The Charles Rice Goff III Audio-Visual Experience Part III – Noises of War

Welcome to Part III of the Charles Rice Goff III Audio-Visual Experience. In the first two segments I explored samplings of Charles’ video art (Part I HERE, Part II HERE). This final installment zeros in on the 1991 live performance and video that inspired the series. Long story short…
 
I’m working on what will be an updated, second edition of my 2020 published book, Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age. There’s a section in the book where I talk about artists incorporating samples from radio and television, often to make political statements. I emailed Charles with what I thought was going to be a simple clarification question. That question spiraled into email exchanges, lengthy phone conversations and, ultimately, the realization that I had glossed over a fascinating performance.
 
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. After much post-invasion preparation, Operation Desert Storm commenced on January 17, 1991, ending on February 28 with the liberation of Kuwait.
 
Disgusted by all parties involved in the death and destruction, the members of Herd of the Ether Space (HOTES) decided to make a public statement regarding the Persian Gulf War – a performance that would take place at the ‘Art Here’ gallery in Albany, California on March 1, 1991.

A great deal of rehearsal and preparation went into the performance by band members Charles Rice Goff III, George Gibson, Killr “Mark” Kaswan, and Robert Silverman. A television was set up on the side of the stage, broadcasting video collages of Gulf War related news reports that had been edited together by Goff and Gibson. Artist Debra Burger (Silverman’s spouse) created a set for the show consisting of bricks, sandbags and barbed wire. She pops up periodically during the performance in costumes. Will Flanagan (now Will Marston) filmed the event, the only video document of a HOTES show.
 
An audio cassette of the performance was released in 1991. For the cassette album, Charles added a track to fill out the 90-minute tape. The version he later made available online is additionally chock full of the rehearsals that illustrate the evolution of how the band ‘composed’ the performance. This was fun for me to dig into after having digested and marveled at the performance video.

About the live performance available online: The video was never shown publicly until years later when Charles edited it, and Taped Rugs Productions released it on DVDR in 2010. Charles explains how he weaved the images from the television set into the performance:
 
“The images that were on the TV set… I have them occasionally and sometimes dramatically washing over the performance itself, and sometimes even blacking out the performance. When Will was filming he thought it would be cool to zoom in on the TV set. He had to really zoom in across the room, and still it wasn’t zoomed in enough, so I had to kind of reprocess the way that he had filmed it and pan and just change things so that you could actually see what’s going on. In a lot of cases I just added the visual element from the TV over the performance so that it would be more interesting to watch if you’re watching video rather than being at the concert.”
 
The performance with Charles’ embellishments is a highly intense and often (appropriately) disturbing experience. The opening credits display near apocalyptic missiles launching amid fiery war imagery to a psychedelic jamming and drone accompaniment. It’s so hair-raising that I was already unsettled when the shot transitioned to the band taking the stage for the show.
 
The performance consists of seven movements that comprise the narrative. The music is like an avant-garde chamber-rock meets theatrical art ensemble. The television is visible off to the side but only marginally integrated with the performance. And this is where Charles’ video wizardry comes into play.
 
His overlays pop in with desert scenes of soldiers, tanks and artillery and the sky hellishly lit up by an onslaught of missiles and gunfire. Helicopters, carpet bombing, the worst of war is on full display as the band chant and the music eerily, dissonantly and furiously plays, reaching high-octane levels of orchestrated delirium. Overall, it’s part avant-garde chamber ensemble, variously striking me as Univers Zero meets Art Zoyd, pagan psychedelia and psychedelic free-jazz freakout. The cacophony of horns, orchestral drones, howls, sirens, tribal percussion and news report voices is jarringly exciting. It’s a stellar marriage of avant-progressive rock, psychedelia and experimental music.
 
And throughout, the visuals alternate between band performance and Charles’ embellishments, adding an entirely new audio-visual and experiential dimension to the live performance, which is further accentuated by Debra Burger’s appearances in costume.

Clockwise from top-left: Charles Rice Goff III > Debra Burger > Killr “Mark” Kaswan > Robert Silverman > George Gibson

The final movement – ‘Exorcism’ – is the one I mention in my book that sparked the initial question to Charles. This may be the most surreal transition of the set (starting just before the 58:00 mark). Images of President George H.W. Bush with a bullhorn announcing ‘mission accomplished’ are accompanied by a celebratory dancehall type song – “Heaven is better than this. Praise God, what joy and bliss.” But this is soon replaced by thunderous crashes and an edge-of-our-seats hullaballoo finale that leaves the audience with the certainty that war may be over, but all is far from well. As Charles points out: “Of course afterwards everything dragged on and on for a million years over there. Iraq… Bill Clinton was bombing those guys for years after George Bush was done.”
 
HOTES wasn’t intending this performance to be a one-off: “We all thought it was going to go on for a lot longer than it did. It was only like a month after it started. We were expecting it was going to go on for a loooong time. So, our performance was, literally, at the end of the war. Whereas our intention was to make it during the war, but it just went too fast for that to happen. So, we might have performed that more than just once. We put a LOT of work into it. I think it was worth it.”
 
Readers will be well served by setting aside 72 minutes to immerse themselves in the Noises of War video.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed this Charles Rice Goff III series. Even seasoned Goff fans may not be aware of his interest in and flair for video craftsmanship. Follow the links below to Noises of War, a list of Charles’ audio-visual work, and more.
 
The Noises of War video can be viewed HERE
 
The Noises of War audio cassette album plus rehearsals can be heard HERE
 
A comprehensive list of Charles’s audio-visual work can be found HERE
 
Visit the (MASSIVE) Taped Rugs Productions web site HERE
 
All of Charles’ previously published articles at Electronic Cottage can be found HERE