[NewMusic] LAT on Poole

[Phillip Greenlief]

Dear bListers,

Here's a nice article by my friend Greg Burk with commentary by local LA
musicians on Rod Poole that Greg compiled for the LA Times.

Still pretty damn shocked by this...
PG


Guitarist Rod Poole pushed the envelope on music
In the wake of his tragic death, friends remember 'a true artist' who
loved to explore new sounds.
By Greg Burk, Special to The Times
May 19, 2007 

Guitarist Jim McAuley had no trouble this week recalling his first
meeting with fellow guitarist Rod Poole. It was at the home of Nels
Cline, well before the three recorded their "Acoustic Guitar Trio"
album. 

"I was standing in Nels' kitchen, sipping coffee, when these amazing
crystalline tones emerged from the living room," McAuley said. "Rod
Poole was just tuning up, and already I was mesmerized by his sound."

Cline, a key player in L.A.'s experimental music scene and now a member
of Wilco, described Poole as "a true artist, probably a genius" in a
note on his website, posted after Poole was stabbed to death on Sunday
in the parking lot of Mel's Drive-In. 

His wife, Lisa Ladaw-Poole, was there when it happened. 

The couple was walking toward the restaurant, after attending a concert
at the Dangerous Curve art gallery downtown, when a car nearly struck
them and other pedestrians. The musician spoke up; the vehicle's driver
and passenger both got out, the latter allegedly with a knife, according
to police. A half hour later, Poole died.

A security camera provided images that led to the quick arrest of
Michael and Angela Sheridan. They were arraigned Wednesday.

Ladaw-Poole fielded a lot of phone calls this week, many of them from
the parents of Poole's guitar students who hadn't gotten the news and
were wondering why he didn't show up for their children's guitar
lessons.

"These children loved Rod," Ladaw-Poole said Wednesday. "He was really
kind with them."

Poole was a highly unusual guitarist, equally drawn to the distorted
sound bombs of Jimi Hendrix and the spontaneous microcosmic tracings of
Derek Bailey. 

"I never could quite figure out how one man with one guitar could
generate such an all-enveloping aural space," said Devin Sarno, an
electronic drone artist who recorded Poole twice for Sarno's W.I.N.
label. 

Having left his native England in 1989 to find a more exploratory
climate, Poole fell in with a devoted cloister of Los Angeles
pathfinders that included Kraig Grady, Brad Laner and Motor Totemist
Guild.

Grady, who composes in microtonal scales that employ the frequencies
between Western music's traditional 12 tones, introduced Poole to his
own mentor, Erv Wilson. Wilson is a pioneer in microtonal music and
"just" intonation, which tunes to vibrations' natural mathematical
ratios rather than the tempered scales used in orchestras.

Never one to take halfway measures, Poole lived in Wilson's house for
more than five years and emerged with his own way of hearing.

He had a Martin guitar re-fretted to 17 tones and, using his already
precise, shaded finger-picking technique, began improvising trance-bound
variations on spacious arpeggios that could extend until time vanished.

Poole's solo, group and bowed-guitar recordings have appeared on the
W.I.N., Transparency and Incus labels (the last being Bailey's imprint).

Poole's music was the first and last thing heard Wednesday on KXLU-FM's
(88.9) "Trilogy" show, this night hosted by old Motor Totemist friends
Emily Hay and Lynn Johnston. 

Pinging and plucking, gently contracting and expanding, with "just"
harmonies fluttering their intangible physicality throughout, the
improvisation exuded an uncanny sense of peace. In contrast to its quiet
beauty, it was titled "The Death Adder."

Earlier in the day, Johnston described Poole as "a low-key guy - he was
only in your face about music."

Two words that surfaced repeatedly when people talked about Poole's
artistic temperament were "passion" and "intensity."

Experimental guitarist Jeremy Drake, a curator of the "Sound" concerts
at Schindler House in West Hollywood, wrote on a Poole tribute site:
"Rod was always fully present. Good mood or bad, you got the full Rod
Poole experience whenever he was in the room."

Cindy Bernard, a primary "Sound" series organizer, said Poole was
extremely meticulous about the many recordings he engineered for the
series' archive: "It's rare to know someone whose enthusiasm for music
is so pure."

Instrumentalist and composer Vinny Golia, long the most pervasive
influence in this city's edge-music community, agreed. Poole once
recorded a performance Golia had done with German bassist Peter Kowald.
When Golia wanted a copy, Poole broke down his equipment, carried it
over to Golia's house and made the transfer there, not wanting to take
any chances that the copy wouldn't be perfectly compatible with Golia's
system.

Guitarist Carey Fosse, who knew Poole mainly in Poole's transitional
period of the early '90s, called him "a wonderful improviser, very
disciplined, and with beautiful articulation. I think his technique led
him to areas he hadn't imagined."

Poole had been disappointed by the lack of opportunities to play
forward-thinking music in Los Angeles. Though he had made few live
appearances for several years, Bailey's death in late 2005 inspired him
to help fill what he felt to be an artistic gap.

Poole's wife said he had been working on "just"-intonated
interpretations of Irish folk songs, and that the noted film sound mixer
Giovanni Di Simone had made new recordings of him. 

Grady recently received an invitation to perform at a microtonal
festival in Germany and was asked if he could help extend the offer to
Poole.

He will be there in spirit.

Ladaw-Poole said she will take her husband's ashes back to England. A
memorial service is being planned.