Even for a pretentious high school student this was a pretentious idea. Stoked by the energy of DC-area punk, but grooving more on the sounds out of downtown New York, and stifled by the classic rock preferred by most of my fellow lets put a band together students, I instead wanted to capture the alchemy achieved by Peter Gordon (tenor sax) and David van Tieghem (percussion). I dont remember how it happened, it may have been the first time we ever spoke, but sharing a table in the Yorktown High School cafeteria, tenor saxophonist Ken Walsh had some similar notions. Classic rock is fine, but it shouldnt be the only thing, he said, calmly, maybe unknowingly, sealing his fate. The resulting unit, The Laughing Fish, was always more a performance art ensemble than a band (filling its ranks with core actors Yuri Lowenthal and Guy Paquette, then later that year Chris Sellers and Charles Sellers)(then, in 1999, long after Yorktown and actually in downtown New York, Bryan Enk). John Doyle rehearsed with us some but never took the stage with us, meaning Ken would be the only actual musician in the group. I have many fond memories of Yorktown in general, and the Laughing Fish in particular. And very high among the latter was drumming with Ken Walsh. We never really captured the Gordon/van Tieghem alchemy Id initially sought, but the Walsh/Robson pairing was an absolute blast. Im so glad to have reconnected with you this year (and am as grateful as you to FB for making such things possible), and today it delights me to say: Happy Birthday, Ken. And heres a song about that. https://youtube/watch?v=fvbAohplcEk
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 18:51:48 +0000
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