Henry Cow - Trondheim I

Live concert by Henry Cow, recorded May 26, 1976. Extracted from the Henry Cow Box Redux CD set.

Trondheim I (track times according to exported tracks from CD)

0:00 Track I
7:07 Track II
9:32 Track III
14:25 Track IV
19:24 Track V
24:10 Track VI
31:26 Track VII
35:16 Track VIII
43:01 Track IX

The Trondheim concerts were one of Henry Cow's most special.
It was performed as a quartet by Lindsay Cooper, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, and Tim Hodgkinson after a series of unfortunate events: John Greaves wanted to leave the band and Dagmar Krause was too ill for the tour commitments.

Taking the radical option, Henry Cow opted to prepare material from each individual musician using the following themes: the history of Henry Cow (Fred), the music of youth through old age (Lindsay), and the history of language (Tim). These tapes each contained roughly two hours of interrupted material, and were always running in every one of these concerts; they were silent until their author made them audible through a a foot pedal.

They were hardly used and in a classic Henry Cow style, they improvised for an unbroken two hour stretch in the darkness (or candlelight); not even the audience could see what was going on. These improvisations were linked with a concept that had to do with the GENESIS OF MUSIC, RITUAL, and WESTERN CULTURE.

These were truly an interesting experience, for those who had the pleasure of attending these.