Folke Rabe about Trees, Grass and Stones (English)

In the spring of 1965 I was in the USA, socializing studiously with Terry Riley, whom I had met a couple of years earlier in Europe. In 1964 Terry had composed his classic; the ensemble piece In C, and through several long nights that we spent together in San Francisco in April/May 1965 he sat at the piano for hours, practicing his Keyboard Studies. During these months he gave a number of concerts at The San Francisco Tape Music Center, performing Keyboard Studies, In C and another ensemble piece; Tread On The Trail. On coming home, this magic, illusionist music kept resounding in me, and naturally I shared my experiences with others. Bo Anders certainly received his share, and he picked up on it.

Karl-Birger Blomdahl had just left his professorship of composition at the Royal College of Music to become the Director of the Music Radio. After I returned home he asked me what I’d regarded the most interesting during my USA trip, and I told him, naturally, primarily about Terry’s and his new music. In his dynamic and authoritative way Karl-Birger simply stated: ”Let’s bring him over here then!” That’s how Terry Riley was invited by The Royal College of Music and The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation for a month’s residency in April 1967, with the assignment to compose a piece for a student ensemble at The Nacka Community Music School, to be performed at one of The Broadcasting Corporation’s Contemporary Music Concerts. Further more, Terry was to be available for The Composition Seminar at The Royal College of Music, and rehearse his own music with the pupils, and generally be a resource for them. Not all of them were impressed, but others capitalized heavily on this opportunity. Bo Anders and his pals at the College and outside of it belonged to the latter category. Lars-Erik Rosell who was a student in the Composition Class wrote a piece plainly called Terry Riley.

The reason for dwelling on Terry Riley here is that I believe his presence in Stockholm in the spring of 1967 was crucial for Trees, Grass and Stones. Most of those who later would become members of Trees, Grass and Stones hooked up to most events headed by Terry in Stockholm this month of spring, and also participated in related activities in Stockholm.

The following year – the hot spring 1968 with student upheavals across Europe – the students occupied The Students’ Union Building at Stockholm University. That occupation developed into a spontaneous occupation of The Royal Opera House, but that action dissipated. By chance, Bo Anders and I were there. We’d had a party to conclude The Composition Seminar semester at Ingvar Lidholm’s place in Tullinge, and driving back home we passed Strombron Bridge in Stockholm and happened upon the revolution in my Renault L4, which presumably felt at ease with this, since workers at The Renault Plant participated in the demonstrations in Paris.

1968 and –69 I hosted the hour-long Night Studio program once a month at The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. For one of those programs we made a Trees, Grass and Stones production; a 13-minute version in three sections: It’s Only Love – Till Indien – Sov gott Rose-Marie… About a year later (on a recommendation by György Ligeti) I received an offer from the renowned German recording company Wergo. They wanted to release my electroacoustic piece WHAT?? and asked me to suggest another work to make the LP complete. I asked Bo Anders. He proposed Proteinimperalism, and there it was.

During these years Trees, Grass and Stones gradually emerged, even though they sometimes called themselves something else. I often dropped in on them where they played. The so-called Good Luck Shows that Trees, Grass and Stones gave at Pistolteatern [The Pistol Theatre] at Malartorget Square were especially memorable. The band’s fat, heavy drones rolled out across the rows through long laps, oftentimes combined with diapositive slide shows in a deliberately corny form that associated to domestic picture slides from the family’s vacation trips. Crackling, psychedelic light orgies never were part of Trees, Grass and Stones’ artistic expression. Their images could, for instance, picture newly constructed private homes in the suburbs, with stereotyped catalog houses; simple but proper and unassailable. Beginning with an aerial overview, the camera would move in close, showing the inlet for heating oil, before moving on to other details of the house.

Everybody sort of knew of what kind of political ideas were prominent in the Trees, Grass and Stones circle, but they were never aired in the form of loud-voiced pamphlets or slogans. Nothing was forced on anybody. You could understand their views, but that was it. It was enough with a hint at heating oil for us all to start associating to the nature resources of the world and their limitations, or about a sterile suburban area to start pondering a more organic environment for life and living…

Then The Sixties moved over into The Seventies and ABBA won The Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with Waterloo in 1974. Simultaneously, new national cultural goals had been formulated, and they included a paragraph identifying ”the negative influence of commercialism”… This became a natural argument in the debate when Sweden, due to The Eurovision Contest victory, had to host the contest the following year. The prog rockers had, during a couple of years – via Gardesfestival [an outdoor progressive/alternative music festival in Stockholm], the magazine Musikens Makt [The Power of Music] and through other venues – become a new, alternative hub in Swedish musical life. Many intelligent and creative people recognized the prerequisites that were in place for the formation of a wide front against musical commercialism, and plans grew for an Alternative Music Festival to be staged simultaneously with The Eurovision Song Contest in the heavily fortified Exhibition Halls of Alvsjo.

The activities in the spring of 1975 were quite amazing. Large parts of the non-commercial music life – the traditional folk musicians, The Choir Association of Sweden, the prog rockers and countless others – organized to fight for a free and independent music life! Further more, all these people and organizations seemed to respect and understand each other. Such a broad musical manifestation has never, thitherto or thereafter, existed in our country. What might have happened if that spirit had survived and developed? I was naïve enough to believe, for a time, that a real revolution had taken place, but a while after The Eurovision Song Contest most things were back to what they used to be, with the habitual borders between musical traditions.

Towards the conclusion of The Seventies I no longer has such a tight connection to Bo Anders and Trees, Grass and Stones, but let me tell you about an event which I no longer can date exactly, but which must have happened some years into The Seventies.

In those days a very popular music quiz – Kontrapunkt – was broadcast on Swedish television – with Sten Broman [composer and colorful, cultural eccentric with a mighty authority] as the host. Jan Bark and I were engaged to make some kind of modernist contribution for one of these programs. We got hold of playing cards in the A5-format [app. 15 x 21 cm], which we glued onto light metal sheets of the same size. We remodeled an old table, fitting it with a metal tabletop instead of the original wooden one. Underneath we installed contact microphones.

The plan was that Jan and I would sit on either side of the table, building card houses. Then, when one of the card houses gave away, a massive, rumbling noise would appear through the contact mikes. We also set up a four-channel tape, with each channel providing its individual sound character. The simplistic form idea was to make the card house crashes trigger new sound characters, with the aid of a technician who would decrease the present sound character and increase another, when a card house fell in on itself. Towards the end of the tape we had a quote from Stravinsky’s ballet piece Jeu de Cartes. We asked Bo Anders to mind this technician task out in the wings.