Bicycling to Afghanistan

repertoire:
* eye of the needle
* bicycling to afghanistan

diatribe

preface

part one:
moments with a small “m”

part two:
moments with a capital “m”

preface, take two:
one year and a half later

part three:
first encounter

part four:
preparation

part five:
the ghosts

part six:
the need

part seven:
arrival

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 somebody or other) 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, 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. 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 much of the material it was important to “get it right” right from the start, or there was no recovery – kind of like 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 train wrecks. 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 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. 

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. It got its public debut at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA on the Ides of March. Two days later, on St Patrick’s Day, we were in New York taping “New Visions” for VH-1. It aired on Easter, April 3.

Curt Golden, November 21, 2002