Fred Frith (born February 17, 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, co… Read Full Bio ↴Fred Frith (born February 17, 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.
Probably best-known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-prog group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew. He has collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, including Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, Lars Hollmer, The Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Derek Bailey, Iva Bittová and Bob Ostertag. He has also composed several long works, including Traffic Continues (1996, performed 1998 by Frith and Ensemble Modern) and Freedom in Fragments (1993, performed 1999 by Rova Saxophone Quartet).
Frith was born in Heathfield in Sussex, England into a family where music was considered an essential part of life. He started violin lessons at the age of five and became a member of his school orchestra. But at 13 he switched to guitar after watching a group imitating a popular instrumental band at the time, The Shadows. He decided to learn how to play guitar and get into a band. Frith taught himself guitar from a book of guitar chords and soon found himself in a school group called The Chaperones, playing Shadows and Beatles covers. But when Frith started hearing blues music from the likes of Snooks Eaglin and Alexis Korner it changed his whole approach to the guitar, and by the time he was 15, The Chaperones had become a blues band. Frith's first public performances were in 1967 in folk clubs in the North of England, where he sang and played traditional and blues songs.
Besides the blues, Frith started listening to any music that had guitar in it, including folk, classical, ragtime and flamenco. He also listened to Indian, Japanese and Balinese music and was particularly drawn to East European music after a Yugoslav school friend taught him folk tunes from his home. Frith went to Cambridge University in 1967 where his musical horizons were expanded further by the philosophies of John Cage and Frank Zappa's manipulation of rock music. Frith graduated from Cambridge with a BA (English Literature) in 1970, and an MA (English Literature) in 1974, but the real significance of Cambridge for him was that that was where the seminal avant-prog group Henry Cow were formed.
Frith met Tim Hodgkinson, a fellow student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in 1968. "We’d never met before, and he had an alto sax, and I had my violin, and we just improvised this ghastly screaming noise for about half an hour." But something clicked and recognizing their mutual open-minded approach to music, Frith and Hodgkinson formed a band there and then. They called it Henry Cow and they remained with the band until its demise in 1978. In the early 70's Fred's grey Morris Minor sported the band's heraldic logo, much to the amusement of boys at his dad's grammar school in York where he was the headmaster.
Frith composed a number of the band's notable pieces, including "Nirvana for Mice" and "Ruins". While guitar was his principal instrument, he also played violin (drawing on his classical training), bass guitar, piano and xylophone.
In November 1973, Frith (and other members of Henry Cow) participated in a live-in-the-studio performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for the BBC. It is available on Oldfield's Elements DVD.
After Henry Cow's first album, Frith released Guitar Solos in 1974, his first solo album and a glimpse at what he had been doing with his guitar. The album comprised eight tracks of unaccompanied and improvised music played on prepared guitars. It was recorded in four days at the Kaleidophon Studios in London without any overdubbing.
When it was released, Guitar Solos was considered a landmark album because of its innovative and experimental approach to guitar playing. The January 1983 edition of Down Beat magazine remarked that Guitar Solos "... must have stunned listeners of the day. Even today that album stands up as uniquely innovative and undeniably daring." It also attracted the attention of some "mainstream" musicians, including Brian Eno, resulting in Frith playing guitar on two of Eno's albums, Before and after Science (1977) and Music for Films (1978).
In the mid-1970s, Frith contributed a series of articles to British weekly music magazine, New Musical Express entitled "Great Rock Solos of our Time". In them he analyzed prominent rock guitarists of the day and their contribution to the development of the rock guitar, including Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
While recording Henry Cow's last album, differences emerged between the group members over the album's content. Frith and Chris Cutler favored song-oriented material, while Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper wanted purely instrumental compositions. As a compromise, Frith and Cutler agreed, early in 1978, to release the songs already created on their own album, Hopes and Fears, under the name Art Bears (with Dagmar Krause). The instrumental material was recorded by Henry Cow on Western Culture later that year, after which the band split. The Art Bears trio continued purely as a studio group until 1981, releasing two more albums, Winter Songs in 1979 and The World as It Is Today in 1981.
During this time Frith also released Gravity (1980), his second solo album, recorded at Norrgården Nyvla in Uppsala, Sweden with Swedish group Samla Mammas Manna, and at the Catch-a-Buzz studio in Rockville, Maryland with United States band The Muffins. It showed Frith breaking free from the highly structured and orchestrated music of Henry Cow and experimenting with folk and dance music. "Norrgarden Nyvla" was also the title of one of the tracks on the album and is considered one of Frith's most recognizable tunes.
Towards the end of 1979 Frith relocated to New York City where he immediately hooked-up with the local avant-garde/Downtown music scene. The impact on him was uplifting: "... New York was a profoundly liberating experience for me; for the first time I felt that I could be myself and not try to live up to what I imagined people were thinking about me." Frith met and began recording with a number of musicians and groups, including Henry Kaiser, Bob Ostertag, Tom Cora, Eugene Chadbourne, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, The Residents, Material, The Golden Palominos and Curlew. He spent some 14 years in New York, during which time he joined a few bands, including John Zorn's Naked City (in which Frith played bass) and French Frith Kaiser Thompson (consisting of John French, Frith, Henry Kaiser and Richard Thompson). Frith also started three bands himself, namely Massacre, Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog.
Massacre was formed in 1980 with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Fred Maher. A high energy experimental rock band, they toured the United States and Europe in 1980 and 1981, and released one album, Killing Time (1981), recorded at Martin Bisi's later-to-be historic studio in Brooklyn. Massacre split in 1981 when Maher left, but later reformed again in 1998 when drummer Charles Hayward joined. The new Massacre released three more albums.
Skeleton Crew, a collaboration with Tom Cora from 1982 to 1986, was an experimental group noted for its live improvisations where Frith (guitar, violin, keyboards, drums) and Cora (cello, bass guitar, homemade drums and contraptions) played a number of instruments simultaneously. They performed extensively across Europe, North America and Japan and released Learn to Talk in 1984. Zeena Parkins (electric harp and keyboards) joined in 1984 and the trio released The Country of Blinds in 1986. In October 1983 Skeleton Crew joined Duck and Cover, a commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival, for a performance in West Berlin, followed by another in February 1984 in East Berlin.
Frith formed Keep the Dog in 1989, a sextet and review band for performing selections of his extensive repertoire of compositions from the previous 15 years. The lineup was Frith (guitar, violin, bass guitar), René Lussier (guitar, bass guitar), Jean Derome (winds), Zeena Parkins (piano, synthesizer, harp, accordion), Bob Ostertag (sampling keyboard) and Kevin Norton (drums, percussion). Later Charles Hayward replaced Norton on drums. The group existed until mid-1991, performing live in Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union. A double CD, That House We Lived In, from their final performances in Austria, Germany and Italy in May and June 1991, was released in 2003.
During the 1980s, Frith began writing music for dance, film and theater, and a number of his solo albums from this time reflect this genre, including The Technology of Tears (1988), Middle of the Moment (1995), Allies (1996) and Rivers and Tides (2003). Exploring new forms of composition, Frith also experimented with chance or accidental compositions, often created by building music around "found sounds" and field recordings, examples of which can be found on Accidental (2002) and Prints (2002).
As a composer, Frith began composing works for other musicians and groups in the late 1980s, including the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Modern and Arditti Quartet. In the late 1990s, Frith established his own Fred Frith Guitar Quartet consisting of Frith, René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart. Their guitar music, varying from "tuneful and pretty, to noisy, aggressive and quite challenging", appears on two albums, Ayaya Moses (1997) and Upbeat (1999), both on Lussier's own Ambiances Magnétiques label.
The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Frith still collaborates with many of them, including Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper. Cutler and Frith have been touring Europe, Asia and the Americas since 1978 and have given dozens of duo performances. Three albums from some of these concerts have been released by Recommended Records. In December 2006, Cutler, Frith and Hodgkinson performed together at The Stone in New York City, their first concert performance since Henry Cow's demise in 1978.
In 1995 Frith moved to Stuttgart in Germany to live with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss and their children Finn and Lucia. Between 1994 and 1996, Frith was Composer-in-Residence at L’Ecole Nationale de Musique in Villeurbanne, France.
Frith relocated to the United States in 1997 to become Composer-in-Residence at Mills College in Oakland, California. In 1999 he was appointed the Luther B. Marchant Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills where he currently teaches composition, contemporary performance and improvisation. While he had never studied music in college, Frith's credentials of over forty years of continuous practice and self-discovery got him the position. He has, however, maintained that "most of my students are better qualified to teach composition than I am," and that he learns as much from them as they learn from him.
In March 1997 Frith formed the electro-acoustic improvisation and experimental trio Maybe Monday with saxophonist Larry Ochs from Rova Saxophone Quartet and koto player Miya Masaoka. Between 1997 and 2008 they toured the United States, Canada and Europe and released three albums. In March 2008 Frith formed Cosa Brava, an experimental rock and improvisation quartet with Zeena Parkins from Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog, and Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and The Norman Conquest. They toured Europe in April 2008 and performed at the 25th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada in May 2008.
Fred Frith has used a number of different guitars, including homemade guitars, over the years, depending on the type of music he is playing. For the more structured and refined music he has often used a Gibson ES-345, for example on his solo album, Gravity. For the heavier "rock" sound, as in Massacre, he has used an old 1961 solid body Burns guitar, created by the British craftsman Jim Burns. On his landmark Guitar Solos album, Frith used a modified 1936 Gibson K-11 guitar (q.v. for details).
For Frith's early unstructured music, as with Henry Kaiser on With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?, and his early table-top guitar solo performances, he used a homemade six-and eight-string double-neck guitar, created by a friend Charles Fletcher. Frith told Down Beat magazine in 1983: "It was the one and only guitar that he ever built ... he constructed it mainly out of old pieces from other guitars that I had, and for the body I think he used an old door." The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted a pickup, a bridge, and strings stretched over metal screws. "The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible," Frith said, "so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds ... ."
Frith has used a variety of picks with his guitars, from traditional guitar picks to violin bows, drum sticks, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain and other found objects. Frith remarked: "It's more to do with my interest in found objects and the use of certain kinds of textures which have an effect on the string ... the difference between the touch of stone, the touch of glass, the touch of wood, the touch of paper — those kinds of basic elements that you're using against the surface of the strings which produce different sounds."
In a typical solo improvising concert, Frith would lay a couple of his homemade guitars flat on a table and play them with a collection of found objects (varying from concert to concert). He would drop objects, like ball bearings, dried beans and rice, on the strings while stroking, scraping and hitting them with whatever was on hand. Later he added a live sampler to his on-stage equipment, which he controlled with pedals. The sampler enabled him to dynamically capture and loop guitar sounds, over which he would capture and loop new sounds, and so on, until he had a bed of repeated patterns on top of which he would then begin his solo performance.
Frith is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's award-winning 1990 documentary film Step Across the Border. He has contributed to a number of music publications, including New Musical Express and Trouser Press, and has conducted improvising workshops across the world. Frith's career spans over three decades and he appears on over 400 albums. He still performs actively throughout the world.
Frith is also one of the subjects of the Canadian documentary Act of God, from the director of the award winning Manufactured Landscapes. The film is about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning.
Currently Frith is Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California. He lives in the United States with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss, and their children, Finn Liss (born 1991) and Lucia Liss (born 1994).
Frith was awarded the 2008 Demetrio Stratos Prize for his career achievements in experimental music. The prize was established in 2005 in honour of experimental vocalist Demetrio Stratos, of the Italian group Area, who died in 1979.
Frith is the brother of Simon Frith, a well-known music critic and sociologist, and Chris Frith, a psychologist working at University College London.
Probably best-known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-prog group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew. He has collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, including Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, Lars Hollmer, The Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Derek Bailey, Iva Bittová and Bob Ostertag. He has also composed several long works, including Traffic Continues (1996, performed 1998 by Frith and Ensemble Modern) and Freedom in Fragments (1993, performed 1999 by Rova Saxophone Quartet).
Frith was born in Heathfield in Sussex, England into a family where music was considered an essential part of life. He started violin lessons at the age of five and became a member of his school orchestra. But at 13 he switched to guitar after watching a group imitating a popular instrumental band at the time, The Shadows. He decided to learn how to play guitar and get into a band. Frith taught himself guitar from a book of guitar chords and soon found himself in a school group called The Chaperones, playing Shadows and Beatles covers. But when Frith started hearing blues music from the likes of Snooks Eaglin and Alexis Korner it changed his whole approach to the guitar, and by the time he was 15, The Chaperones had become a blues band. Frith's first public performances were in 1967 in folk clubs in the North of England, where he sang and played traditional and blues songs.
Besides the blues, Frith started listening to any music that had guitar in it, including folk, classical, ragtime and flamenco. He also listened to Indian, Japanese and Balinese music and was particularly drawn to East European music after a Yugoslav school friend taught him folk tunes from his home. Frith went to Cambridge University in 1967 where his musical horizons were expanded further by the philosophies of John Cage and Frank Zappa's manipulation of rock music. Frith graduated from Cambridge with a BA (English Literature) in 1970, and an MA (English Literature) in 1974, but the real significance of Cambridge for him was that that was where the seminal avant-prog group Henry Cow were formed.
Frith met Tim Hodgkinson, a fellow student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in 1968. "We’d never met before, and he had an alto sax, and I had my violin, and we just improvised this ghastly screaming noise for about half an hour." But something clicked and recognizing their mutual open-minded approach to music, Frith and Hodgkinson formed a band there and then. They called it Henry Cow and they remained with the band until its demise in 1978. In the early 70's Fred's grey Morris Minor sported the band's heraldic logo, much to the amusement of boys at his dad's grammar school in York where he was the headmaster.
Frith composed a number of the band's notable pieces, including "Nirvana for Mice" and "Ruins". While guitar was his principal instrument, he also played violin (drawing on his classical training), bass guitar, piano and xylophone.
In November 1973, Frith (and other members of Henry Cow) participated in a live-in-the-studio performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for the BBC. It is available on Oldfield's Elements DVD.
After Henry Cow's first album, Frith released Guitar Solos in 1974, his first solo album and a glimpse at what he had been doing with his guitar. The album comprised eight tracks of unaccompanied and improvised music played on prepared guitars. It was recorded in four days at the Kaleidophon Studios in London without any overdubbing.
When it was released, Guitar Solos was considered a landmark album because of its innovative and experimental approach to guitar playing. The January 1983 edition of Down Beat magazine remarked that Guitar Solos "... must have stunned listeners of the day. Even today that album stands up as uniquely innovative and undeniably daring." It also attracted the attention of some "mainstream" musicians, including Brian Eno, resulting in Frith playing guitar on two of Eno's albums, Before and after Science (1977) and Music for Films (1978).
In the mid-1970s, Frith contributed a series of articles to British weekly music magazine, New Musical Express entitled "Great Rock Solos of our Time". In them he analyzed prominent rock guitarists of the day and their contribution to the development of the rock guitar, including Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
While recording Henry Cow's last album, differences emerged between the group members over the album's content. Frith and Chris Cutler favored song-oriented material, while Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper wanted purely instrumental compositions. As a compromise, Frith and Cutler agreed, early in 1978, to release the songs already created on their own album, Hopes and Fears, under the name Art Bears (with Dagmar Krause). The instrumental material was recorded by Henry Cow on Western Culture later that year, after which the band split. The Art Bears trio continued purely as a studio group until 1981, releasing two more albums, Winter Songs in 1979 and The World as It Is Today in 1981.
During this time Frith also released Gravity (1980), his second solo album, recorded at Norrgården Nyvla in Uppsala, Sweden with Swedish group Samla Mammas Manna, and at the Catch-a-Buzz studio in Rockville, Maryland with United States band The Muffins. It showed Frith breaking free from the highly structured and orchestrated music of Henry Cow and experimenting with folk and dance music. "Norrgarden Nyvla" was also the title of one of the tracks on the album and is considered one of Frith's most recognizable tunes.
Towards the end of 1979 Frith relocated to New York City where he immediately hooked-up with the local avant-garde/Downtown music scene. The impact on him was uplifting: "... New York was a profoundly liberating experience for me; for the first time I felt that I could be myself and not try to live up to what I imagined people were thinking about me." Frith met and began recording with a number of musicians and groups, including Henry Kaiser, Bob Ostertag, Tom Cora, Eugene Chadbourne, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, The Residents, Material, The Golden Palominos and Curlew. He spent some 14 years in New York, during which time he joined a few bands, including John Zorn's Naked City (in which Frith played bass) and French Frith Kaiser Thompson (consisting of John French, Frith, Henry Kaiser and Richard Thompson). Frith also started three bands himself, namely Massacre, Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog.
Massacre was formed in 1980 with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Fred Maher. A high energy experimental rock band, they toured the United States and Europe in 1980 and 1981, and released one album, Killing Time (1981), recorded at Martin Bisi's later-to-be historic studio in Brooklyn. Massacre split in 1981 when Maher left, but later reformed again in 1998 when drummer Charles Hayward joined. The new Massacre released three more albums.
Skeleton Crew, a collaboration with Tom Cora from 1982 to 1986, was an experimental group noted for its live improvisations where Frith (guitar, violin, keyboards, drums) and Cora (cello, bass guitar, homemade drums and contraptions) played a number of instruments simultaneously. They performed extensively across Europe, North America and Japan and released Learn to Talk in 1984. Zeena Parkins (electric harp and keyboards) joined in 1984 and the trio released The Country of Blinds in 1986. In October 1983 Skeleton Crew joined Duck and Cover, a commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival, for a performance in West Berlin, followed by another in February 1984 in East Berlin.
Frith formed Keep the Dog in 1989, a sextet and review band for performing selections of his extensive repertoire of compositions from the previous 15 years. The lineup was Frith (guitar, violin, bass guitar), René Lussier (guitar, bass guitar), Jean Derome (winds), Zeena Parkins (piano, synthesizer, harp, accordion), Bob Ostertag (sampling keyboard) and Kevin Norton (drums, percussion). Later Charles Hayward replaced Norton on drums. The group existed until mid-1991, performing live in Europe, North America and the former Soviet Union. A double CD, That House We Lived In, from their final performances in Austria, Germany and Italy in May and June 1991, was released in 2003.
During the 1980s, Frith began writing music for dance, film and theater, and a number of his solo albums from this time reflect this genre, including The Technology of Tears (1988), Middle of the Moment (1995), Allies (1996) and Rivers and Tides (2003). Exploring new forms of composition, Frith also experimented with chance or accidental compositions, often created by building music around "found sounds" and field recordings, examples of which can be found on Accidental (2002) and Prints (2002).
As a composer, Frith began composing works for other musicians and groups in the late 1980s, including the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble Modern and Arditti Quartet. In the late 1990s, Frith established his own Fred Frith Guitar Quartet consisting of Frith, René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart. Their guitar music, varying from "tuneful and pretty, to noisy, aggressive and quite challenging", appears on two albums, Ayaya Moses (1997) and Upbeat (1999), both on Lussier's own Ambiances Magnétiques label.
The ex-Henry Cow members have always maintained close contact with each other and Frith still collaborates with many of them, including Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper. Cutler and Frith have been touring Europe, Asia and the Americas since 1978 and have given dozens of duo performances. Three albums from some of these concerts have been released by Recommended Records. In December 2006, Cutler, Frith and Hodgkinson performed together at The Stone in New York City, their first concert performance since Henry Cow's demise in 1978.
In 1995 Frith moved to Stuttgart in Germany to live with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss and their children Finn and Lucia. Between 1994 and 1996, Frith was Composer-in-Residence at L’Ecole Nationale de Musique in Villeurbanne, France.
Frith relocated to the United States in 1997 to become Composer-in-Residence at Mills College in Oakland, California. In 1999 he was appointed the Luther B. Marchant Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills where he currently teaches composition, contemporary performance and improvisation. While he had never studied music in college, Frith's credentials of over forty years of continuous practice and self-discovery got him the position. He has, however, maintained that "most of my students are better qualified to teach composition than I am," and that he learns as much from them as they learn from him.
In March 1997 Frith formed the electro-acoustic improvisation and experimental trio Maybe Monday with saxophonist Larry Ochs from Rova Saxophone Quartet and koto player Miya Masaoka. Between 1997 and 2008 they toured the United States, Canada and Europe and released three albums. In March 2008 Frith formed Cosa Brava, an experimental rock and improvisation quartet with Zeena Parkins from Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog, and Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and The Norman Conquest. They toured Europe in April 2008 and performed at the 25th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada in May 2008.
Fred Frith has used a number of different guitars, including homemade guitars, over the years, depending on the type of music he is playing. For the more structured and refined music he has often used a Gibson ES-345, for example on his solo album, Gravity. For the heavier "rock" sound, as in Massacre, he has used an old 1961 solid body Burns guitar, created by the British craftsman Jim Burns. On his landmark Guitar Solos album, Frith used a modified 1936 Gibson K-11 guitar (q.v. for details).
For Frith's early unstructured music, as with Henry Kaiser on With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?, and his early table-top guitar solo performances, he used a homemade six-and eight-string double-neck guitar, created by a friend Charles Fletcher. Frith told Down Beat magazine in 1983: "It was the one and only guitar that he ever built ... he constructed it mainly out of old pieces from other guitars that I had, and for the body I think he used an old door." The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted a pickup, a bridge, and strings stretched over metal screws. "The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible," Frith said, "so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds ... ."
Frith has used a variety of picks with his guitars, from traditional guitar picks to violin bows, drum sticks, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain and other found objects. Frith remarked: "It's more to do with my interest in found objects and the use of certain kinds of textures which have an effect on the string ... the difference between the touch of stone, the touch of glass, the touch of wood, the touch of paper — those kinds of basic elements that you're using against the surface of the strings which produce different sounds."
In a typical solo improvising concert, Frith would lay a couple of his homemade guitars flat on a table and play them with a collection of found objects (varying from concert to concert). He would drop objects, like ball bearings, dried beans and rice, on the strings while stroking, scraping and hitting them with whatever was on hand. Later he added a live sampler to his on-stage equipment, which he controlled with pedals. The sampler enabled him to dynamically capture and loop guitar sounds, over which he would capture and loop new sounds, and so on, until he had a bed of repeated patterns on top of which he would then begin his solo performance.
Frith is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's award-winning 1990 documentary film Step Across the Border. He has contributed to a number of music publications, including New Musical Express and Trouser Press, and has conducted improvising workshops across the world. Frith's career spans over three decades and he appears on over 400 albums. He still performs actively throughout the world.
Frith is also one of the subjects of the Canadian documentary Act of God, from the director of the award winning Manufactured Landscapes. The film is about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning.
Currently Frith is Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California. He lives in the United States with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss, and their children, Finn Liss (born 1991) and Lucia Liss (born 1994).
Frith was awarded the 2008 Demetrio Stratos Prize for his career achievements in experimental music. The prize was established in 2005 in honour of experimental vocalist Demetrio Stratos, of the Italian group Area, who died in 1979.
Frith is the brother of Simon Frith, a well-known music critic and sociologist, and Chris Frith, a psychologist working at University College London.
Lost and Found
Fred Frith Lyrics
We have lyrics for 'Lost and Found' by these artists:
1208 You know the question, find the answer Stirring deep within …
4N The Human I did a lot of shit that led to lots…
7 Foot Midget Hardly had a chance She wipes away a tear from her…
@tisakorean I'm so lost with the swag that I don't have…
A Rocket to the Moon Old man on his way back home late from work…
Acchy It's a Sunday night And I'm driving home Tears flood my eyes…
Adrienne Pierce eyes like flowers, i love the way you see you see,…
Agua de Annique I sit in your chair You are aware of me, and…
Al and the Transamericans Uhh Bitch I'm on one now I'm up Steady tryna stack some…
Alexis V.O. Two boys with a dream They hate the smell of money…
Alfiya Glow Maybe I'm lonely Killing the time Nobody knows that i lost m…
AlunaGeorge When I'm falling, when I'm broken You can do what you…
Alyson Stoner This is my world four walls and a view i stare at…
American Aquarium I lost her trail on a Friday night She was gone…
Anders Johansson Say yeah, Say yeah, you're coming I see you wanna go,…
Anneke van Giersbergen Agua De Annique I sit in your chair You are aware of me, and…
Antivalent There's no electricity No light at all I'm numb and hungry O…
Atmosphere [Hook - Slug] To my surprise, discovered that I really don't…
Auburn (Intro) I was so lost But glory you found me Dusted me of…
Austin Collazo I'm hating this, so often it feels like I'm faking…
Aztek Trip Worries waste and happies just a high It seems nothing's ch…
B-Side Band. Love that lil look in your eye, connection build greater…
Big Sugar If only you could see behind my eyes You would count…
Blue Monday I can still remember that night like it was yesterday.…
Borgeous & 7 Skies Found you in the dust, we fell in lust Back then…
Brooks & Dunn I lost her trail on a Friday night She was gone…
Calla Soiled feat. Hatsune Miku 「もう いいかい」 僕は尋ねるけど そもそも君は このゲームを知らないんだ ああ 君は 巧く隠れて居る様だ そもそも隠れ…
Camel Latimer/Hoover Where have you come from, where have you be…
Chadwick Stokes Oh can you hear them calling you Oh don't you make…
Chamber - L'Orchestre de Chambre Noir If I could learn how to fly My feet would never…
Charlie I sit here in a daze Wishing I could change my…
Charlotte Martin A garment of praise for the spirit of heaven who…
Charming Don't you know You've made a mess of me, you…
Chase & Status ft. Louis Mattrs Blinded the lights This movie ain't over Take me by the hand…
Chemical Vocation Stop, and breathe it all in Save it for later We have…
Chuck Ragan There ain't no wasted time covering our own ground. Sooner o…
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah I heard it from a friend The Revolution never happened Sigh …
CloudNone & Direct feat. Matt Van Is this what I've been waiting for (Been waiting for) (…
Colby Yates day after day tell my self you never meant the words…
Cue Come and take me, I can show you how it's…
Da Menace DOOMSHOP MOTHERFUCKER DOOM- DOOMSHOP MOTHERFUCKER I′m strai…
Daily Planet I see You everywhere Love through Your creation I watch it …
Delerium I really wanted to go It hurt me too much to…
Delerium (feat. Jaël) I really wanted to go It hurt me too much to…
Delerium feat. Jaël of Lunik I really wanted to go It hurt me too much to…
Derailers There's a honky-tonk across the tracks It's called The Lost …
Desolation Sound Lost, found Lost and found Hey baby I got to know Do you rem…
Diamusk Tell me what I've got if ya love me not In…
Diane Chase I was lost it was getting late, Trying to find my…
Dirty Vegas There isn't any movement There isn't any sound So how can we…
DJ Krush & DJ Shadow Well Well You know something that's what you've done You sai…
DJ.Shark Hitter Czy to wydarzy się znów bracie Znów bracie Lepiej mnie wybud…
Domo Genesis Some of those you can take off though I don't like…
DownTown Mystic LOST & FOUND You can feel…
dr. ghost Build up till I break down Same shit when I come…
E.C.Davis Who gon stop it? Only you've got keys to my locket Hustled…
Echo & the Bunnymen I was standing Under sliver studded skies In a forest burnin…
Echo & The Bunnymen with The Royal Burundi Drummers Flowered lies you told me Lift me from my knees and…
Eggy I lost a dream that once was mine I'll wait until…
EKLO Theres no direction that i need I got no road to…
Elizabeth Lane Everywhere I look I'm reminded Of what you took from me You'…
Ellie Goulding Gotta love this field and the cherry sky Under blossom cloud…
Emma Smetana & Jordan Haj Let's talk about you For all I care Let's talk abo…
Energy (Chorus: repeat 2X) I've been wondering about the complexi…
Eric Clapton Falling in the deep end Stop messin' around I cant keep fr…
Eye Cue Come and take me, I can show you how it's…
Faker You've gotta dance Gotta dance with your back to the wall …
Feeder You’re the right stuff I’ve got my head straight Goin’ up to…
Feeder. You’re the right stuff I’ve got my head straight Goin’ up …
Field Study I felt I would need a new word For Lost and…
Fjelding Lost and Found Don't wanna be lost. Don't wanna be found.…
FM Your a hard one Your a cold one In the shadow of…
For The Wicked You′ll face the torment and disgrace Full option of what you…
Gabin & Mia Cooper There in a box on a shelf in its original…
Ghost in Real Life You really got me going Standing outside waiting for yah Bab…
Gino Vannelli I was lost then I was found your love has…
Go Radio I hear you say the sun is setting and it's…
Golden Earring From the Album: * Cut I am not an object Somethin' you thro…
Guru xjdsnsnnznzznzkzmxncnxjdjnxdkdmdndnfnfnfnffkdkskxjcndnsjskdn…
Haco Excursion Excursion Excursion…
Herzig Katie I know you left me standing there Out of the calm…
Hirie Walking through the dark Until I met you Bending like the wi…
Honeymoon Suite Wear me loose, wear me tight Wear me out on Friday…
Hrly I'm looking For answers In a book I've never read I'm sorry…
I'min Mm mm thinking about the way we Mm mm just why Mm…
Iration Remember getting lost and found your whole world inside of o…
J-Blev 期待你寄信到我郵箱 期望你教我煮得更香 這方向靠於窗看夕陽 I've been listening to those s…
J. Jordan-Jones Uh, yeah Yeah, I said I, I said I I said I'm…
Jamie Winchester & Hrutka Róbert Leaving on a train Watch the land just roll…
Jerk Magnet I try to make some sense of something that does…
Jigsaw I could not sleep Too scared to dream What if things were…
Joe & Gus (Do do do do do) Lost count of all the countless…
John Anthony You left me alone Emotional nowhere No claim to my heart …
Johnny Flynn Reams of stories reeled me in Caught my ear and hooked…
Jon Wood I got a bible on my nightstand Whiskey bottle in my…
Judas Priest I always used to be afraid That I was going to…
Justin Hayward I was lost I was wandering in the dark I was searching…
Kamasean Bapa Kau tahu Sgala yang ada dalam hatiku Walau kadang ku be…
Karen Briggs Always alone, someone come for me Here on my own feels…
Kasey Chambers If I could learn how to fly My feet would never…
Kate and After We never understood how cruel life really was We grew up…
Katie Herzig I know you left me standing there Out of the calm…
Kelz2busy Got me lost in the party Girl I'm focused on…
kenzie. Here I got a sense of hate Mixed in with my…
Kim Taylor I've been lost and I've found That when you get lost You…
L.E.X.A.R.T. He landed in ’96 Light skin kid from the township Wondering …
Last Days of April Watching, Watching airplanes paint the sky, With cloudy li…
Ledisi Always alone, someone come for me Here on my own feels…
Lianne La Havas Come upstairs and I'll show you where all my Where my…
Lights of Euphoria If I knew how to play this game In between pleasure…
Limp I'm on my way now I did it by myself I looked…
Lost & Found Music Studios Me and him - he is Tim When together we're musically…
MajMasti.in Too many days here to count My previous entry could have…
Major/Minor It started slowly But it still took me by surprise When we…
MBNel Listen to [?] Oh yeah Berki this the one right here I…
Meanie Yeah I said its cold like the floor of oceans Yeah…
Mechanical Parts Inside Is she the one who laughs? Or the one who cries? She…
MËMË This is my world Four walls and a view I stare at…
Mes I've been feeling like there's no symmetry Between you and m…
Mike Living like you'll never be free While this 9 to…
Mike And The Strangers Waiting for something It could be nothing All those whispers…
Milkychan Auf der Suche nach meinen Träumen verschwind ich in der…
millennium parade Baby, come closer to me Lie back rest your head a…
Milliseconds Rooms full of rhodium and phosphor Your questions never go u…
Mistery A Things seem so strange In the ethereal plane Fog filled and …
Moya This moment is ours, We've turned off the lights. We're lost…
Oh Weatherly Well I've been fighting my thoughts with the weak, And that'…
Ola Podrida The car crashed but everybody was okay But that don't mean…
ONE OK ROCK More expectation Instead of singing in the blue sky I was …
Only Seven Left So I'm glad you joined the show I'm glad you found…
Oswald Five-0 I was Lost and found Couldn’t find my way back up I…
Oswald Five-O Two boys with a dream They hate the smell of money…
Patient Patient I was Lost and found Couldn’t find my way back up I…
Paul and Friends Always hated every job that I had Told my mom and…
Peter Hammill (Even the wolf can learn, even the sheep can turn, even th…
Phoenix So you've got your own little story to tell Some…
Phoenix/Musicfire.in Too many days here to count My previous entry could have…
PLASUI PLASUI อีกไม่นานก็เจอ (เฮ้อ) เธอคนนั้นที่ฉันเฝ้ารอ เธออยู่แห่งหนใด …
Plum Jam Only you can be A part of the music baby You're a…
Popular Computer (feat. Pacific!) When we were looking back On What might have been We were…
PowaPowa-P feat. Kagamine Rin They was sleep we was still working doing extra How you…
Pretty Lights What is this I can not see In the dark That hides from…
Prong Exposing all the frauds Those heroes for a cause They're hol…
Rachel York Mr. Detective, you′ve been looking too hard You should've st…
Randy Rogers Band Day after day, I tell myself you never meant the…
Red Island I hope that you find what you searching for I know…
Right Brigade What the fuck went through your head It doesn't matter,…
Saints Ain't nobody tells me what to do now I've heard all…
Santers I'm on a rolling tide, rolling away I know the pleasure's…
sapientdream Slushii Was it all my fault When it all came crashing down? I…
sasakure.UK Feeling a breeze on my face, slow down the pace,…
Sean Sennett Oh, yeah She walks like a gunslinger Laughs through the…
Senses Fail This island has become An ocean and my boat's too small The…
Shane Harte Woah oh oh, woah oh oh, woah oh oh oh Woah…
Sharon D. Clarke You said you weren't in the right place You said your…
Shasha Marley Yah know seh, we haffi go back to whea you…
Signum Regis I've seen where rivers flow How strong the wind can blow I'v…
Slushii & sapientdream Was it all my fault When it all came crashing down? I…
South 59 The Words that i say, have fallen away from you…
Sparks Lost and found, a wallet from a man, careless man,…
Spirits and the Melchizedek Children I feel like I'm lost and won't be found, please…
Stephen Kellogg It's not that I've closed off my heart, It's just…
Supreme Soul In a distant place where the forgotten ones roam It's gettin…
Taken by Trees I took myself out walking By the evening I was running I…
Taking Back Sunday we were only 15, i let her go, like paper airplanes,…
Tankard Still all this party, raising hell to get my beer…
Tee Grizzley Stack, pray, stay out the way, you gon' make it…
Tessa Rose Jackson I was a fool I was young and confused And I fell…
The 88 Left at the altar Proud to be seen A serpent in his…
The Call Back Academy I never saw this coming I think I've got so much…
The Camel Where have you come from, Where have you been? How can you…
The Camels Where have you come from, Where have you been? How can you…
The Derailers There's a honky-tonk across the tracks It's called The Lost …
The Everettes Changing nothing means nothing will change And so goes my lo…
The Evidence Excuse me, ma'am, do you know where I can find Something…
The Hall Effect What remains, what remains of you was erased Was erased by…
The Hives Ain't nobody tells me what to do now I've heard all…
The Kinks Waiting for the hurricane To hit New York City Somebody…
The New Pacific When we were looking back On What might have been We were…
The One and the Other 期待你寄信到我郵箱 期望你教我煮得更香 這方向靠於窗看夕陽 I've been listening to those s…
The Phoenix So you've got your own little story to tell Some…
The Radio Dept. I'm scared when I'm at home In my apartment on my…
The Saints Ain't nobody tells me what to do now I've heard all…
The Young And Free I been lost yeah But now I'm found I got all the…
Theo Katzman V1 Maybe I'll stick out on the pavement Under your sneakers …
They On this fateful day, in the history of whenever, An epidem…
Things Of Stone And Wood Been a long time coming, I know Spent a long time…
Tim Christensen No one knows Where you're going Cause you don't show anythin…
Train My dad said son, one Day we'll have a drink…
Trevor Something So lost, searching for something So far, you've found nothin…
Tripping Daisy Do you know the reason people dive when they wanna Take…
Trisha Paytas Little girl searching Hoping for an answer to her prays Oh t…
Tunnelblick-Music Lost without direction Lost beyond impression Lost in a past…
Turboweekend I just want to get lost Pick up the prize and…
UB40 It's so very easy for me to disappear No-one seems to…
Undine For so long I wandered alone, fragmented Engulfed in confusi…
Us & Our Daughters A hard question to answer, a hard answer to question When…
Us and Our Daughters The silhouettes of us Burning in my mind Shadows are dancing…
Wasted 24/7 See you again See you again This is the Legion Its okay and…
Y.Shimizu's Babylon I’ve been searching round Like lost n found Heal my…
Yung Pinch Yeah-eah-eah Oh, oh, look I was lost, she was found (yeah, h…
Zack Hemsey I used to hear them say of bad news, when…
Zenith Volt I'm gone No more, no more The better part of the day...…
Zornik Oh my love I wish I could Destroy the World And hide with…
Ellie Goulding Gotta love this field and the cherry sky Under blossom cloud…
We have lyrics for these tracks by Fred Frith:
Drum Factory Tu sonrisa tan resplandeciente A mi corazón deja encantado V…
Evolution Welcome to the insects Welcome to the insects Where are all …
Ghosts Eu não escrevo pra ninguém e nem pra fazer música E…
White ct twelve I dream The siren screams The bomb will fall, fall…
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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deino
come back 2 us someday.....