GUH TRIPLE CD: SELFTITLED
These CD's are available from Brian Cram by emailing:    briancram@mail.com
Or send $20.00 to:
Brian Cram, 711 Bay St., Apt. 421, Toronto, Ontario, Canada    M5G 2J8   Ph:  (416)  599  5863.

COMPOSITIONS
CD  I

1. Phrygia   (Jason Clarke)   8:35
2. Petula   (Colin Couch)   5:09
3. Mass Rectum   (Brian Cram)   7:48
4. Eating Rights   (Blake Howard)   4:26
5. Castration   (Brian Cram)   3:58
6. The Song Line   (Brian Cram)   6:22
7. Lost Dog Dance   (Brian Cram)   2:05
8. Feast of the Marmelukes   (Jason Clarke)   5:19
9. Copulation   (Brian Cram)   6:48
10. Gavin   (Henry Muth)   7:33
11. Man From 1000 Uncles   (Henry Muth/Brian Cram)   2:27
12. Take Y'Chicken   (Blake Howard)   3:20

CD  II

1. Rocky Balboa   (Colin Couch)   4:56
2. Quinta Del Sordo   (Brian Cram)
   1. Rezar      3:22
   2. Allegria Montar   3:17
   3. Grotesco Sonar   6:11
   4. Retreta   6:21
3. Liberation in Five Easy Pieces   (Dave Clark)   7:48
4. Japanese Poetic Forms   (Brian Cram)   5:09
   1. Dodoitsu
   2. Sedoka
   3. Tanka
   4. Haiku
5. Greek Rhetoric   (Brian Cram)   15:18
   1. Logos
   2. Ethos
   3. Pathos
6. Gulden Drak   (Brian Cram)   3:46
7. Rupture   (Blake Howard)   5:03
8. Resplendance   (Dave Clarke)   3:53
9. Penultimate   (Brian Cram)   5:17

CD  III

1. Why Must I Bb   (Henry Muth)   3:07
2. Chateau Gang   (Brian Cram)   8:23
3. Stealth   (Brian Cram)   6:57
4. Time to Bb   (Henry Muth)   2:24
5. Bramorama   (Henry Muth)   3:39
6. WW I   (Henry Muth)   6:40
7. Stagger Inn   (Brian Cram)   5:58
8. Be a Man Bb   (Henry Muth)   4:12
9. The Break Song   (Henry Muth)c2:16
10. Mein Will Pee Anywhere   (Jason Clarke)   4:15
11. Six Odes to Single Malts   (Brian Cram)   21:41
    1. Bowmore
    2. Dalwhinnie
    3. Talisler
    4. Oban
    5. The Balvenie
    6. Lagavulin

REVIEWS

• EYE MAGAZINE   May 23, 1996.
• Author: Erin Hawkins
• Headline: GUH / Guh (Unmanageable)

     Great Jehovah, three in one! Who could sing nothing but the highest praises for our very own Guh? At first, the prospect of sitting through three hours of slap-happy back alley jazz (bagpipes'n'all) was a pettrifying thought. Now I've fallen in love with each beautifully dented tin can, crumpled-up sheet of newspaper and glass shard strewn about. Unpigeonholeable, ambitious, mucho loco and completely unpredictable. Give them a Governor-General's award of at least some money.

• EXCLAIM MAGAZINE   May 1996.
• Author: James Keast
• Headline: GUH's Compositional Complexity

     Consider the amorphous entity that sometimes inhabits Toronto stages, confusing and amazing audiences, twisting and turning through their own skills, revolutionizing the audience's ideas about music, and mounting an aural and intellectual assault on music of all forms-and going by the name of GUH. It's easiest to start with the facts. GUH is a band, made up of between six and eight members. The core members are Blake Howard (drums), Brian Cram (trumpet), Colin Couch (tuba, didjeridu), Henry Muth (bagpipes), Jason Clarke (guitar), Jason Baird and Scott Apted (alto sax, clarinet, flute). They play music. They just released a remarkable three-CD set that covers the band's progress through the last year (although one tune was recorded in 1993). After that, the facts get a little muddled.

     Thesaurus researchers could be searching for the next thousand years to describe exactly what GUH does, but defining it is as recommended as wondering how the universe works. Don't think about it, just enjoy it. Given the fact that the band is made up of instruments that are traditionally heard in either orchestras or jazz bands, that's as good a place to start as any. "Possibly in the purest sense of the word we do play jazz music," says Brian Cram, "if jazz is being able to play any influence in a solo. It's posssible that we're playing contemporary classical, because there are elements that aren't traditional jazz." Well that's a pretty straightforward answer. Thanks Brian. "I like to think it's all jazz. I like to think that any sound coming from instruments can be jazz." Doh!

     Although GUH plays sounds that would fit into many jazz repertoires, especially those of vanguard bassist and large ensemble leader Charles Mimgus, two factors will lead jazz theoreticians against that conclusion: it don't always swing and it ain't often improvised. "The charts stay intact," says Jason Clarke. "You're going to have different kinds of comping and solos, but the charts stay the same. Theoretically, jazz music has certain kinds of forms, and we're not anywhere near those forms."

     While most of the music that GUH plays is, like most of the complex avant-garde classical music of the last century, composed- Brian Cram describes the band as "a compositional workshop"- such composition is often just a starting point when it comes to performance. "Some tunes more than others led themselves to a natural evolution ," says Colin Couch. "It's open for people to bring new ideas. The more familiar we are with the piece, we start to hear different possibilities. The arrangements stay very similar. We always know where we are in the piece, but each person plays something different."

     One of the remarkable things about GUH is how a band of its size manages to operate on a musical seat-of-the-pants level. "Sometimes the tunes are being written on the floor of the studio that day," says Brian. "Others have been rehearsed for a couple of months." As a result of all the material on the CD being recorded in one-day, most of the "performances" on the CD are first or second takes, live off the floor. "Some of the songs of physically very demanding, and when your recording alot in one day, it gets very difficult to work through the material on repeated takes."

     Since the band ranges from as few as six people, even on recording dates (including ex-GUH founding member, Venus Cures All drummer Andrew Henry), to as many as eight, even getting people together for rehearsal and recording is difficult, let alone coordinating performances and compositions. "That's a very difficult job," says Henry Muth. "You have to think about people who will always be there, base your composition on those parts, then think about other parts that might be there, but aren't essential. But that doesn't always work, because if you're going to write for that many, you'd like all the parts to be essential." Brian chips in: "For instance, right now we're rehearsing a couple of pieces that have 11 horns in them, and we never have that many in the band. We'll take it to the studio and record it for posterity."

     With as many as six composers in the band (including Dinner Is Ruined's drummer Dave Clark, who drums on two tunes, and often jams with the band at shows), the general rule is that the composer makes the decisions (arrangement, recording, rehearsal, etc.) regarding his composition. Inspiration, on the other hand, is a different matter. The band recently played for Remembrance Day and several members composed new pieces based on the events of specific wars, two of which appear on the CD set.

     Sources may not always be that straightforward, however. Jason Clarke relays the inspiration for his recent composition "Chateau Gang": "I didn't write the song within musical styles, I wrote it from a picture. It takes you through the story of these art thieves in France in the early sixties. There are four or five major parts; I wrote it out literally first, like a story. These guys go into a chateau in France, basically like a museum. There's a household there; that's the majestic opening piece. There's a part where six bells hit; that's six o'clock, that's when the thieves start the robbery. They break in; it's an angular type thing, spy music. Then there's an improvising spy that's stealing things; that's the trumpet. Pilfer with prejudice. Steal, but steal for art. There's a getaway that gets a bit tense, with harmony parts, then it's clean, they get away, they're living a nice life, and that's a nice bluesy ballad part. Then there's a tension part where they get caught, they go to prison, then there's the eulogy. That's the guy who stole the art, because he thought it wasn't being treated well. He stole it, but he didn't resell it. He kept it."

     Stealing for art, not to sell it but to preserve it, to explore its potential, to share it with people who see and appreciate it. Maybe that's what GUH is doing. "We're just trying to learn how to play music and write music," says Brian. "We're doing it, and we're going to be doing it in 20 years."