There Stands the Glass

A solo performance by Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator in a church basement changed my life in 1978. Until that evening, I didn’t fully comprehend that difficult art-rock might be a deliberate artistic choice.

Closer in spirit to the nascent punk revolution than the era’s dominant rock rendered by the likes of Genesis, Kansas and Yes, Hammill’s appearance stood as the best prog-rock concert I’d attended. Until this week.

The $69.75 I paid for a general admission ticket allowed me to claim a spot about 20 feet from the center of the stage of the Midland Theater on Wednesday, July 19. I held my ground even though half the people around me chatted throughout Robert Stillman’s opening set of spiritual jazz.

My fury dissipated when The Smile began its 100-minute outing. In the spirit of Hammill 45 years ago, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner made no concessions to the near-capacity audience of more than 2,500.

With the possible exception of the Sonic Youth-esque "You Will Never Work in Television Again", the Smile’s grooves were obstinately enigmatic. A perfect sound field- easily the best I’ve experienced at the Midland- made processing the challenging music easier.

The absence of instrumental soloing was the most startling aspect of the performance. Is it even prog-rock if there’s not a five-minute drum solo? Yes. In fact, the Smile’s punk approach to prog-rock is the fulfillment of a dream I’ve carried for 45 years.

My late friend R. and I huddled with a few dozen other weirdos in the basement of All Souls Unitarian Church for a performance by Peter Hammill in 1979. The extraordinarily unlikely event was my first meaningful experience with a literal and figurative music underground. Artlessly Falling, the frequently harsh prog-rock freakout by Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, reminds me of the transformative concert. Not only does Artlessly Falling feature Hammill’s art-rock peer Robert Wyatt on three tracks, I witnessed Halvorson’s showcase of what I suspect was some of the same material at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville last year. I realize it’s the perilous times talking, but I fear that if my presence at the 1979 concert in Kansas City was the inception of my proclivity for patronizing performances of outsider music, my trek to Tennessee to catch Halvorson might end up being its unexpectedly premature conclusion.

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I reviewed I’m Feeling Mellow, the new album by the Kansas City vocalist Molly Hammer, at Plastic Sax.

Concert Review: The Smile at the Midland Theater

Revelation