POP CAPSULES : FRITH GETS FREAKY

A solo electric guitarist comes on stage and proceeds to wreak musical havoc on his battered instrument: He sticks a wooden dowel through the neck; licks his finger and rubs it on the sound board; plays with a paintbrush, clothes brush and metal file, and even hits the guitar neck with the neck of another guitar that has just broken. This is Fred Frith, playing at McCabe’s on Saturday, breaking all preconceived notions of both what a guitar can do and its relationship to music.

A semi-legend of the avant-rock world for years, the gruff, aggressive and alarmingly original performer’s hour of tonal clusters, hypnotic ostinatos, shards of jagged electricity and plain, all-out weirdness proved that this is one man who can definitely pat his head and rub his belly at the same time. But there was also a remarkable technique behind the noize( manipulations. Towards the end of the set, he performed a melodic improvisation as gently beautiful as the preceding atonal mash was disruptive. A whole history of musical modernism filters through Frith’s agile fingers.