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| Hot Licks in a Cold Spot
"The place appeals to me," said Kaiser. "It's such an alien scene. It's the closest thing to going to another planet." Kaiser, 49, who has earned a reputation as an offbeat traveling musicologist with recordings he made in Madagascar and Norway with guitarist David Lindley, plans to return from Antarctica with an album of solo guitar music. He will be the first musician to record in Antarctica. Nothing about Kaiser's appearance or manner even vaguely suggests the lunacy that lurks within. He is a calm, low-key personality, even-keeled and temperate. He keeps a dog and cats in his eagle's-nest home in the East Bay hills above the Claremont Hotel. When Kaiser talks about improvising a solo guitar album that will "sound like Antarctica," he makes the idea appear rational, reasonable, even. He seems like an eminent candidate for a scientific grant. But his eyes show a maniacal glint that probably did not show on his application. "The way it looks, sounds, feels to your senses," he said. "The history, the explorers -- that Kaiser, grandson and namesake of the man who brought you aluminum, joins a team of scientists from the Exploratorium and art historian William Fox next month for the eight-hour plane trip -- in full arctic survival gear -- from Christchurch, New Zealand, to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. They are this year's Artists and Writers Group, guests of the National Science Foundation, which operates three bases under the 1961 Antarctica Treaty that created what the foundation likes to call "a continent for science." The artists and writers program adds no cost to budgets; the grant winners simply share existing accommodations, food and travel with scientists. Kaiser asked his friend Matt Groening ("The Simpsons") to design a patch for this year's party, and Groening obliged with a drawing of his characters Akbar and Jeff from the cartoon strip "Life in Hell." Kaiser will bring custom- made (by Rick Turner of Santa Cruz) guitars, loaded with graphite and epoxy and some structural supports to withstand the subzero temperatures. Kaiser will issue reports as a correspondent for the NPR radio show "All Things Considered" and National Geographic's daily cable TV show. The Exploratorium team plans to post reports on the Internet (www.exploratorium.org/antarctica). Kaiser, who taught scientific research deep-sea diving for 15 years at the University of California at Berkeley, plans to do some scuba under the ice cap. Sitting in his cluttered but sunny home recording studio, he flips to a Web page of a previous grant winner to look at some otherworldly photos taken under the Antarctic ice. He is looking forward to sitting in the preserved huts abandoned by turn-of-the-century polar explorers and setting up his portable digital recording equipment, small enough to fit in a briefcase. He also wants to play bottleneck guitar with the metal post in the center of the station at the South Pole. "Bottleneck guitar around the world," he said. As a KPFA world-music disc jockey and armchair ethnomusicologist, Kaiser takes his place in Antarctic history seriously. "No matter what I do," he said, "it's authentic because I'm the first person. You could talk about something like 'Antarctica' by Vangelis, but he's never been there. As for music that's about a place by someone who's been there, this is the start of that." Kaiser will play a farewell concert Sunday at the Great American Music Hall with Yo Miles!, a group of like-minded improvisers who take off from the '70s funk-inspired jazz of Miles Davis. He praised the National Science Foundation for picking him. "I was not the conservative choice," he said. (On the other hand, Kenny G probably did not apply.) The accommodations will be spartan at best,and some of his excursions will take him into the most remote geography on the planet. But Kaiser is not daunted. Far from it. His eyes light up just thinking about it. "This is the best deal yet," he said. "It's something you could not pay to go do."
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle
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New Year's Day in Antarctica is like the Fourth of July back home. It gets up to 30 degrees sometimes, and the amateur musicians among the more than 1,000 American scientists and support personnel at McMurdo Station play an outdoors "Icestock" concert. As many as 17 bands will be on the bill, ranging from classical and bluegrass to thrash-punk. Also playing this year will be a special guest, internationally renowned East Bay avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser, who will visit the ice cap at the end of the world for three months on a government grant for artists. 
seems heroic -- and the current scene, the microcultures in the bases. It all sounds like inspiration for music about a place, which goes to the beginning of humans making music anywhere."