Avant Garde Guitarist Fred Frith Rediscovered RER-USA Re-releases Allies & Cheap at Half the Price By Jeff Eason Somewhere between pop, jazz, classical and the odd musical stylings of Frank Zappa lies the music of Fred Frith. Some of his older works have finally been released on CD by RER-USA. Lovers of music heard off the beaten path should know by now that it is the smaller independent labels that are preserving a place for the less popular musicians. At a time when mainstream radio is becoming more and more homogenous and large recording companies are taking fewer and fewer risks with music that actually challenges the listener, the small indies and their corresponding websites have exploded in a thousand different directions. If you like the challenge of listening Frank Zappa’s odder oeuvres and appreciate the weird keys and time signatures of newer bands like Primus, you may want to check out the extensive discography of Fred Frith. For those music lovers unfamiliar with Frith’s prodigious output, he is an accomplished guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and composer who has been influencing musical culture from the fringes for over three decades. He was the co-founder of the British underground rock band Henry Cow (1968-78) before moving to New York in the late 70s. There he became acquainted with many of the musicians that he still performs with including John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Tom Cora, Zeena Parkins, Bill Laswell and Fred Maher. During his tenure in New York he has given rise to many an experimental musical enterprise including Massacre, Skeleton Crew, and Keep the Dog, a sextet performing an extensive repertoire of Frith’s compositions. In the 1980s he also started composing music for film, dance and theatre. That experience led to his writing compositions for other bands including the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Modern, and Asko Ensemble, among others. Frith is probably best known these days as a free-wheeling mercenary improvisational guitarist. He has played guitar on recordings by artists such as Brian Eno, The Residents, Rene Lussier and Amy Denio. He is also quite capable on other instruments and has played bass in John Zorn’s Naked City Ensemble, and violin in Lars Hollmer’s Looping Home Orchestra. Frith’s 1983 experimental album Cheap at Half the Price has recently been re-released on CD by RER-USA, an independent label dedicated to the harder-to-categorize music out there. Frith recorded the bulk of Cheap at Half the Price at home during the summer of 1983 on a primitive (by today’s standards) 4-track tape recorder. It is a testament to his ingenuity that aside from the occasional cheap sounding Casio keyboard, the album sounds as dynamic and full as many New Wave studio recordings of the era. Cheap is a combination of rhythmic instrumental tracks, New Wave folk songs and odd ditties. The tracks were remixed on October 3, 2004 for the new CD version of the album. The result is a sound that is at once 80s retro and completely new sounding. Cheap’s two Reagan/Cold War-era songs, “Some Clouds Don’t” and “Cap the Knife” are as hilariously entertaining and catchy as they were when they were released two decades ago. Another of the newly remixed Frith albums on RER-USA is the completely instrumental Allies. It was originally recorded in Brooklyn in 1989 as a commissioned work for a choreographed piece by Bebe Miller and Dancers at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s New Wave Series in November of that year. It features Frith on bass, guitar, violin, keyboards, drum machine and tape manipulations, Joey Baron on drums, George Cartwright on alto saxophone and Tom Cora on Cello. Caught somewhere between ambient dance music and modern jazz, Allies was remixed by Frith in September, 2004. It is another one of Frith’s works that defies description. Let’s just say that a good filmmaker could make wonderful use of the instrumental tracks in Allies. It stands up to close scrutiny or you can just let it slide into the background. Frith was recently the subject of an award-winning documentary film by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzels called Step Across the Border. He is currently Professor of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he lives with his photographer wife Heike Liss and their children Finn and Lucia. Frith’s work has been an important influence on groups such as Ween, Primus and They Might Be Giants. If you like your music to have dark corners and the occasional cartoonish moment, check out these new re-releases by Fred Frith. For more information, go to www.fredfrith.com or www.rermegacorp.com.