Jeff Kaiser: Chapter 8: From Faria Beach...about an epic gig.

I have been lucky enough to participate in many, many interesting gigs, but this was one of the best. In the words of the inimitable New Zealander, Andrew Pask, “This event has been brought to you by the word ‘EPIC.’” Of course, that is what he said afterwards. An hour into setting up for the gig, he phoned me (telephones were required for us to talk, even though playing together, more on this later) and said, “I just realized how #*@(&$ insane this is!” But let me give you a little background first.

A little over a year ago Paul Linhard, Ventura resident of Art City fame, had a dream one night, and called me the next day. “I want to do an art festival in Ventura, but one that is different. I want it to be focused on fire, light, and sound. And I want you to play from the top of the Holiday Inn at the beach for it.” Of course, I agreed, but didn’t want it to be just me, so I called my fellow members of the LA Trumpet Quartet (Kris Tiner, John Fumo, Lorenzo Trujillo filled in for Larry Williams, and myself) and arranged to do an antiphonal composition I wrote for the occasion with a lot of improvisation. Fumo on the 11th floor, me on the other end on the 6th floor and and Kris and Lorenzo on the opposite side of the California Street Promenade on top of a parking structure. The auditory swirl that was created between the two buildings was wonderful…and made me think of what else I wanted to do…The Choir Boys came immediately to mind, with vocalists as well. Which is what we did last night.

So, jump into the present, Paul had two meetings with the head brass at the Holiday Inn (I will use pseudonyms, as it did not end pretty) and then I had a meeting with them along with Paul. Three meetings explaining exactly what we wanted to do. Large sound system, wild music, from their balconies. And we were given the go-ahead, AND comped two rooms at the hotel for two days. Please pay attention: they knew, and comped us.

I set-up my sound system on two adjoining balconies on the fourth story of the Holiday Inn, and Andrew set his up across the Promenade on the top of the parking structure, hence the need for phones. His vocalist of choice was Debbie Kim and my choice was Elizabeth Stuart. We would electronically process their voices along with our horns. A lovely set of antiphonal duos across a reverberant open space. It was whilst setting up that Andrew called me and said it was “insane.”

We got all our gear set up, and had a lovely pre-show gathering in the rooms, friends, members of my family…a nice relaxing time.

At sunset, the show began, and went quite well. We had a blast, mixing it up with acoustic, then walls of sound, then just the singers, the horns, just a great variety of music, the audience was very appreciative, though a few people yelled expletives at us... We played for the fully allotted time of 45 minutes and had a blast! At the end, while announcing the names of the band members, the management broke into my room with security and started yelling at me and Liz! (Thinking that we did not want to be disturbed while playing, I dead-bolted and latched the doors, and disconnected the phones. Knowing that the management knew what was going on.) They had a big Swiss/German security guy yelling at us, making cutting signs at the throat and big hand gestures telling us to stop it now! At about 6'4" with his strong German accent, it was quite interesting. At this point, I thought it was the perfect time to announce our grateful thanks to the Holiday Inn to the large crowd below at the Promenade. Which we were: grateful. I put down the mic and had a less than lovely conversation with the management, but all was well, so I thought, and they left. So much for them being into what we were doing, I guess they didn’t understand what we told them about the big, loud, sound system. But it was over, we could hang out and visit, and the comped rooms would be used by out-of-town musicians and friends. So we thought. (Big lesson: get things in writing.) A half hour later, the big manager came up and informed us that we needed to vacate the rooms. Wow. So we agreed to be out by 11 that night (it was about 9 pm). 15 minutes later, his boss, the lovely Yennifer came up and told us that we had to be out immediately, and if didn’t leave right away, they would call the police. That is SO Ventura. I couldn’t believe it. They were so incredibly wonderful to let us use the space, so we can’t complain, but then to threaten us with police action for doing what we said we would do, that they agreed to: It was bizarre, surreal even, but hey, we were in Ventura. They were incredibly rude and disrespectful. So I called Yennifer and had her do a walk-through with me, she said, “don’t worry, I trust you.” At which point I told her, I don’t trust you, you have been rude and disrespectful and gone back on an agreement we had.” So she came up and in front of everyone did a walk-through with me to prove that the room was left un-damaged by my middle-aged supposed rock star antics. I felt more punk rock than I did in my twenties.

A couple of thoughts:

It is really nice to know art that is free of programmatic material still has the power to offend. We didn’t say anything political, social, obscene, nothing that could be construed as being offensive by culturally referenced points of meaning. Yet, they were sorely offended. I call it the shadow test. People seem to project the shadow aspects of their inner world onto the abstract art. In the case of hotel management people, it seems the more banal the persons life is, the more darkness they see in the art.

And, I also wonder if they will let us use the rooms next year. I have this new idea for a giant 5.1 surround sound installation involving the Holiday Inn, Parking garage, Surfer’s Point, the Pier, and a very large boat…