Rest in peace Roger Trigaux

[Trane]

A thought for Chevalier who now lost his third RIO-related job after the folding of Aranis and Univers Zero (well Guennet had replaced him anyways).

Final performance:

Yup, sorry I missed that, but there was no way of knowing.
Les absents ont tjs tort.

The infuriating thing is that I often bitched about is that, outside their first edition in March 2007 (it was freezing cold), the Carmaux festivals were being organized at an inoppurtune time (mid-Sept) and when the Bourgoin-Jallieu was organized, I couln't go either. wall.gif

Amazing token of remembrance of Roger and Present by Stéphane Fougère

https://www.rythmes-croises.org/roge...zg5vQujoIzjwYc



Directed by Stéphane Fougère
- Concert photos: Sylvie Hamon and Stéphane Fougère
- Black and white photo: Cuneiform Records collection

If Sylvie (with the turquoise coat) was present (no pun intended) at Bourgoin-Jallieu, I didn't spot Stéphane on the above film .

[Steve F.]

Great video from Robert (Guillerault) as usual, made me a litlle nostalgic... in more ways than one.

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

[calyx]

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Well, that parking lot in Bourgoin-Jallieu was almost paradise !

[boilk]

So glad that I at least got to one RIO, in 2013. Thankfully Present were the headliners, and they blew my mind.

neil

[vacuumtube1954]

Thank you Steve F. for posting this wonderful video. This is treasure. I enjoyed it very much. I hope that one day someone will release a box set of all of Roger's work. That would be nice. Maybe out takes and unreleased live works. Roger was a pioneer, visionary, and allow me to use the word genius. Again thank you Steve F.

[vacuumtube1954]

Final performance:

Thank you Steve F. for posting this wonderful video. This is treasure my friend. Roger Trigaux was a visionary, a master, and if I may a genius. I hope that one day someone will release a box set of all is works with studio outtakes, unreleased live concerts, and have a wonderful booklet as well. Thank you again Steve F. You have made my day.

[Steve F.]

^^^^^^^

For the first two Present releases, the very best ‘extra materials’ were used for our reissues of them; there is nothing else known to any of us of musical value, that was not included.

[vacuumtube1954]

^^^^^^^

For the first two Present releases, the very best ‘extra materials’ were used for our reissues of them; there is nothing else known to any of us of musical value, that was not included.

Ok thanks Steve F. for the info. I just wasn't sure if there were recordings stashed somewhere. I have the two cd set of ""le poison qui rend fou" and "Certitude" which was released in 1998 I believe.

[GuitarGeek]

^^^^^^^

For the first two Present releases, the very best ‘extra materials’ were used for our reissues of them; there is nothing else known to any of us of musical value, that was not included.

And I want to say that you did an awesome job in both cases.

[Udi Koomran]

A word of farewell by Pierre Chevalier to Roger Trigaux (spoken at his funeral)

So here it ended up happening that unlikely moment - that moment we all dreaded thinking maybe never would happen - the moment to say goodbye to Roger. For it seemed acquired for all those who knew him, that Roger obviously would bury us all - better even, that he would come to dance and spit on our graves!
And then finally, Roger, the Black Sun, ended up shutting down, quietly, peacefully.
Roger, the Black Sun - rehearsing Roger's music in recent days, seeing the many tributes emerge here and there, with several decades-since that of a teenage Roger scratching his guitar the air lost in daydreams announcing the battles to come, up to a gray and smiling enigmatically roger, wrapped in smoke in this wheelchair that would be his ultimate destrier - this picture seemed to me well. A Black Sun...
Because like a sun, Roger thought and lived very alone. And probably was his artist curse - no matter how many planets gravitating around him, nothing could have filled this essential, devouring loneliness, populated by inner demons. Yet this lonely star kept stinging its black light on the many stars who gravitated around him and were able to experience his warmth and benevolence. The hundreds of testimonials in the past few days are attested.
I've often been told Roger's music is dark, and it's probably true. But in those darkness where she was born, there was a lot of light, beauty, grace and eventually through an operation of almost alchemical transmutation, joy and humor. Far from always being evil, his music was also populated by angels - wounded, broken, distorted, angular, sometimes grimacing, but still angels, capable of bringing torrents of beauty and grace.
As a musician, it was Roger who made me realize that Beau has a thousand faces, that music, if it meant something true, had to come down in an infinite palette of emotions and in which one calling ′′ ugliness ′′ must have a place of choice, and that it was often in a box of dissonance, brutality, darkness, that the most beautiful pages of music and art were born in general.
So of course, it is also the clean of a Sun that you only approach it with caution - because if it is often kind and warm, it can also burn yourself there. Those who have known Roger know that his freedom requirement admitted no limit, and that this absolutism - as admirable as it is scary for normal people - will have earned him some scars and the attendance of dangerous roadmates.
To meet so much the coldness of real, to the sad chromatic poverty of the ambient world, on a daily basis too often mundane by its fellow people.
And it's little to say that for some of those who accompanied it, the journey was not always resting.
But when we say goodbyes, what will remain - for me anyway - is the forever memory of a man without concession - and for the fact that this often galvauded expression takes its true meaning -, until at the last second of his life.
For let's not be mistaken: despite appearances, Roger died standing. And this in a world where many don't even bother to stand up to live.
And like many, when saying goodbye to him, I realize how much his encounter changed my life and helped make it a little less ordinary.
Goodbye, Roger, and thank you.

[Steve F.]

^ ^ ^

very glad you posted this, Udi!

[taliesin]

That's very beautiful.

[Trane]

BTW, destrier = steed (horse).

Merci Pierre.

Adieu Roger.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Here in Norway at the moment, we have a publicly declared concept called "Standoff quarantine" - meaning basically that you'll have to stay at home and do whatever you're able to with what you've already got if there's the slightest reasonable suspicion that you're maybe harboring the virus.

Granted I haven't seen much folks this past year and I certainly didn't attend parties or any non-existent concerts or non-active theatre. Yet what I -do- stick to is visits from my two sons, one 11 1/2 and the other 23 when he's home from master studies in London at King's College (he used to be in Edinburgh). Anyway, there are two mothers and my responsibility entirely to form a sense of family-unity amongst the two boys, so I always try to coordinate so that both can meet at my apartment and have dinner etc.

So, Wednesday I had my eldest son visiting for supper and telling me after receiving an urgent SMS that a girl he'd met the day before just came out as having tested positive for the damn virus. Himself having spent the past four months here in Oslo instead of his quite expensive Spitalfields dorm, and having only recently ordered a trip back to London for Easter quarantine and the lots, this was extremely unsettling and infuriating. At least the girl could have informed my son that she'd just had yet another test performed - and logically retreated to her home for results. But no. She went on to play a game of Cluedo with my kid and consequently likely had him infected on the spot.

What unbearable crap.

So we went to late-night testing on Wednesday evening, all three of us (including my 11-year old) and promptly had to inform our respective appropriate adults that there'd be no school, no jobwork or return to university in London until the matter was resolved.

So here I am, Friday, still not knowing whether I'm infected or not. Knowing not what to do except read Ovid's prime or Rilke's sad rhyme or Somerset Maughan's dime or Ken Follet's slime or Jo Nesbø's silly crime, I'm stuck in my flat and drinking Amaretto and leftover Christmas mulled wine, anticipating results from the National Health and getting adequately inebriated for a drunken fight and junken flight of Stealth.

This being the case, I decided to crawl foam-like into the past week's losses of craft and hand with James MacGaw, Jewlia Eisenberg and Roger Trigaux. Listening again now to MacGaw's inputs with One Shot, Pienza Orchestra and on the fantastic Trilogie-releases of the millennial Magma - man, this captain was too talented an instrumentalist for words; selective, adaptive, tasteful if necessary or wanted, yet both so personal in touch and fulfilling any ordinated task improbable. An amazing talent. I still recall with such a sentimental note that debut release of One Shot, and not least Steve F.'s almost panegyrical cry at its effect on him. This was about the same time as uncle Steve signed the monster Machine & the Synergetic Nuts (I believe); intensive, energetic, to-the-core power fusion of immense force yet also refinement. The days!

And then onto Jewlia Eisenberg. A long run, due to her involvement with lots of external artists and actors, yet her work with Charming Hostess was about as convincingly virtuoso as anything I heard in modern art-rock music; perfectionist but still so damn raw'n'raunchy - not a note missed, not a single fate of sloppiness engulfed or delivered. EVERYBODY should hear their Eat or Punch. There's force and there's joy and then there's both.

As for Roger, he was "contemporary progressive rock" brilliance encapsulated and embodied. Few if any 80s releases made as harrowing an impression on me as getting Present's Le Poison Rend Fou on vinyl in early 1994. I still recall listening to it for the first time on an old German one-deck cassette/turntable set that I'd initially taken over by my teenage sister when she escaped (moved out) from my drunken mom's sad apartment in 1986. I'd brought the silly thing with me to student times and equipped it with double speakers, analog gliss'n'bliss distorted for the friends of hiss.

I got Poison from Swedish vinyl retailers Record Heaven, the same folks who'd sold me Etron Fou Leloublan's Les Poumons Gonflés, Miriodor's Rencontres, However's Sudden Dusk and that ace copy of Univers Zero's first album. All of it earlier that very same year. And so I'd learned about this "other" and "more serious" take on the fantastic stuff they were otherwise selling me, like reprints of Italian classics or british and West-German obscurities.

It hit me like a fucking ballkick. The intense atmosphere of musical commitment vs. darkly satirical artistic irony (which I've come to interpret as a specific trait of Trigaux'), multi-detailed dedication to craft and technicality, and that sheer -GLOW- of vitality and strength and, well, humanly creative spirit. Inferiority complexes towards Larks Toungues or Western Culture notwithstanding, this was as overarchingly immersing as stuff that had initially introduced me to the world of "progressive" in the first plce; as dangerously and mysteriously inviting but forthcoming as Soft Machine and VdGG, as formally intricate and demandingly challenging as anything by Gentle Giant or Hatfield or Zappa.

I'll never forget it. Le Poison Qui Rend Fou remains one of my top-10 fave records - for this personal reason alone. Never mind a level of musical prestige that I'd never grasp executions of, although I certainly played some firecely difficult things myself throughout the years. But not with this sense of vision; one of fun and playfulness as much as of attitude and celebration.

Three great folks gone. Three fabulous creative minds.

[Steve F.]

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Thanks for your beautiful tribute to three great artists.

[Zappathustra]

What were you thinking Richard? You just had to abstain from the silly need to see your kids (do you really have to? don't you have a laptop?) and protect your health, and most importantly OUR health. Isn't it all about that nowadays?

I wonder how much of our health we have to sacrifice to protect our health. Being a parent of a 16year old that doesn't live with me, I am exposed to the same dangers and understand your position. Hope all turns well.

Your text was beautiful. I am also a big Poison qui rend Foux fan, I much prefer it to Triskaidekaphobie, which to me sounds a bit academic in comparison.

[Udi Koomran]

My discovery of Present was As a follower of Wayside Music since 1981 or 82
I bought the first album and Loved it so much then quite a long time till suddenly the launch of Cuneiform and the announcement of a future release of Present wow
I remember the long month of anticipation for the release of Le Poison ...
Then when it came out I was quite surprised and a bit shocked as I was probably expecting a follow up to Tris which Le Poison certainly isn't its a different beast

[loshammeros]

RIP Roger and condolences to all of you who know more of his genius than I. I first discovered Present at NEARfest and prior to their performance I had asked a fellow NF patron about their style of music.His reply was---"music you would commit suicide over so you don't have to listen to again". I took in the whole set (amidst quite a few people leaving)-and I feel I was rewarded with all the " hammering" going down

[GuitarGeek]

RIP Roger and condolences to all of you who know more of his genius than I. I first discovered Present at NEARfest and prior to their performance I had asked a fellow NF patron about their style of music.His reply was---"music you would commit suicide over so you don't have to listen to again". I took in the whole set (amidst quite a few people leaving)-and I feel I was rewarded with all the " hammering" going down

I think it was Pierre Chevalier who used the phrase "mass exodus" to describe what happened after their first number, but I don't remember that all. Maybe I didn't notice because I was so taken with the performance. Or maybe I was sitting close enough (I think that was one of the years I did Patron) that all the people who left were behind me. Or something.

[chalkpie]

One of me favorite Present moments is "Quatre vingt Douze" right near the end, goes into this crazy groove that once it starts you never want it to end.

[chalkpie]

OK, I had to find it again..it starts right at 14:24. Insane!

[boilk]

I think it was Pierre Chevalier who used the phrase "mass exodus" to describe what happened after their first number, but I don't remember that all. Maybe I didn't notice because I was so taken with the performance. Or maybe I was sitting close enough (I think that was one of the years I did Patron) that all the people who left were behind me. Or something.

Haha. Well, I was there too, and lucky enough to be in the second row that year (thanks Uncle Norm Nied, RIP), and I clearly remember looking back every once in awhile and that mass exodus did happen! However, the more that people left, the more that I loved it. When I saw them the following Thursday in Montreal at a club, nobody left. They were all too busy, being held in a state or rapt transcendency.

neil

[Udi Koomran]

Steve expected the "exodus" so piror to the show urged me not to mix the "too loud"
So I did my best to balance the stage with the house PA to a "acceptable " level
At one point Martine RT's wife came up to me and asked me what's wrong ??
After the Exodus I said to myself fuck it...

[Udi Koomran]

Present Live @ Bourgoin Jallieu Les Abattoirs 25/9/09
Roger Trigaux,Reginald Trigaux,Dave Kerman,Pierre Chevalier,Keith Macksoud,Matiu Safatly,Pierre Desassis

[chalkpie]

Steve expected the "exodus" so piror to the show urged me not to mix the "too loud"
So I did my best to balance the stage with the house PA to a "acceptable " level
At one point Martine RT's wife came up to me and asked me what's wrong ??
After the Exodus I said to myself fuck it...

This show was absolute magic (my first and last time seeing this band). Kermanator is a true badass, and Macksoud just kills on this as well (phenomenal player). Sound was perfect as well (at least from what I recall).