Dead Language Liberation at Cafe 9

Dead Language Liberation at Cafe 9 - 7/6/06


The debut performance of Paul Belbusti's Dead Language Liberation project was an experience of contrasts. Good, bad or ugly? We witnessed moments of each that night.
Predominately, it was an experience of a musician learning how to improvise onstage. The Dead Language Liberation project is intended to be a revolving lineup of performers improvising musically. For the first night, it was Paul and Chris Zollo. They have played together before and have some kind of rapport. Paul stuck mostly to guitar, but diverged to bass and hippie drum temporarily. Chris was on keyboards and special effects primarily with a moment of percussion.
The show started with a short acapella piece by Paul, followed by a long, mostly instrumental period that morphed into and out of songs and looped guitar riffs. He ended by playing a couple of songs, his "Ballad of a Bird Watcher," a Bruce Springsteen medley and a solo version of "I'm on Fire."
As far as improvisation goes, there were successful periods and less-successful periods. When compared with an improvisational group like Coup de Grace, DLL is certainly more in the business of providing a worthwhile experience for the audience. Considering the immaturity of the project, the performance was pretty decent.
The audience that night may have been the worst to play like this for. They wanted country-rock. They came to see I See Hawks in L.A., a shitty Eagles ripoff band. The headliners didn't care for the DLL performance, as documented here: http://www.iseehawks.com/hawkslog/archives/2006/07/nines_on_the_wa.html Remarkably, though, the audience was quiet and mostly attentive.
I don't know the name of the band that followed DLL. They played rockish songs. The guitar player had crazy fingers.
I See Hawks in L.A. was all three-man vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars. The sort of thing that makes me hate Gram Parsons.


I took pictures:
http://flickr.com/photos/oldangelmidnight/sets/72157594190764225/

and:
http://deadlanguagerecords.com/dll.html
http://www.iseehawks.com


Also, unrelated: The Danglers MySpace page seems to have gone down. I hope nothing tragic has happened.