Bicycling To Afghanistan
A BRIEF HISTORY
In early 1987 I was still living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC, splitting much of my time between the courses that were going on almost all the time at Claymont and the long-term projects at Red Lion House in Dorset. About that time the Russian occupation of Afghanistan was at its bloody height. I was working on a kind of punk/funk/vocal tune for a rock band. It was called Be A Man In Afghanistan. It never quite gelled into a real piece, but I kept recycling the workable bits through all kinds of vehicles and concepts. The Lead I Intro figure in 7, and the Lead I A Phrygian melody are, I believe, the only material from this period that survived to become part of the final piece. Perhaps some bits of bass line as well.
In June 1987 we moved to NYC. Much of my time and energy for the next several months went into getting our feet on the ground in NY, but I continued to develop the ideas in my personal practice.
In early January 1988 I did an electric jam session with Trey Gunn, who was just getting his Stick chops together, and a drummer friend of his, Scott Schultz, at a rehearsal studio in “The Music Building” on 8th Avenue and 40th Street, just across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Not a lot really clicked at that session. It had been long time since I had played electrically with a group, and my command of the instrument was rusty at best. But I did latch on to one little improvised figure that seemed to have something to it – 12 16th notes in a three-beat pattern, with bass notes rocking back and forth between the root and fifth played on the 3rd and 4th strings, and the top notes moving up and down the 2nd string on the minor third, the fourth and the fifth. I very distinctly remember a little voice in my head saying, “You need to remember this.” If you already know, or are working on the piece, you will recognize this as the figure played by Lead I in the Eb section and by Lead II in the C section.
The discovery of this little figure served as the catalyst for all the bits and pieces that had been floating around waiting for a vehicle. A Level III course commenced at Claymont in late January which went through the end of March. I floated in and out as my schedule allowed. Victor McSurely and Arch Jones were on this course, and they became my “live sequencers”. Every time a section started to come together I'd to drag them in to my room and make them quickly learn whatever I had just dreamed up. Then I'd send them away while I made refinements. We discovered that for this material it was imperative for us to “get it right”, right from the start, or there was no recovery. We just didn’t have the command yet to survive even near train wrecks. Victor likened it to making sure that you got the first button of your shirt right, and then the rest follow with relative ease. So, we called the trio The Top Buttons.
Once the piece achieved its working, and nearly final form, we started performing at every meal – much to the chagrin, I fear, of the other participants. There were many disasters. The piece was still entitled Be A Man In Afghanistan, but it was so far from the original concept that it didn't really fit any more. Among the Top Buttons, we just referred to it as Afghanistan, but I don’t believe we ever publicly announced the name of the piece at any of these mealtime performances. Our grasp of the polyrhythms and fingerings was so tenuous, that we spent a great deal of time just turning on the metronome and repeating sections over, and over, and over and over. This exercise became known as “cycling through Afghanistan”. One evening we (of course) trudged into the dining hall to once again harangue our fellow guitarists with another shot. I felt that we needed to be a little more aggressive in our performance. Just playing the notes in the hope of getting through it without incident was getting stale. We needed to get over ourselves and take it to the audience - to sell the song, as it were. So we went and stood in an unusual place, our backs to the east wall, and I stepped forward and announced (in my best performer's voice) “Greetings everyone! We are the Top Buttons and this is our latest hit, Bicycling to Afghanistan”. The dining hall erupted into laughter and applause.
I don’t, frankly, remember how that particular performance went. But the piece achieved its identity at that moment.
I had three primary themes I was working with in writing it.
The first was that it was rhythmically accessible. While it was still Be A Man In Afghanistan, it was conceived as a funk piece for a small electric group. Recalibrating for the guitar ensemble, the funk fell away – no bass, no drums, no funk, not really – but the groove remained primary. I didn’t want it to feel esoteric, so the idea was to give it a pretty straight up rock groove in 4/4 at the front and back and 3/4 in the middle sections, but to subdivide the bars in non-traditional ways, keeping everyone on their toes. The bass part is largely responsible for holding this down, but it can be heard in any well-played version of any of the parts. This is the element that recordings tend to fail to reflect. The most convincing recordings are the live ones – The League in Atlanta from the end of the Bogo Tour in 1989, the RFQ with electric instrumentation, and The League performance in Atlanta at the end of the 2003 Level Three, captured on the “Aspiration” CD.
The figure that popped up in the jam with Trey and Scott provided another theme, which involved what amounted to little internal polyrhythms in the individual parts; two lines: one alternating across strings and the other on a single string. Every section has some version of this figure in it, twisted around for the particular quality of that section.
Quartering the octave and modulating through those four keys. Although each section – A, F#, Eb and C – is Phrygian, this movement has a very strong Relative Minor/Major relationship. The first section alternates between A Phrygian and F# Phrygian, which can enharmonically be described as D Minor and D Major. The relationship between F# and Eb is the same, as is Eb and C, and also the transition from C back to A and the beginning.
Other themes emerged, such as the descending arpeggiated line that Lead I plays as it transitions from F# back to A, and again in a longer form at the end of the C section transitioning back to A, and once more in the Outro, but these emerged from the composition process, rather than being part of my intention going into the piece.
In March, toward the end of that Level III, there was a special performance project. Robert asked me if we could have Bicycling to Afghanistan up to performance level for the tour. I said yes, and we did. By the time we took it on the road, the piece was nearly in its final form. Over the years, the only changes/additions have been in the Outro, which I felt was a little anemic and abrupt in this first version. Within a year, the driving 5-figure in the bass part had arrived, which served to keep the energy going right out to the last note. A few years later, an additional line was added to the leads in the Outro, and since then the arrangement has been stable.
It got its public debut at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA on the Ides of March, 1988. Some years later I came across a bootleg cassette recording of that show. I well remember the performance. It is possible that sound check was also the first time we ever heard it through a PA system – a life-altering experience. My memory of the performance itself was that it was a thundering force of nature. After the show, Robert remarked that we had gotten some help from the sound man. I don’t know if by that he meant that we had needed help to get through it, or that we had taken it up a level. I choose to think the latter, but only he knows. I also have an edited board tape from the second show that night, but for some reason Afghanistan is not included. Since I don’t know where this tape came from, I don’t know where to go to find the missing songs. Perhaps it will turn up.
These are the recordings I am aware of:
League Of Crafty Guitarists
Live at Muhlenbert College
Audience bootleg recording
Recorded Mar 15, 1988, Allentown, PA
º Public debut
º The tempo is in the 96bpm vicinity.
º No driving bass or dive-bombing lead line in Outro.League Of Crafty Guitarists
Live on VH1, aired April 3, 1988
Private recording of television broadcast
Recorded Mar 17, 1988, NYC
º Two days after the Muhlenberg show, on St Patrick’s Day, we were in New York taping “New Visions” for VH1. It aired on Easter, April 3. For anyone who has seen a tape of the VH1 performance, Arch Jones is wearing dark glasses because he thought we were just doing a sound check and was goofing around.
º The tempo is in the 92bpm vicinity.
º Same arrangement as Muhlenberg.League of Crafty Guitarists
GET CRAFTY 1
Recorded October 1988, Cranborne, Dorset, UK
º 90bpm – likely with click track. By this time the pulsing 5 figure in the bass line has found its way into the Outro.
League of Crafty Guitarists
Live at Woodruff Arts Center
Board tape of live performance – unreleased
Recorded December 8, 1989, Atlanta, GA
º Same arrangement, 94bpm
League of Crafty Guitarists
SHOW OF HANDS
Editions EG EED 2102-2
Recorded October 14, 1990, Manhattan Center Studios, NYC
º Same arrangement, 98bpm – very definitely with a click track.
º We tried this one for several takes on one of the days of the recording, myself and Steve Ball on the leads and Robert on bass, but it never quite clicked. That night I decided that Robert’s feel on the bass line wasn’t quite right, and so on the next day I sat him down and fired him. I honestly have no idea where the chutzpah for that came from. In the end Steve and I recorded it. Finding the right tempo was a challenge. Metronomes have very traditional divisions, but we were finding 96bpm too slow and 100bpm too frantic. Fortunately it was a professional recording studio with the capacity to click at other tempos. We settled at 98bpm, and immediately Robert chimed in from the booth, “now there is a familiar tempo!” Steve and I recorded the lead parts, and then I went back in and overdubbed the bass line.League of Crafty Guitarists
CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE
Recorded October 3, 1991, Perugia, Italy
º Afghanistan opens the video, played by Robert on the bass part with Bert Lams and Hideyo Moriya (⅔ of what would soon become the California Guitar Trio) on the leads. The music is primarily heard behind opening credits, with video of guitarists wandering around the property near Perugia where the Guitar Craft course and concurrent pre-tour rehearsals for the League were taking place. For a portion of the piece, an interview with Robert about the origins of Guitar Craft is overlaid, and then for the last half the players are featured.
º Either a miscue in the first “A” section, or some editing done to extend it for the video – it is difficult to tell which – causes the section to go on about 3½ extra bars. Other than that it is the same arrangement used since “Get Crafty”. 90bpm.Robert Fripp String Quintet
THE BRIDGE BETWEEN
Discipline Records DR 9302 2
Recorded May 22, 1993, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA
º A brisk interpretation, taking off at about 103bpm and then settling in at 100bpm. California Guitar Trio are on the three basic parts, Robert is doubling the bass part on electric guitar, with Trey on the Stick providing ambience in the first half and doubling bass line as well in second half. For this arrangement the piece was extended with a repeat of half of the Midtro just before the Outro.Atomic Chamber Ensemble
KING FOR A DAY
Recorded June 15, 2003, Seattle, WA
º Between 1992 and 1994, an electric version of Bicycling lived briefly in NYC, performed by The Buttons and later Desperate Measures. Though not really germane to this discussion in itself, out of it did come the final bit of writing/arrangement, which involves a long ascending arpeggio in the Outro which leads to a final restatement of the falling arpeggiated line, all coming together on the final note. This is not a particularly workable part to include in a trio version of the piece. With seven players in the group, ACE had both lead parts doubled, and the bass tripled. This allowed one player from each section to break out of their regular part for the new coda, with all of the original parts left intact. 92bpm.League of Crafty Guitarists
ASPIRATION: ATLANTA 2003
Live recording used on CD
Recorded November 3, 2003, 7 Stages Theatre, Atlanta, GA
º Exactly the same arrangement as the “King For A Day” recording – in fact more than half the Atomic Chamber Ensemble were members of this incarnation of The League – this remains my favorite, and from my perspective, the definitive recording of the piece. It is played with a precision and ease, yet at a very brisk tempo; 98bpm. But more importantly, in this recording it is rock and roll. Although this quality often manifested in performances, no studio recording ever captured it.