DAVID SYLVIAN BIOGRAPHY - ON THE PERIPHERY Only available for worldwide dispatch from WWW.SYLVIANBIOGRAPHY.COM Back in late 1991 — before Sylvian met and married Chavez, and before his move to the States — he was putting his mind to his next collaborative project with Robert Fripp, which had its creative roots back in work Sylvian had been doing for a new solo project that never came to fruition just after the final Rain Tree Crow sessions had been concluded. The pair had remained in touch since they last worked together in 1985, and had often discussed the idea of more collaboration. Numerous projects were mooted over the years, but it was only when Fripp began calling Sylvian again in 1991 with various ideas (one of which was to convince Sylvian to front the new King Crimson) that things gelled. Sylvian and Fripp kicked the King Crimson idea around for a while, but eventually both agreed that it wasn’t the right move for Sylvian. However, out of these numerous discussions emerged a collaboration that ended up as a tour of Japan and Italy in the spring of 1992 (The First Day Tour), a matter of weeks after Sylvian married Chavez. At this time, Sylvian’s was sorting out his affairs in London where he was still based. (Despite the fact that he married in February 1992, it took 6 months after his marriage before he finally severed his ties with London and cleared the bureaucratic hoops to move lock stock and barrel to the USA). Sylvian and Fripp met up at an installation project in Italy, after which they worked together rehearsing for The First Day tour, a series of live, largely improvised sets. Sylvian, Fripp and Trey Gunn toured as a trio, having only got together 2 weeks prior to the start of the tour in Sylvian’s house in London. The material was written in about a week, rehearsed for a week, and then the three protagonists found themselves performing in front of live audiences. The First Day tour kicked off on the 1st March 1992 in the Terada Warehouse in Tokyo with a secret show, before five more concerts in Japan up until the 9th March. A few months later, the three musicians then performed ten more dates in Italy beginning in the Auditorium in Bari on the 14th of June, and ending in the Teatro Astra in Bassano del Grappa on the 26th June. The loose structure of these live excursions was such that on occasion the entire performance could be over in 45 minutes! However, there was a basic set that included various instrumentals and songs with vocals such as Firepower, Jean the Birdman, 20th Century Dreaming, and The Blinding Light of Heaven. With so little preparation time before taking the music on the road, the level of concentration in the live setting was immense, much more so than anything Sylvian had had to tackle in the past, but it was something that he revelled in, and it renewed his interest in live performance. The First Day tour over, Sylvian wrapped up his affairs in London, and paperwork in place, headed over to live with Chavez in Minneapolis. Arriving in the heat of a Minnesota summer, Sylvian had had little time to get his feet under the table before stage two of his collaboration with Fripp was being discussed and finalised. They would work together on a studio album, taking some material from the live shows they had just completed, and adding more in the studio to complete the project. But the timing was not ideal for Sylvian as he explains in the new biography On the Periphery (sylvianbiography). “I wasn’t mentally ready to get involved in recording an album with Robert. I didn’t think Robert was all there either. But at the same time there was a lot to be expressed.” The album The First Day was much more closely associated with the overt rock genre than any of Sylvian’s previous work. To a great extent, this Fripp/Sylvian alliance was somewhat of a cul-de-sac when trying to contextualise it on the road map of his musical progression. Lyrically, however, it was a valuable work, as it gave an insight into Sylvian’s thought processes at the time. More precisely, with its conception in the early 1990s, The First Day, like Rain Tree Crow, was another stab at expressing the low points of Sylvian’s spiritual and emotional upheaval. Musically, however, it did not provide a particularly accurate indication as to the direction of future work. It was almost a way for Sylvian to clear his pipes, get something out of his system, before taking a different route of development much more consistent with roots set down earlier in his solo career. This was not to demean or undermine the work which Fripp and Sylvian produced. Instead the point is simply made that at this stage, Sylvian was in a way rebuilding his solo career and had not found his feet but was experimenting to locate his new direction. JEAN THE BIRDMAN: https://youtube/watch?v=rLU2St_P40U
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 09:20:12 +0000
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