Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Classic San Francisco

Now that I'm back in San Francisco after a ten-day vacation, I'm being reminded and confronted with a bunch of things that make life here amazing. The other day I was reminded of the Suicide Club -- a precursor to the Cacophony Society, Burning Man and other local underground institutions -- and how a Suicide Club event I attended in 1979 was in some ways my initiation to the San Francisco underground.

This town continues to surprise and amaze me, if I pay attention and am lucky. Tonight I went to my friend Bob's house for a small garden concert by the underground music legend Fred Frith. About 25 people heard Frith play electric guitar through an electronic processor/repeater, producing sounds that ranged from bell-like ringing to moans to flutes. It was about 40 minutes of never-again-heard improvization, and I tried to fix the moment in my mind so I'll always remember what it felt like to be middle-aged and still privileged, once in a long while, to be invited underground.

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