B
Besides sending me out into the wilds of NYC free improvisation, Gravity prompted me to glom whatever records Frith had worked on. Which is how I first heard the music of Henry Cow, the band Frith and Tim Hodgkinson formed in 1968, when they were at Cambridge University in England. Five years and several personnel changes later, Henry Cow released Leg End, its first album on Virgin Records, with Frith (guitars, violin), Hodgkinson (alto sax, clarinet, keyboards), Chris Cutler (drums), John Greaves (bass), and Geoff Leigh (saxes, flute, clarinet). Leigh left soon after, and was replaced by Lindsay Cooper (bassoon, oboe). That’s hardly your standard rock complement, and the band seems to have spent a fair amount of time reassuring people that they actually were rock musicians. I wouldn’t say Henry Cow protested too much (musically or politically), but their music did sound quite a bit different from most rock, of their time or ours. The musicians were from very different backgrounds – rock, jazz, pop, concert music, folk – and they were trying to compose and improvise music with which they all could live. To their credit, they managed to keep at it for ten years, until the band’s dissolution in 1978.
The shock waves from Henry Cow’s music are still being felt; as Frith says, “If we got back together, we’d probably have bigger audiences than we ever had.” I’d certainly go to hear a reconstituted Cow, because I admire their musicianship and respect their attitude; but not because I ever developed any real fondness for their albums.
Links to:
SONIC TRANSPORTS: Fred Frith Essay, part 5
SONIC TRANSPORTS: Fred Frith Contents
SONIC TRANSPORTS: Contents
For more on Fred Frith, see:
Music Book: Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music, Second Edition
Music: KALW Radio Show #1, A Few of My Favorite Things…
Music: SFCR Radio Show #6, Postmodernism, part 3: Three Contemporary Masters
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 