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.
Okay... I done owed this one since August of 2012. Sometimes better late than never may not be applicable, but I can always keep my fingers crossed, eh?
Stars Pulled Down by Unextraordinary Gentlemen
Unextraordinary Gentlemen have been sketching out their
particular vision of another time and place fantastic and anachronistic for
some time now.Two EPs, 5 Tales From God Only Knows and No Hands to Guide Us, have collected
tales of the desperate, disparate, and debauched.Set to Romanticism soundscapes interpreted in part by the
archaic machineries of an industrial revolution, these two offerings have
familiarized UXG’s listeners with a Victorian Neverwas inhabited by the noble
and the questionable engaged in voyages extraordinaires.A very European parlour type of
Victorian, there has been a strong cane and bussel and top-hattedness to them
that is very properish.But the
new longplay, Stars Pulled Down, has
delved into something, for lack of a better term, very American.This new offering finds Unextraordinary
Gentlemen having emigrated from the Old World to the New, the wild borders of
an indifferent mechanical hinterland whose flesh and bone gears grind
themselves away in struggles with mortality and excess.
As with its predecessors, Stars Pulled Down is a collection of musings chronicling forays
into both the temporal and the fantastical.But while UXG’s previous tales unfolded within cosmopolitan
settings, this stage is a no man’s land of fog shrouded forest hilltops, frontier
towns weathered gray, and sun-scorched peripheries.The struggles the characters undergo are familiar, but the
savagery demanded by these uncivilized locales is that of a brave
new world of ruggedness and rough-hewn independence, more whiskey than absinthe.
As the listener travels from the Sherman’s March-ishness of
“Elephant Head,” through the dimensional warping voyage of “Almost Imaginary,”
and into the Gothic Americana playground rhyming of “Kiss the Earth” it is very
clear that UXG is moving into new territory.They even offer a traditional protest tune in “Dawn/Worst of
All,” a dirgey account of miners descending into the grave everyday only to
resurrect for a few fleeting hours of unrest before the dawn calls them down
into the earth once more.And if
these tunes are not pointing out clearly enough the direction UXG is edging in,
with “Old No. 9” they present the most venerated of all roots music genres: the
train song.And the ghostly Old
No. 9 is not just any train. It’s the juggernaut of steam and steel that
carries us to the farthest reach of the new domain Unextraordinary Gentlemen is
exploring, the End of the Line.And in these shifting, uncertain sands of mystery lies the leaving point
for “Long Time Gone,” a lament of wanderlust, perhaps the wanderlust that has
brought us to this new borderland in the first place.And what lies beyond?A new frontier?The
gallows?Perhaps simply “The End
Again.”
Been outta practice fer awhile.Work’ll do that to ya.One day ya wake up an’ realize: Hell, work is getting’ in the way of all
the important stuff!
It’s been happenin’ to me.I’ve let all this blogging an’ whatnot slip by in favor of
keepin’ in good with The Man.
Well, first things first.I owe some way outta date music reviews, but even outta date
I still got stuff to say that I want committed to print so I’m gonna go ahead
an’ take care of this business anyways.
Light on in the Hallway by My Half Ridden Dream
The oldest promised musickal commentary I owe is to My Half
Ridden Dream.MHRD is the
sometimes-solo project of one Thomas A. Alfera, and in the hustle an’ bustle of
2012 he released a self-produced longplay called Light on in the Hallway.Late one night many years (possibly decades) past, LA’s Lonesome Cowboy,
Jim Ladd, prefaced a playlist by sayin’ that “the next set of music makes me
wish I was cruisin’ down Pacific Coast Highway in a 1967 Mustang convertible,
the top down, the full moon shinin’ down, the warm summer breeze whipping
by…”I no longer remember what
tunes followed that introduction… one of them may have been “LA Woman”… but
it’s that specific description that the first spin of Light on in the Hallway brought back to me.
All of the songwriting credits of the new offering go to
Alfera and his considerable travels with the American Experience are downright
palpable in the musical an’ lyrical odyssey he shares with the listener.At its heart, Light on in the Hallway is a tale of loves lost and found, in
between, and right where you left them; a poignant spirit-quest into the
eternal paradoxical co-existence of independence and loneliness and the
struggle to find their balance.
The album opens with “Anna Come Home.”It’s a melancholic memoir, but with its
roots-rock forward momentum the tune gives us no option but to press on down
the highway.“Ellen’s Song” and
“D.O.I.” continue a pilgrimage that never leaves us at any one roadside stop
for very long, emphasizing the bittersweet fact that while our emotional
grapplings may never resolve, they do sting less with the distance we can put
between them and ourselves.By the
time we reach “The End of Love” and its fuzzed-out, oozing, rock bottom, the
miles traveled in philosophical introspection have steadied our psyche enough
that we can see around love’s tattered edges.There is possibility up the road, and even though that
possibility may still very well be simply the possibility of disappointment, “Summer
Days,” “Genuine Feeling,” and “Happily Classified” affirm we must be strong
enough to live through that possibility.
Hopefully you have a 1967 convertible Mustang and access to
Pacific Coast Highway for this one… and if not, close your eyes and let the
music take you there anyway.
You can listen to and possess Light on in the Hallway right here:
“Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.” - Ambrose Bierce
"The belly rules the mind." - Spanish Proverb
"ncle Jello" was the first painting of Nouar's that I ever saw in person.
Being the friend of a friend, I had met the artist previously and had acquired some glossy postcards from her; one of the misleadingly innocent “Lemonade Parade” and another of the far more unsettling “You Satisfy Me.”To say that I was intrigued by the images would be an understatement, and I became more enamored with the work after peering into her repertoire via the internet.
To the casual looker, Nouar’s work is definitely a playful romp through the ideals of mid-century foodstuff marketing, complete with anthropomorphous manifestations of carousing vittles who sing, dance, and lead us to believe that their sole purpose for existing, their utmost desire in life, is to be consumed.With a closer look, however, it becomes apparent that there is much more to scrutinize in Nouar’s carefully thought out images than just a well crafted sense of cartoon-ish nostalgia and kitsch.If you contemplate them even momentarily, the questionable behaviors of Nouar’s characters lead to narratives that transcend the world of food and instead comment on the societal interactions of that most questionable of creatures, the human being.
Food is a brutal contemplation.It is chopped, crushed, squeezed, diced, gutted, butchered, boiled, fried, grilled, chewed, eaten, digested, consumed.It is not a far stretch to say that human beings are also a brutal contemplation… and perhaps not much more of a stretch to say that many of those aforementioned brutalities very literally associated with food can be, at the very least figuratively, associated with human interactions and relationships as well.Under such a light, the theme remains “eat or be eaten”, but the implications become far darker.
But back to the beginning of the story.“Uncle Jello” was the first painting of Nouar’s that I ever saw in person.And what a first-person experience it was.In 2009, the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, CA, hosted a group exhibition called the Multi-Plane Show.For the exhibit, a divers group of contemporary artists were invited to create artworks utilizing a vintage multiple-glass panel animation technique.Essentially it involved creating images on three separate sheets of glass which were then assembled into layers, bringing a sense of depth and perspective to the content by utilizing the actual space between the pieces of glass.Most of the artists in the show seemed to take the logical route, using the glass layers to create environmental depth, but “Uncle Jello” was different.Whereas most of the showpieces involved a looking across or through space, Nouar’s contribution instead chose to use the glass panel technique to look INTO a space.Where most of the artworks surrounding it had narratives and actions playing themselves out in familiar, tangible locales, the tale perpetrated by “Uncle Jello” played itself out in some indefinable netherworldly innerspace.
Uncle Jello himself was a red-tinted transparent resin sculpture affixed to a pane of glass.Just head and shoulders, the jello-mold headed gentleman smiled invitingly in his smart bow tie and brown sport coat, a fitting expression for a dashing portrait.But Uncle Jello’s gentlemanly facade became unshakably sinister when it became evident that there were unhappy faced strawberry people trapped within his gelatin noggin.At once both charming and alarming, “Uncle Jello” became so much more than simply a three-deep story about the demise of some strawberries.Who was this belying character?Who were these poor berries suspended like thoughts within his evidently calculating cranium?Why were they there?What had they done?What lay in store for them?Would they ever escape?Could there be an “Uncle Jello” in our own lives?
The piece really was, to say the least, quite remarkable.I had been enraptured by the galleries of her work I had perused online, but this was definitely a case of an artist doing something new, fresh, and unprecedented.If I had not already been a convert to her work, “Uncle Jello” undeniably sealed the commitment.Nouar had found a way to add a dimension, literally, of meaning to an already complex mixture of symbolisms and motifs.And being able to accompany the visual, technical element with narrative and vision that made the work truly meaningful is definitely a feather in her artistic hat… beret?
Luckily, the significance of what the artist had brought to the table was not lost on the owners of the gallery.“Internally Yours”, the Nouar solo exhibit opening at the Corey Helford Gallery on June 11th, will showcase a body of work birthed in the premise of that first “Uncle Jello.”Using transparent food as a metaphor for the struggles, entrapments, and vices of our own lives, the exhibit’s artworks continue to explore Nouar’s already established themes of human interaction and relationship.But experimenting with the new tools afforded her by “Uncle Jello”, Nouar’s new work is taking us on an inward bound journey.It is a poignant exploration of who or what we hide away on the inside, perhaps ultimately asking us to question whether we may be the ones who are in fact being hidden away by something greater than ourselves.A journey we should all be looking forward to taking.
"Internally Yours"
Nouar
Opening Reception - Saturday, June 11, 2011 7-10pm
Corey Helford Gallery
8522 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232-7444
(310) 287-2340
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley
ayle’s Perks is located at 9028 Balboa Blvd, North HillsCA91325.It’s a tiny mom and pop coffee shop tucked away in the corner of a shopping center centered around an Albertson’s and a Wyler’s Delicatessen.And for several years in the early 21st century it was the hub of burgeoning local musical talent.It featured an open mic night that drew an audience from the surrounding area that was comprised of far more than just would-be singer songwriter musicians entertaining one another.People actually came to Perks to listen to what its open mic attendees were creating.
The names that recurred at Perks are not easily forgotten.Ben Jones, Aaron Miranda, Tom Washington, Bryan Chan, Mike Dill, Brooke Trout, Mark Brainard, Alex Schmauss, John Neira… the list goes on and on.Every one of these artists brought their musical conjurings to Perks every week to share what they had been creating, to get feedback for their efforts, to subtly hone their craft according to the constructive criticisms of their peers and an audience that was always appreciative but certainly discerning.
Many were the late evenings, special cup of Perks’ brew clutched in hand, that audiences of artists and connoisseurs enjoyed the musical performances of open mic attendees.Innumerable were the times that music of the highest order was consumed alongside Perks’ humble Panini and treat offerings…
But, as it seems all good things eventually converge to an end, ASCAP eventually caught up to this neighborhood mom and pop coffee shop that was not paying the appropriate dues to be featuring a weekly night of live music.Unable to address the requested fees on the part of the powers-that-be, the venue collapsed its open mic night and ceased to be a place where artists, musicians, and singer songwriters could share their creations with an appreciative community audience.
Undaunted by the bean-counters, however, the artists who regularly converged on Gayle’s Perks on a weekly basis have moved on to pursue their creations above and beyond the parameters of the beloved open mic night.Nearly every Gayle’s Perks participant has been preoccupied with the generating of musical projects that are completely worthy of note.Brooke Trout has moved on to a finely honed pop-rock project known as The Red Herring, Alex Schmauss has adapted his musical social commentary to the psychedelia of Alex & Alex, Aaron Miranda and Squeezebox Sam (yours truly) have invested their efforts in the neo-Americana Folk Punk sound of GRIT, Mark Brainard has invested his efforts in the rock n rollin’ Full Throttle, and Tom Washington has sculpted his Blue Lightning Review in his new home of Tehachapi, California.
On May 12th, 2011, Stephanie Antonio of Subculture Girl Productions, will give several of these Perks regulars an opportunity to have a reunion at LaBrie’s Lounge in Glendale, California.The “Get Off The Couch Thursday” event that Stephanie has secured will showcase current projects from Brooke Trout, Alex Schmauss, GRIT, guitar virtuoso Richard Marchetta, bluesman Brian Chan, and American rock and roller Tom Washington.This will be the first time all of these artists have been given the opportunity to be in one place at the same time, sharing their unique musical visions, in nearly five years, and this collection of local singer songwriters and music makers is not to be missed.
The facebook invite for this event can be accessed here:
ASCAP tried to turn these artists’ creative environment into a monetary issue and, in light of the mom and pop nature of the venue, they succeeded in robbing them of a place to share their creative endeavors.But all these great music makers have moved on to projects that could never have been were it not for their fellowship at the Gayle’s Perks open mic night.Come out to Subculture Girl Productions’ “Get Off The Couch Thursdays” at LaBrie’s Lounge in Glendale on May 12th to experience what these creative entities have been wrangling into existence in the years since Gayle’s Perks ceased being able to provide a place for them to gather. The doors open at 7:30pm and it's only 5 dollars! What better deal could you get on a Thursday night in Los Angeles for five measly dollars?
And, in the meantime, visit Gayle’s Perks for a cup of coffee or a fantastic Panini.
"I had a front row seat to hear ole Johnny sing." - Shel Silverstein
merican Recordings by Johnny Cash arrived in 1994, produced by Rick Rubin as the first release of his newly renamed record label.I was no stranger to Johnny Cash (I can blame that on my parents and older siblings), but the album did appear at a time when I was finally making music my own and I absorbed it eagerly and wholly.Probably the most important aspect of that record-release was the tour that accompanied it, enabling me to see Cash live at the Hollywood Pantages Theater.I don’t know that there are words to describe the fondness I have for that memory, even though I got a second opportunity to see him live when The Highwaymen toured for their last album a year or so later.But they were both events fated to not repeat themselves and I feel very fortunate to have had the experience.
But, despite it being Johnny Cash’s birthday, it isn’t really The Man In Black I want to lay some accolades on.There are many who will do that today and my voice would only be lost in the shuffle.Who warrants a listen to some accordion-squeezing hack from the San Fernando Valley when every accredited music critic, music historian, and venerable musical personality has something to say on the same topic?Nah.Everyone knows how I feel about Johnny Cash.I will let the masses say their part.Who I want to spend a moment talking about is Beck.
Yeah.Beck.That guy who musically defined the modern era of hipsterdom with classics such as “Loser”, “The New Pollution”, and “Where It’s At.”What the hell does Beck have to do with Johnny Cash?Well, Beck opened for Johnny Cash at that Pantages show so long ago.Even at the time the pairing was unprecedented.I remember friends being surprised when I told them who the opening act was indicated to be on the ticket.Even my eclectically inclined contemporaries were hard pressed to see the connection between Beck’s renowned frenetic, yard-blower stage antics and the perceived hallowedness of Johnny Cash.
My thirteen years senior older brother, a Johnny Cash diehard, reviled the thought of the pairing when I explained to him who Beck was and played some music for him.He even went so far as to suggest that we arrive late enough to the show as to miss the opening act, but my cajoling won out.
Anyone who knows Beck’s live performance (at least in the mid-1990s) reputation should have no problem comprehending my puzzlement over the pairing.But it was a puzzlement that was unwarranted.Instead, it was one of those instances where the Powers-That-Be should have been trusted.
Beck came out alone.Clad in a nondescript western shirt and weathered boots and armed with an undecorated steel bodied guitar he proceeded to render his own versions of what he verbally labeled “bad ass songs” for a hushed, and assuredly surprised (if not awed) audience.Beck’s “bad ass songs” were tunes out of the songbook of Americana, traditional tunes a century old with lyrical content that raised the eyebrows of the listener who believing in the premise that the past was innocent and plagued by fewer societal complications and problems than this supposedly downward-spiraling modern world.Songs about murderers, drug abuse, crushed dreams, and questionable repute from bygone eras flowed from Beck’s pickin’ an’ strummin’ fingers and searching voice.At one point he brought out a dobro player and a snare drummer and did a couple tunes as a trio, and in an inspired moment he blared a ditty through a harmonica fed through the tiniest and scratchiest of amplifiers, stopping to sing verses and chorus accapella before resuming his hearty huffin’ an’ puffin’.
For nigh on 40-some odd minutes Beck continued with this very un-Beckish performance.Then, amidst a tune he was carving out on the steel bodied guitar, a string break loudly resonated through the pick-up and out into the theater’s acoustics.There was a muffled “Shit” under Beck’s breath, then an apology, a regretful farewell, and a thank you to “whoever it was that booked me for this gig.”
And then he was gone.Johnny Cash delivered after that.The man was everything you could have imagined he would be, a stage presence so overpowering and commandeering that there was absolutely no stage show necessary to hold that audience riveted.The reverence held through the opening set with his band, through his just-me-and-my-guitar set in the middle of the show, and through the filmstrip-of-crashing-locomotives-accented Orange Blossom Special encore.
But even coming away from that night with the euphoric “I can’t believe I just saw Johnny Cash” mindset, it was hard to shake Beck.My perception of his music had been changed forever.Odelay! made sense on so many more levels than it had before, and the appropriation of such traditional tunes as “One Kind Favor” into his following album experimentations came as far from surprising.
When I look back on where the inspiration for Squeezebox Sam and any of the musical projects I’ve fooled with birthed from, there are the usual suspects such as being raised in a musically-versed family, permanently borrowing Lomax books from the public library, and hearing Gordon Gano’s “Mercy Seat” side project on a mid-morning independent radio broadcast.But I would be a liar if I did not include that Beck performance in the list.His offbeat stint truly inspired me to look at those beloved antique tunes in new ways.I, too, thank whoever booked him for that “gig.”
- Squeezebox Sam
Here's the variety review link fer that show so long ago:
"File under sacred music." - blurb from The Cramps' Songs the Lord Taught Us album art
y doom was to be minorly eclectic.
There just wasn’t any way I was going to avoid it.I grew up in a house with parents who were fairly music-adept.My mom was 18 years old in 1954.I have a box of original 45s from Sun Records and Chess.Hank Williams multi-disc 45rpm sets.Chuck Berry’s “Deep Feeling”.A deeply grooved Gene Vincent.Even a Cameo of Charlie Gracie’s “Fabulous”.All artifacts from my mother’s youthful musically-inclined ear.
But my parents never stopped acquiring music (mostly records) for most of their 54 years (currently) together.By the time I was old enough to peer up at the shelves and shelves of records that spanned the walls of the living room in my parents’ house they had delved into nearly every modern genre, from the American song book to standards to jazz and vocals to country and folk and what I would spend a large part of my youthful days disparaging as “hippie shit” (Mary Hopkin, The Mamas and the Papas, Peter, Paul & Mary…).I even acquired my first Ken Nordine record out of my parent’s collection, but that’s another story.
Certainly my parents were too old to be inclined to follow post 1970 musical developments, and they were never Beatles, Led Zeppelin, nor post-1963 rock n roll people, so there was a cap on the breadth.But I’m not going to complain.Imagine thinking about trying to ingest that wall of music.What was it all supposed to mean?Who the heck was this Guy Lombardo guy?Who was Harry Belafonte?What does this mean, Handel’s Messiah?How is Handel’s messiah any different from that one they talk about in church?What are American Railroad Songs and why should I be interested in them?
It was also challenging that my brother, fourteen years my elder, became an avid record and music collector as well.Also not a fan of the acid-rock revolution he was born into, I owe him for a continual dosage of Johnny Cash, Hank Jr., and Gordon Lightfoot.
And my sister?Seven years my senior, my sister lived Martha Coolidge’s Valley Girl.I owe her for exposure to the birthing throes of KROQ, second wave ska, The Stray Cats, the resurrection of my mother’s dust gathering 45s, and a worn out Depeche Mode cassette.Then she graduated high school and dragged hip-hop into the sonic menagerie I encountered on a daily basis.
So I did what any good kid who was immersed in this veritable cornucopia of musical opportunity would do.I started listening to gangsta rap.
Actually, that’s not quite the truth.When I first determined that I would come into my musical own, I turned on the clock radio in my room that had never uttered a peep except to klaxon me into wakefulness in the morning.The one thing I found that was different from all the offerings in my home was classical music.I don’t even remember the station. It was somewhere way down on the left hand end of the dial.It may even have been AM for all I remember.But it was different, and in light of the rest of these music purveyors inhabiting my living space, it was mine.
So I listened to classical music. I didn’t know the composers.The complicated titles of the compositions meant nothing to me.No attention was paid to this orchestra or that orchestra or such and such a conductor.But that’s what was in the background of my homework and model-building and whatever else I accomplished in my room as an adolescent.I don’t know what my family thought of it.Perhaps they thought it was odd.Maybe my parents thought I would grow up to be “cultured” or something.I don’t know.I don’t recall anyone ever commenting on it.
Then, one day, one of my sister’s boyfriends gave me a copy of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Swass”.I apparently approved, because then he loaned me NWA’s “NWA and the Posse” and Ice T’s “Power”.Being the logical individual I am, I was of course curious about the Intro and Outro tracks of “Power”, so along came Ice T’s “Rhyme Pays”.
So then I listened to classical music and gangsta rap.
And that’s pretty much the way it went for me all through middle school and into high school.My headphones were pumping one of two things into my ears… something akin to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” or something like Eazy E’s “Eazy Duz It”.I don’t really have an answer for the appeal of gangsta rap as a genre to a middle class white kid from the San Fernando Valley.I certainly wasn’t much of a rebellious type.For whatever reason, it just clicked.Somewhere along there I also acquired an interest in film music, probably via the renditions of Wagner used in Boorman’s “Excalibur”, but ultimately it was probably because it reminded me of classical.
Then, in 10th grade (back then, high school started with 10th grade), someone pressed a cassette tape into my hands with instructions to listen carefully.This was an album called “Disintegration” by a band called The Cure.I vaguely remembered seeing a Cure shirt on a guy in middle school.But this guy was also a devoted Beatle-maniac and talked continually about GREASE (the musical).I didn’t know what to expect.But I listened to it.
To say that it put a speed bump on my classically gangsta rap highway would be sort of an understatement… but to say that I didn’t like it would be a lie.It intrigued me deeply, actually.I don’t know if I was aware of it at the time, but in looking back I can understand that there was enough of a musical connection between spoken word numbers like “Lullaby” and my rap/hip-hop leanings to create a stamp of approval.But atmospheric songs like “Untitled” were classical-ish and soundtrack-ish enough to also retain validity.In short, I realized I had a new musical strain to delve into.Several times I fell asleep and awoke to that album, the flip and reverse cycle on the walkman working overtime through the night.
Don’t let it be thought that at any time I despised or rejected the musical heritage my family imbued me with.I was always cool with whatever it was that my brother or sister or mom or dad was spinning (except maybe my dad’s propensity for Carly Simon and Carol King… I just never could abide by them).But, as most youth probably do, I was looking for something to call my own.What ended up happening, however, was I ended up with what seemed like a plethora of disparaging musical strains that didn’t seem to make sense together.
And so it went.The collecting of this and that into my musical interests until everyone thought I was just too strange in my musical leanings.My sister was fine with Tony Tone Toni, but wouldn’t return to the Depeche Mode she had dumped on me years prior.My brother was fine with Johnny Cash, but could I please turn off that Dead Can Dance stuff?Dad was fine with Tiny Tim, but Run DMC was not going to be okay… ever.
To further complicate matters, late one night I came across the late great Warren Kolodny’s “Stay Awake” program on KCRW.His guest DJ that fateful night was none other than Byron Werner, purveyor of all things Juan Garcia Esquivel and what he coined as “Space Age Bachelor Pad Music”.I was instantly enraptured by this complex, hard to pigeon-hole mid-century lounge music.Sure, my parents had the standard Ferrante & Teicher quotient and the smattering of the Rat Pack, but their collection did not dig as deep as Alvino Rey or Esquivel.I was caught up.
Much to the chagrin of those who associated with me, I was then on a rampage of mid-century instrumentalism.Orchestral lounge music, surf, and instrumental rock made certain that no one ever wanted to ride any distance with me in my car.Except my cousin Sean.Also an investigator of the odd and off-beat he seemed to get it.But we were in a lonely understanding.
But still there did not seem to be a thread of uniformity in my listening pleasures.I was resigned to the fact that I was just a musical weirdo… too eclectic for my own social good.Then one day a friend pushed a couple CDs into my hands.He said, “Here.Since all you’ll listen to is that guitar instrumental stuff, you will probably like this.”The CDs were a copy of The Cramps’ “Bad Music for Bad People” and a combo disc of their EP “Gravest Hits” and the seminal “Psychedelic Jungle”.I expect it was his hope to shake me back into some semblance of tolerability.
And it did shake me up.There was a dramatic affinity in me for The Cramps from the first time I spun those CDs.And it wasn’t necessarily that they were anything “new”, per se, but they were certainly “out of the ordinary”.I identified that punk-goth-weirdo rocker aesthetic instantly… but what really fascinated me was that, despite the fuzz and the grind and the ooze and the moan and groan and snarl, I recognized that music as crawling from the records on my parents’ wall.Those 45s and LPs of my mom and dad’s, as well as my brother, had been dragged through the tapes and radio of my sister’s and those of my own youth, and out had popped The Cramps.
In those recordings there was an identifiable but indescribable link between everything I had been indoctrinated with musically while growing up.It contained the delirium of psychedelia, the brute force of punk, the forlornness of country, the desperation of the Delta, the lyrical recital of hip-hop, the innocent double entendre of rock n roll, the atmospheric repetition of electronic and industrial, the misery of Gothicism, and the illumination of the cathode ray, all wrapped into one aggressively complex offering.Lux Interior and Ivy Rorschach had groped back into the American musical psyche that had been buried by Beatles-mania and dragged it, kicking and screaming, into the latter 20th century.They bathed it in the taboo and rubbed musical America’s face in the discarded and forgotten heritage.And while it might be words of blasphemy to some, it was not the original material of The Cramps that really shined for me.For me, it was the way they reinterpreted the material of yesteryear with their own indelible stamp that was truly a mark of mastery.So well did they do this, in fact, that it was a fair amount of time before I knew that they weren’t just creating 100% music in the spirit of Americana ground up in a garage rock in-sink-erator.I remember the first time I heard Ronnie Dawson’s original “Rockin’ Bones”, or Roy Orbison’s “Domino”, or Jack Scott’s “The Way I Walk”, and said, “Wait… that’s not a Cramps song??What?!?”
You see, The Cramps had a way of culling through the obscure and finding the overlooked yet valuable, feeding it through their own creative meat grinder, straining it through the post modern musical mentality, and unleashing it again upon an unwary and unsuspecting audience.It makes me sad when I think of all the Hasil Adkinses and the Charlie Featherses that I may not have encountered in my musical journey had it not been for the vigilance of Lux Interior and his musical cohorts preserving them for me.And yet, they preserved the legacy of American music in such a personal manner that it also revealed the interconnectedness between so many seemingly disparate musical stylings.“Yes,” The Cramps seemed to always imply with each ground out chord and soulful yowl, “it really is all just the blues.”Later on down the road, this implication that I learned from The Cramps seemed solidified by learning that such seemingly far ranging artists as Hank Williams, Martin Gore, Alan Wilder, and Jimi Hendrix collected and drew inspiration from blues, hot-jazz, folk, and old timey musics.But it was that introduction to The Cramps that I look back on and see as the moment that I realized it all made sense.
With the second anniversary of Lux Interior’s untimely death approaching (he gave up the ghost on February 4th, 2009), I find myself glad that I had the opportunity to see them perform twice in the twilight of their twenty-some-odd year career.Once at the 2004 Hootenanny and a second time at Sunset Junction in 2006.I remember they headlined the Sunset Junction show, the last act of the night to grace the main stage, and the LAPD shut down the event just before Lux had the opportunity to shed his pants.It was almost as if they had been waiting for the moment.Some people have no sense of theater.
The Cramps.I owe them the recognition of being the source of coherence amongst my varied and divers musical interests.And while I doubt I would ever be inclined to rub my family’s nose in them, I also thank The Cramps for focusing an appreciation in me for the many colored musical umbrella I grew up under.Most of all, though, I give them credit for teaching me to dig deeper under the musical surface than I may ever have been inclined to do on my own.
Thanks, Lux, for not letting the music die.
Thanks, Andy, for jamming those Cramps CDs into my hands all those years ago.
ncle Jello" was the first painting of Nouar's that I ever saw in person.
ayle’s Perks is located at 9028 Balboa Blvd, 
merican Recordings by Johnny Cash arrived in 1994, produced by Rick Rubin as the first release of his newly renamed record label.
y doom was to be minorly eclectic.
