Thin White Rope
The One That Got Away

June 28, 1992

The musical career of Thin White Rope concludes with a concert in a small club in Ghent, Belgium, a country that, like much of Europe, has particularly appreciated them: a story that began in 1984 in the sunny town of Davis, California, which has given us five wonderful albums and a series of mini-LPs composed of the most diverse covers.

The group of Guy Kyser and Roger Kunkel is now adrift; strong internal tensions, due to doubts about continuing their career and the musical direction to choose, have undermined the relationship and friendship between the two historic members. Years spent on continuous and exhausting promotional tours, especially in our Europe, have not brought the expected economic return even by the record label itself, with poor record sales; we have entered a dark dead-end alley that gives no hope for the future.

But before the traumatic dissolution comes their last concert ever, at the "Democracy" Club: a double album lasting nearly two hours that represents a worthy finale of a formidable career, at least musically. It is the words of the guitarist and singer Guy, readable inside the booklet, that clarify the situation: the venue where they are about to play can hold three hundred people, perhaps a few more; it is hot, and one can feel it on the very skin of the spectators and musicians; the bathrooms are placed within the backstage, making the atmosphere even more dense and full of dark moods that will explode on the record with unheard power. There are no dividing barriers with the audience, and the tiny stage on which they must move transmits a contact that is not only visual, making everything more alive, felt, and direct.

I have always compared the Belgian Club, precisely for the characteristics described above, with the legendary and unique Bloom in Mezzago, where everything is similar, from the atmosphere, to the heat, to the size of the stage that allows you to "touch" the musicians: these are for me the best places to enjoy a real concert.

Even the cover helps us to understand the atmosphere: a black and white image showing Guy in front of the audience, wrapped in dense smoke that makes the air almost unbreathable; a claustrophobic sensation that the reduced size of the venue only amplifies. But the guys don't seem to care about all this, they are ready to take the stage and ignite the powders one last time, giving free rein to their nature, to their feral beauty sound, through the twenty-six songs that make up this musical epitaph.

The concert begins with the pressing rhythm of "Down in the Desert," an emblematic title that immediately makes clear the combative direction the concert will take; then comes the mad shard of "Eleven," where in just over two minutes the listener is annihilated with a sonic assault at point-blank range. There is no respite, no breath, and one continues towards their masterpiece album "In the Spanish Cave," honored with a dizzying trio of songs: "Mister Limpet" with its heavy-country progression where the rattling guitars of the Kyser-Kunkel pair sweep away any remaining hope of not being dazed by this sonic bomb; the twin "Elsie Crashed the Party" with a guitar feedback that rests on Guy's voice never so raw and stretched to the limit, with Matt's drumming and Stooert's bass providing an assurance of further balanced power; and then comes "Red Sun," where the crazy rhythms finally allow for a minimum of respite, only apparent: a disturbingly beautiful track, with its mantra-like progression, crossing and bridging virtually between Arabian melodies and Latin rhythms....to scream!!!

But it is another short song that raises the emotional tension again: "Tina and Glen," a searing and acidic ride where the lysergic Rock, a child of the desert from which the guys come, reminds us of what they represented for the neo-psychedelic movement of the eighties. There are also some covers presented by the group in a personal way, but without overturning them: I like to recall "Yoo Doo Right" by Can, "Outlaw Blues" by Bob Dylan, and "Silver Machine" by Hawkwind. And we arrive at the track I consider the masterpiece of the entire concert: "It's Ok," a long and dreamlike song with a hypnotic sound wall, with a noisy finale where the two guitars and bass are distortedly maltreated, and the drumskins barely withstand Matt's uncontrolled fury. There is a video of this concert track online, which I recommend watching to understand the exact atmosphere from the audience's perspective.

We are at the end, intentionally unplugging with the notes of the very short "The Clown Song," just voice and guitar: but we would never want to stop letting ourselves be enveloped by this so intimate, poignant, emotional finale.

I have concluded while my faithful stereo diffuses the wonderful notes of "Hunter's Moon" with a finale where the two guitars chase each other in a stellar but physical lysergic progression at the same time, leaving me once again speechless......

With this personal writing, I wanted to pay tribute to a group too often forgotten, which has been able to give moments in Music of pure beauty that will forever remain among my favorites. Great Thin White Rope.

Ad Maiora.