-page 43,45- So. Z'ev lives in Europe and works in Europe. Why would it be impossible for Z'ev to work in America? Well, let's say I didn't want to work in clubs anymore.

Let's go back to why I started working clubs in the first place.

In new music in 1975-76, there were a few places, like Joseph Celli's Real Arts Ways in Hartford and Phil Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Foundation -- all these new music composers had lofts which were performance spaces. You would barter, you would give people gigs at your space, and they would give you gigs in return. Many people built a whole career over this concept -- Rhys Chatham, Carl Stone. That was how it went. You had to have a space.

I was working with a synthesizer player, Will Jackson, at the time.We turned Mary Ashley's loft in San Francisco into a space, we called it the Center forInterspecies Communication, because Will was into working with whales at the time. And we were starting to do the same thing, people were going to come play in San Francisco, and then they would give us a gig somewhere else.

Well, the whole thing became a little sickening to me, because I feel more populist. I figured, I'd go, and I'd play in the clubs, and people would hear this music they'd never heard before, and then maybe they'd open up to other kinds of musics.

That was the time when the punk movement was coming into America, and things were really opening up. The first punk bands were artists. There was this notion of the art band, without it being a pejorative, or a negative association like it is now.

The reason most punk bands at the time were artists was the ethic in punk of "no future." Well, in 1977-78, who had no future but an artist? If you were a 20-year-old artist there was no future. You had to wait 20 years until you were 40 years old, and had proved that you could still do interesting art when you were 40 -- that your art could evolve. Now, of course, in the last few years this has totally changed. In 1978, if you had told anyone that a 26-year-old artist was going to make a million dollars off their work, no one would have believed it. Talking Heads is a perfect example of these young artists who went into punk because of no future.

So I was playing in the clubs, and I was a novelty act. I could have been the premier novelty act -- the opening act. In Europe I was opening for Basement 5, The Cramps, Human League, Bauhaus, English Beat in Toronto -- I was opening very large shows, two or three thousand people.

But there are real problems with the clubs. If I listen to tapes of me playing before I went into clubs, and how I play now, it breaks my heart, because I used to be able to use silence, I used to be able to transform to silence, and work from there to awesome loud, which Z'ev can definitely be. Except in a club, as Diamanda Galas says, if you're quiet, that means it's their turn.

There you are in a club, and people are there for every other reason than to see you. They want to get laid, they want to get drunk, they want to see their friends, and then all you are is a circus act. And it got really boring, being that kind of entertainment. So I got out of working in clubs. -page 43,45-

Typed by Cheryl Vega 3-21-95