Surfing Over GodThe first time I heard David Torn play the guitar was on David Sylvian's Secrets of the Beehive album It's a beautiful collection of music, played by some wonderful musicians. The bit that really drew me into this music was the final portion of The Boy With The Gun, the second track on the album. Torn was stacking phrases on top of each other, and it didn't sound like he was overdubbing.
I never heard of Torn again until I was reading messages on the David Sylvian mail list, and found a new list on Torn's music had just been started by this cool guy from the U.K. I joined, and quickly found out that Torn was coming out with a new album with a group called Polytown. I rushed right out and bought it, and I marveled at what I was hearing.
I rushed out and bought every Torn recording I could lay my hands on. What drew me to this music wasn't that he was a virtuoso on his instrument, or that he was doing some incredible things with technology. This guy was on a quest, and it expressed itself in everything he played. Some folks on the list decided to start a web site for Torn, and after some discussion I was chosen as the guy to do it. So one weekend, I threw a draft together and emailed a few folks asking for feedback. Two days later, I got to my office and found a voice mail message waiting for me. It was Torn! He was playing a gig near Detroit that night. He really wanted to see the site. I was on the guest list. Come on up! I recruited Heather and we headed to the concert. It was a pretty amazing set-up. I counted thirteen pedals on the floor, scads of foot operated switches, and a rack of digital signal processing equipment seven feet tall. When the music started, it was a transcendental experience. We met in the lobby after the concert and talked for an hour-and-a-half. I knew that David had studied guitar with John Abercrombie, who had been a big influence on me many years earlier. The first jazz album I ever purchased was by a group called Gateway, which featured Abercrombie on guitar. I asked David how he happened to study with him. As it turned out, the very same Gateway album was the one that moved him to go study with Abercromie. Cool! The concert was part of a tour to promote David's new disc entitled Tripping Over God. It was during the building of The Torn Web that I discovered what this disc was all about, and the life he had experienced in the past few years.
Torn recorded a new album in late 1995. It was released in Europe about a month before it made it to the States, and I began getting email from folks across the pond telling me that I got a credit on the disc. I checked the record stores every day for a month to no avail. Then one day I got a package in the mail from Torn with the new disc enclosed. I opened it up, and on the list of people who got "deep bows" in the liner notes was my name! Among the other names on the list were some seriously great musicians. There was Brandon Ross, who's playing I credit for helping me from going off the deep end when things were really rough. My knees were shaking just looking at it. I had to listen to the whole thing once through before I went out for the night with some friends.
When I purchase a new CD,it usually takes a couple of weeks to digest what's on it. With this stuff, I was experiencing something totally new. Within minutes of going to sleep that night, I was dreaming huge portions of this music, even though I had only heard it once. At 3:00 AM, I woke up, threw on the headphones, dropped my head back, and listened to it over and over while I wandered around the apartment until the sun came up. Working on The Torn Web has brought me back in touch with a side of my life I thought I had left behind forever. When I'm finally done bringing this thing to life, that's the place I'll be diving into. Perhaps one of these days, I'll actually learn to play the guitar. |
