Trey Gunn knew that he wanted to pursue a life in music and, despite the prevailing spirit of contemporary culture, was keen to develop an understanding of the fundamentals. ‘I went to the University of Oregon and I studied composition. I had played classical music as a kid, like from 6 or 7, and played Bach or Bartok or whatever you did back then on piano, and transitioned to bass and acoustic guitar. I was in punk rock/new wave bands in the late ’70s and it was counter to the culture to study music. It was, “I’m going to go my own way,” and, “I’m NOT going to learn!” – I’m talking about the punk culture – and sometimes that was cool, sometimes that would produce unusual things…but I still felt like if I was going to be a professional, whatever that meant… basically on track to get really good at something, then I should learn about the materials, even though it was counter to everyone I knew… I thought, if I was a writer, I would want to learn how a sentence is structured; it just makes sense, even if you are going to be deviant… I wanted to learn more stuff and get exposed to more things.’
Continue reading “Protopunk – Brightness Falls”
