liner notes by Howard Stelzer:

"Drive the Pieces Together was a band that existed for one performance only. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if it was a band or a composition. Maybe it doesn't matter. It was borne from the community that existed around the Zeitgeist Gallery, a small below-the-radar spot in Cambridge, MA, where Dave Gross (and later James Coleman and a few other people) hosted Friday-night concerts of improvised music. I moved to Boston from Florida in the summer of 1998, and became a huge fan of Dave's band, FETISH, which played a particularly confrontational style of aggressive, dissonant, anti-jazz. I'd go to every gig they played, always sitting up close to the band, and eventually (nervously) I introduced myself to Dave.

"Not too long after we met, Dave asked me to take part in something called Drive the Pieces Together. Had he heard my work before then? Did he have any idea what I do? What made him think that I could improvise with other players? I have no idea. He was probably just being friendly. The fact was, I had hardly ever performed with other people before then. I was sure that the other guys in the band had some secret knowledge about improvised music that I was lacking. But even though I figured I'd be laughed off the stage, I was too flattered by the invitation to say no.

"Dave explained the deal to me: Peter Warren, a guitarist, had composed a piece of electronic music with significant silences in it. The group – consisting of Steve Norton (a sax player who would, for this project, only play a turntable), Vic Rawlings (amplified cello), Erik Carlsen (tuba), Dave (reeds), and me (cassette tapes) – would improvise along with Peter's recording, which would function as a sort of score. At the rehearsal, I was petrified. But somehow, no one called me out for being a talentless hack, so Dave scheduled a performance. This would be the first time I ever improvised with a group... the first time I ever performed with my (now, a decade later) dear friends Vic and Dave... my first performance in Cambridge. As evidenced by this document, no one suffered any ridicule. At least, none that made it onto the recording.

"After this performance, Dave and Erik and I would play for a year or
so as a trio called The Medford Sound Machine, a lame joke name taken from the suburb where I lived at the time and a reference to Florida, which is where I had moved away from. Vic would start to build electronic instruments, which he would play in a trio with me and Greg Kelley that would change names a couple of times (Tulse Tuper, then Deer Telephone) until we split up. Later, all three of us would play together again in The BSC. Peter moved from guitar to bowed metal,
Erik moved to New York to teach music, and the Zeigeist eventually caught fire and was abandoned. But those Friday night shows were
magical... they were, in a way, the genesis of a lot of experimental music in Boston.

Howard Stelzer
Cambridge, MA 2009