I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: August 2, 2024] Stick Men 

About a year and a half ago I saw Stick Men for the first time and it was fantastic.

I was able to get up close to the stage to see Tony Levin (the main reason I wanted to go) play the Chapman Stick up close.  I have seen him play with King Crimson but have never been THIS close.  I didn’t know much about Markus Reuter, who also plays a kind of Stick–his own U8 Touch guitar.  But wow, he was amazing.  And he made playing these crazy complicated song so easy.  And I can’t forget Pat Mastoletto, who I’ve seen several times playing drums with King Crimson.  He’s amazing to watch, but I laughed to myself at what an amazing show this was if he was the least interesting thing on stage.

I enjoyed the show so much last time and I was really looking forward to this show as well.  The lineup was the same as last time.  And I was able to get nice and close.

I don’t know many of their actual songs.  And it doesn’t matter.  They mostly play instrumentals that are complicated and fantastic to watch.  Much like saying you could listen to a favorite singer sing the phone book–whatever the instrumental equivalent is, I was happy to watch it.

In fact, they opened this show with a relatively brief impov–almost a warm up–and it was fun to see them noodling on their instruments.  But it tunrs out that they played ten of the same songs as last time (in a different order) and that actually worked out really well, because  recognized them from last time, so it was even more fun knowing what was coming next.

They started with Cusp.  Reuter’s guitar is so fascinating because he holds it upright like a cello and both hands are just moving all over the fretboard.  Like a Chapman Stick but shaped like a guitar.  For this song, he was playing most of the bass line while Tony played lead on the Stick.

They followed it with the title track from their new EP Brutal–it was great–very heavy and rocking and featuring Tony going “uh!”

Markus did most of the talking, and he told us that their song Ringtone is a huge hit in somewhere like Turkey for one reason or another.  They played it last time and it was fun to recognize it.  It was during this song that I realized all of the things that Pat was doing on the drum kit–he has some kind of electric pad and was dialing in various sounds which he could trigger on pads throughout his kit.  For one of the songs, he had two electronic pads up front that he played mid song that sounded like a full electronic set.

They played Robert Fripp’s Breathless, a song I first heard from them last time and which I love.  Like last time it made me check out the whole album that it comes from but I didn’t really like much else on the record.  I wondered if it was easier to play Robert Fripp’s fascinating chords and solos on Markus’s guitar rather than on a standard guitar.  Markus has all of his fingers handy to play Fripp’s twisted structures.

After another older song (they do play a lot from their 2013 album Deep), they played two songs I remembered well from last time.  Tentacles is a wild piece that’s fun to keep track of.  And then Pat had a few words for us (after he took his gum out–so yes he can play King Crimson and chew gum at the same time).  He did the crowd participation bit with Mantra that he did last time getting us to clap on the beat for this sequence of time signatures: 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2 and then repeats backwards.

Then came their first Crimson song of the night.  I don’t know how many KC songs are in their repertoire, but I’ll never get tired of them playing Red.  Like last time, the KC songs feel looser, not sloppy at all, because they are precision players, but as if they were just having fun with it instead of needing to meet (dare I say it, Robert Fripp’s exacting standards).  Reuter in particular threw in some little solos that are noncanonical.

They followed it with two new songs.  The Well from the EP and Komodo from their forthcoming album Let’s THRAK again.  Reuter told us that Komodo was named after the Komodo dragon which he was able to see in person on a trip abroad.  He learned that the dragon doesn’t rip your head off.  First it poisons you and then it rips your head off.  He felt with this song sometimes he was lucky to have survived the end.  I lost track of what song this was in, but at one point Tony was using a violin  bow on a Chapman Stick and it was very cool to see that in action.

Up next was the slower, improvised Swimming in Tea.   Like last time it was slow and meandering but it was most fun watching Pat who was making most of the sounds on his electronic pad–birds and gongs and voice prompts (here comes a knock on the door).  At one point I looked up and realized that he was cranking a plastic water bottle into the microphone to make interesting sounds and he followed that with a dog toy making squeaky crying sounds.  Hilarious but wonderfully atmospheric.

They followed it up with the only song with lyrics, “Prog Noir.”  Tony sang a song about touring as Stick Men.  It was the most “song like” song, with an actual song structure.

It was followed by a thrilling “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two” which also felt a little looser and more relaxed.  But the crowd was super psyched for it including the weird guy in front of me who decided that he should empluy what I can only think to call the Native American War Cry three times during the song.  WTF.

That ended the set and they came out to bow.  The guys then “decided” to do one more.  They ended with the awesome King Crimson song Level Five, which Pat said was also called Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Five (which makes sense).  Yep, they played it last time, but I loved seeing them play it again.

With their new album coming out in September, I assume they’ll come back to PA in the New Year.  I’d happily see them again.

& Let’s THRAK Again (2026)
⊗ Brutal EP (2025)
τ Swimming in Tea (Live EP) (2024)
Ψ Tentacles (2022)
Ø Owari (2020)
♣ Prog Noir (2016)
⇓ Deep (2013)