D
Ironically, Massacre lived up (down?) to Speechless’ vision of troubled communication: The trio terminated in the summer of 1981, in a falling out between Laswell and Maher concerning Material-related matters. “I figured that it was probably a good enough time to give it a miss,” says Frith. “But there was a period when I had an idea of getting another drummer, and Bill and I and Ronald Shannon Jackson spent a day playing together. That was very enjoyable, but it wasn’t Massacre.”
But even when Massacre was still going strong, Frith was feeling the urge to attempt something else. “I’ve become increasingly interested in the idea of using a voice,” he told me in March of 1981, “and I’m struggling with the notion of whether or not I should be capable of doing that.” He wanted to go beyond what he called “the wordless, screaming kind of way” in which he would occasionally vocalize with Massacre or while improvising, and to “use the voice straight, developing some lyrics. But I’m really scared of it at the moment. Writing words seems such a big responsibility, or something like that.”
Scared or not, Frith finally went ahead with both writing and singing, and by the fall of 1981 was facing the mic with a band called Skeleton Crew.
Links to:
SONIC TRANSPORTS: Fred Frith Essay, part 9
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 