On Random Gear Fest 2023

In 1917 at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, Erik Satie’s ballet Parade premiered as a part of impresario Sergei Diaghiliev’s Ballets Russes—a dance company known for promoting collaboration between artistic fields and commissioning works from composers and visual artists alike, among them Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Matisse. Parade attempts to expressively incorporate elements of everyday life and popular entertainment, embedding elements of American silent films and iconography from fairgrounds and the streets of Paris. The piece was the first collaboration between Satie and Picasso, who produced the costumes and set, and the first time either of them had worked on a ballet. The idea for the piece was seemingly initiated by poet Jean Cocteau, who provided the narrative scenario—the story of a performance troupe’s failed attempts at attracting an audience to view their show. In a review, Guilliaume Apollinaire described the performance as “a kind of surrealism” years before the term was applied to a style of painting. Yet, even at the advent of a new 20th century musical avant-garde, Cocteau’s narrative expresses a spectacular and embattled self-consciousness toward audience—the lack of an audience and the melodrama of audience reception.

Cocteau also insisted that the score contain several “noise-making” instruments (a typewriter, foghorn, an assortment of milk bottles, a pistol, etc.), somewhat to the dismay of Satie. Such additions by Cocteau showed his eagerness to create a succes de scandale (success through scandal) similar to the Ballet Russes’s presentation of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps a few years before. The simple use of everyday objects as instruments was the key to unfurling abomination—to the point where music critic Jean Poueigh penned a negative review of Parade, prompting Satie to write a response letter calling him “an arse without music!” Poueigh subsequently sued Satie, Cocteau got arrested at the trial and beaten by police, and Satie himself was given a sentence of eight days in jail. 

Over one hundred years later, the simple use of everyday objects as instruments can simultaneously elicit the same lack of audience enthusiasm (as displayed in Cocteau’s narrative) and, occasionally, the same succes de scandale. Last week on January 6th, Random Gear Fest took place at a secret location in New York City. While not at all formally similar to Satie’s Parade, ultimately I feel the festival authentically expressed a simple social update of the unique spectacle that occurs between audience and avant-garde performance troupe. The factionalized boos and hisses which nearly caused a riot at the Theatre du Chatelet ballet in 1917 were replaced by knowing smirks and drunken laughs, hugs and hat tips, and the general warm conviviality afforded by a common vocabulary established by one hundred years of playing random objects for musical purposes. 

For many involved in “experimental” music, the novelty of performing with everyday objects can feel like a rote kind of subversion provided to us through decades of electroacoustic music and extended technique’s re-engineering of instrumental approaches. Our shared boredom with the parlor tricks of this kind of improvised music allowed the festival to evolve into a kind of group penance for decades of music participation—the schlepping, and the exhaustion, yes—but also the comforting glow of music’s promise of community in the ashes of contemporary life. Yes, too many times have many of us been locked into watching a set with seemingly no end—subject to the incessant tapping and flicking of amplified gourds, the shuffling of papers, or ringing of bells. And yet, it’s this very kind of performance that I ultimately seek solace in. When even a merry performer troupe like the one unfurled in Parade seeks an audience to no avail, it’s affirming that today there exists the possibility of raucous applause for the performance of random gear. This comforts me, and I think that this promise can still carry with a plea to friends and colleagues for communion.

Random Gear Fest is the project of Ren Schofield (Container) and has been staged in Providence, Rhode Island and other locations for years. After a hiatus, the 2023 edition of the festival was co-conspiratorially curated in collaboration with close friends Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher. Together they curated a group of musicians (Alec and I were included), and chose specific artist pairings and a selection of objects and instruments. The instrument matchups and set times were chosen at random, although I have a hunch there may have been some collusion … or maybe it was just cruel fate that destined me to receive a fish procured at a local fish market as my “gear.” Without going into the immense subtleties and ins and outs of the pairings, side projects, musical histories, lineages, and legacies of the participants—I can confidently say the group charted a pirate map of musicians who’ve been organizing and participating in music for cumulative centuries, spanning all manner of underground music, improvisation, electronic music, sound art, noise, as well as theory around music. 

The festival afforded a “degree zero” opportunity where musical terms, styles, and approaches could become entangled without clear intention or consequence. It demonstrated how we can wrest from objects our assumptions about music and descend into the cloud of our social life as its own expressive musical vernacular. Moreover, it showed me that a lack of clarity with regards to musical communication can actually be an effective rallying point for community and a space where expression could thrive—a reverse tragedy of the commons where the pit becomes an intimate stage. The festival felt like a support group for musicians with our particular kind of affliction—where whistling through a traffic cone conjures spirited yelps, faces flushed and calling out to keep the “parade” going—a demented fantasy realized in a din of fish and fog. At the horizon line of boredom, decadence, and blasé attitudes towards art and music, the performative potential of a mop bucket and bicycle pump calls toward us. Let us answer its call. 

Alec was paired with Lea Cho from Blues Control and the great guitarist Ryley Walker. A scene of Walker blowing furiously into an ice skate while Alec bounced a basketball and Lea scattered leaves subsequently went viral. Mike Pollard and Ian Kim Judd gave an inspired performance with a cigarette and lighter, dexterously maneuvering through lighter flicks, fake outs, and puffs—fusing a Chaplinesque aesthetic with the iconic cigarette break so essential to all noise shows. The boys of Barb Wire (Jack, Jeff, Jonas Asher and Daren Ho) destroyed an oud and triumphantly lifted the fabled red backpack of Jeff Witscher up like a battle flag, raised and tattered as it withheld its own war stories. Meg Clixby and Asha Sheshadri were able to balance “woodwind” (bicycle pump) and “percussion” (mop furiously pummeled into bucket) in a frenetic duo that outstripped most “drums and sax” duo formats with its elemental power. Writer Michael Eby played a schoolyard theme on the recorder while an air mattress slowly inflated—calling to mind the work of Taku Unami and his fusion of the machinic and harmonic—but also giving needed dynamic space to the percussion-heavy instrumental choices with “a song to the wind.” I was paired with guitarist and DJ Zac Davis, who in Luke Wyatt’s words conjured “Tony Scott-like” film aesthetics. I wagged a fish through a fog machine while Zac fiercely vacuumed up leaves left from a previous set, as if trying to clean up a murder. The fish became a kind of symbol for the ethical dilemmas we face … a totem to ritual sacrifice, a nod to Jacques Attali’s “Sacrificial Code” rendered oddly nautical. 

As I mentioned, the performances at Random Gear Fest may have formally very little to do with Satie, Picasso, and Cocteau’s Parade. Yet, through both the 1917 ballet and 2023 festival, I'm reminded of art and music, of collaboration, and of scandal as a matrix that we are still indeed enmeshed in. While it’s been speculated that Parade covertly influenced the trajectory of musical composition throughout the 20th century—it’s Cocteau’s narrative of the merry avant-garde performance troupe left in its wake—the cajoling band of fools trying to gain an audience depicted in Picasso’s backdrop—that feels contemporary. When it becomes difficult to hear the music, the music we’re all attempting to show each other, the music in our sequestered circus tents that we’d do anything to showcase to each other—let us commune in parade formation … carrying stolen street signs and fishes into the night. 

Random Gear Fest 2023 featured performances from Daryl Seaver, Kwami Winfield, Pool, Lea Cho, Ryley Walker, Alec Sturgis, Barb Wire, Meg Clixby, Asha Sheshadri, Dave Public, C. Spencer Yeh, Michael Eby, Luke Moldoff, Luke Wyatt, Luke Younger, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Zac Davis, and Nick Scavo.

Listen to exclusive recordings of sets from Michael Pollard & Ian Kim Judd, Michael Eby, and Meg Clixby & Asha Sheshadri below. Thanks to Ren Schofield, Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher. 

Image: Picasso's backdrop for 1917 Parade performance, program detail, Random Gear Fest 2023 flyer detail