’ll next show up on the European map. I don’t even know how to wrap up this happy stroke of luck, with CGT and Levin playing practically on our doorstep. Maybe Caesar’s famous line says it all: “Veni vidi vici!” (We came, we saw, we conquered).
author: 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
