Adrian Belew Power Trio | 03.31.17

He is that idiosyncrasy weaving through a vast terrain of surf rock, new wave, jazz, jungles, lounges, and space.

Old Rock House, St. Louis

While his may not be a household name, the vast array of projects to which Adrian Belew has lent his talents across the span of a decades-long career are some of the biggest names in the history of music. Whether you realize it, any single conversation of music legends contains has to contain at least one link to Belew’s catalog. Taking off with Frank Zappa’s crew on Baby Snakes, on to David Bowie for Lodger, and later co-founding the legendary King Crimson, Belew’s unconventional approach to guitar sounds has been the flourish that defines some of the most classic albums in the history of experimental music.

I first sniffed my way onto Belew’s trail via Talking Heads’ phenomenal album Remain in Light, trying to understand what made this album so remarkable in their catalog, and why the albums before and after seemed lackluster in comparison. Turns out, that magical ingredient is Belew: wildness, spontaneity, and a wide-eyed pursuit of the music, with whammy, tapping, picking, banging, and bending.

But apparently my introduction to Belew came much earlier than I had realized, at a fundamental stage of my introduction to independent music, and I began to realize the fuller extent of all these overlaps and intersections as they unfolded one after another in back-to-back sets at the Old Rock House. As the set opened with “a2” followed by “Men in Helicopters,” it sounded like a fresh-squeezed Primus show in there. Wonky guitar strolling and curt, slappy bass raced to the bottom and back again, created a dizzying dissonance that I know best from Claypool and Larry LaLonde’s expertly rough-and-tumble interplay. In fact, at the conclusion of “Ampersand” near the end of the second set, Belew referred to his bandmates as “playing the roles of Les Claypool and Danny Carey,” both of whom collaborated with Belew on the recorded version on his Sides collection.

It seems he has cemented that holy trinity, and the moniker “power trio” means that most sincerely, with Julie Slick on bass and her brother Eric Slick on drums, players who owned their roles of Claypool and Carey on additional Sides tracks like Beat Box Guitar and Writing on the Wall. Julie handled Claypool bass lines like a boss, with flair and confidence to match her baroque style: blue curls, George Harrison guitar strap, candy sprinkle tights, and iridescent tennies. Her counterpart across the stage played the yin to her aesthetic yang, dark and somber, in layers of black on black, rolling across his kit like thunder and lightning.

Though he clearly has a few years on his younger companions, Belew’s playful enthusiasm lessens the gap. Whether pounding the neck of the guitar on “Big Electric Cat,” scampering his up and down the strings with fingers like a spider on “Three of a Perfect Pair,” or being compelled by the magnetic pull of “Heartbeat,” Belew plays like the consummate session musician, full of humility, gratitude, and drive, occasionally pausing to sop up the sheen of sweat from his forehead with a hefty gym towel. He grinned ear-to-ear from beginning to end, pleased as could be with the sounds he was producing, barely containing the exciting about what he knew was about to come. Understated and unassuming in a plain red ball cap and t-shirt, he interspersed his own compositions with nods to his bandmates’ contributions, including the sound guy contributing those mysterious vocals from the back of the room.

The dedicated fans in the crowd seemed pleased with the set list, comprised primarily of King Crimson covers, including “Dinosaur” and “Walking on Air,” along with Belew originals, instrumentals like “b3” and the jubilant “Of Bow and Drum.” Concert tees proudly on display spanned the range of prog rock outfits and obscure Belew sightings: Two of a Perfect Trio Tour, Steve Hackett, Stick Men, Ween. In another testament to Belew’s broad reach and enduring influence, I was surprised to find that I recognized more than I anticipated, thanks to my love of Bowie and obsession with all Les Claypool projects. An early taste of “Pretty Pink Rose” (a Belew and Bowie duet) and a tease of “Boys Keep Swinging” brought a sigh to my heart. Belew’s tender and sentimental remembrances of his work with Bowie are well worth searching out, and you can hear his enduring influence in songs like “Young Lions.”

By the time he ripped the first chords of the big closer, “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” a song I first met thanks to Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade furiously funky homage, I was near hysterics. And it dawned on me how crucial and prolific Belew has been in so much of the music that I hold dear. I have always wished that music players like Pandora could cultivate a station for based on a quality, not a genre. Generally, when you set the path starting with a musical act or two, you have a pretty good idea where it will go, because they pull in by era or label. They failed to build on a quality. So I gave up on them long ago because all roads seemed to end in Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, presumably the lowest common denominator in the algorithm.

I like to be surprised and delighted; I like the unanticipated and unpredictable. And I think Belew might be that quality, the weird tie that binds so many disparate sounds. By genre algorithms, I would not expect a Zappa station to pull in Bowie or Talking Heads, but following the Adrian Belew trail, his quirks and eccentricities lead you to the oddities I live for. He is that idiosyncrasy weaving through a vast terrain of surf rock, new wave, jazz, jungles, lounges, and space.

As if that weren’t enough, his he is also now an inventor of apps. His Flux app promises you’ll never hear the same music twice. For all I know, if could be life-changing, or hold the keys to yet another dimension of sound. The winding tour he led blew my mind, reflecting my musical tastes in a whole new light. | Courtney Dowdall