There's a Hole in Yer Music Collection an' it's called The Jug or Nots

The Jug or Nots

Anachronism is in.  Men (and women) are sportin’ waxed-up moustaches.  Craft libation makin’ is all the rage.  Midnight cyclists fantasize their neon fixed-gear bicycles earning them a spot in the lineage of daring penny-farthing riders from days of yore.

Anachronism has also been makin’ inroads in popular music as of late (again).  There are banjos on mainstream radio.  The bluegrass/hip-hop alchemy of Justified’s theme song has been nominated for an Emmy.  Baz Luhrmann’s revisioning of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby foxtrots to Andre 3000.

The nature of anachronism, however, is just that.  It’s anachronistic.  There’s always the omnipresent reminder that an out-of-time cultural reference is being made.  This isn’t a bad thing.  Anachronism exists for a reason.  But it’s also important to remember that interest in the “real thing” has also survived the test of time, and with Southern California’s Jug or Nots’ self-titled first release, that’s exactly what you are getting.  The real thing.

The Jug or Nots play traditional American street music from the 1920s and 1930s, and they do it all acoustic with bonafide traditional instruments including cigar box guitar, kazoo, washboard, and various kitchen utensils.  They perform as an ensemble on street corners, farmers markets, harvest festivals, tiny juke joint stages, and from the flatbed of parading hay wagons.  And when you see (and hear) them perform, you’re hard pressed to shake the feeling that perhaps you’ve momentarily slipped through a warp of some kind and are witnessing contemporaries of Cannon’s Jug Stompers or the Mississippi Shieks.  There’s no Twilight Zone here, though, folks.  The Jug or Nots are the real thing… and that’s just what they set out to deliver with their first studio recording: the Real Thing.  Good news.  They succeeded.

The Jugs’ initial recording offering is a collection of traditional and original tunes committed to posterity with the utmost care in preserving the “accurate” feel and sound the band works so hard to evoke with their live performances.  There is no anachronism here.  These gents determined to provide us with a set of songs that truly sound like they are from an earlier, simpler time, and that’s exactly what the listener comes away with.  If you like your jug music to actually sound like it was made in a time when jug music was king, this is the recording (and band) for you.  Their rendition of the “Spider-Man” theme will have you doubting your own cache of pop culture knowledge.  They make it sound like such a tried and true jug band tune that you’ll be googling the superhero’s history to assure yourself that you haven’t been wrong in your assumptions all this time and that Spider-Man is not actually a 1930s contribution to the comic world.

Don’t give up on anachronism, but don't mistake the Jug or Nots for such.  If you have a soft spot for a contemporary band that can transport you wholly into a bygone era, causing you to momentarily forget that the recording you are listening to is not actually 80 years old, then the Jug or Nots (and their CD) are the band for you.  They are traditional, heartfelt, bawdy, and very talented at the niche they are carving out for themselves.  Try them.  They’ll have you believin’ that “the sales tax is on it” is a brand new contention for regular fellers everywhere.

Lay yer hands on it here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jugornots

Watch 'em here:  http://youtu.be/WHG7JdOi7Ms 

Some Things I Wanna Say 'Bout The Kingdom of Not

This here commentary is wholly unsolicited, an' far past the oven timer of immediacy (not, however, past the oven timer of relevancy), but I got some things to say...

Journey to the Far Side of the Room by Kindom Of Not

In the only-could-be-original realm caught somewhere between the medieval folk rock pageantry of Donovan and the sonic voodoo rituals of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins there is a new kingdom to contend with.  The Kingdom of Not.

Three years ago I sheepishly inquired of Andrew Goldfarb, The Slow Poisoner, if’n he’d be interested in playing GRIT’s first Old Timey Music and Variety Show.  Completely surprising me, he responded by asking if, in addition to his snake-oile-salesman-one-man-band routine, we would be interested in the new project he was involved in (then called The Wounded Stag).  He forwarded some videos of their work and we were completely sold.

While certainly musical in orientation, the project Goldfarb and frontman Dan Carbone brought south with them is best perceived through the filter of performance art.  Backed by a turbaned and masked Slow Poisoner grinding out his pulsating jungle-folk-psychedelia, Carbone (channeling Buddd Underwood) sings, chants, admonishes, pontificates, and acts out a wide array of fringe characters, fluidly donning costumes, toys, and various other props drawn from the guts of a massive steamer trunk at his feet.

At once both fascinating and alarming, the duo’s performance danced a taut tightrope between luring their audience in close and then abruptly provoking a terrified desire to flee for fear of the cataclysmic happening being conjured.  It was definitely spectacle, definitely a spiritual journey of some sort, and it was definitely enlightening, but it did not leave the audience soothed or reassured about its uncertain place in the vast and scrutinizing (or indifferent) cosmos… and that unwillingness to answer its own questions made the performance truly magnificent.

I have to admit that I was a bit dubious when I heard that Carbone and Goldfarb were going to commit their project to aural recording.  I didn’t know how the living, breathing beast I had witnessed, its name now changed to Kingdom of Not, would translate into an audio only format.  Even so, when the disc came in the mail I fell upon it with eager anticipation.  That anticipation was not disappointed.

While Kingdom of Not’s recording, titled Journey to the Far Side of the Room, is certainly a different creature than the live performance, Carbone and Goldfarb have definitely accomplished a masterful act in bringing the concept of their live Prometheus to the listening-only audience.  It is not a substitute for experiencing their live performance, but as a detailed conceptual narrative it is undeniably its own very important monster.  Its often modal musical drivings, trance inducing at times, possessed of a frenetic energy at others, combined with the sometimes-storyteller-sometimes-eyewitness bard work of Buddd Underwood create a richly decorated otherly world that effectually commands the mind’s eye for the duration of the production.  Not an easy feat when working with such an elaborate aural-oral-visual foundation, but a feat admirably accomplished.

There indeed exists a Kingdom of Not.  Its domain, however, extends considerably beyond the realms capable of being rendered by the recording studio.  That said, if the kingdom could be transferred to a listening-only format, Carbone and Goldfarb have committed to us the best possible manifestation imaginable.  Listen to and embark upon the Journey to the Far Side of the Room, but do so knowing that you will not be able to cease your pilgrimage at the edge of the compact disc.  The kingdom will continue to beckon from beyond the confines of the recording.  Acknowledge and follow.