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 artiest: FAST 'N' BULBOUS
song: Abba Zaba
cd: Pork chop blue around the rind
label/referentie: Cuneiform/Lowlands/Rune205
Abba Zaba
van Don Van Vliet, beter bekend als Captain Beefheart. Het origineel
van dit nummer stond in 1967 op zijn fenomenale debuut Safe
as milk. Maar de versie die je net hoorde, is die van Fast
'n' Bulbous, het Captain Beefheart Project van gitarist Gary
Lucas en saxofonist Phillip Johnston. Als jong broekie is Gary
Lucas ooit nog manager geweest van Captain Beefheart én
hij heeft ook meegespeeld op de laatste twee platen van The Magic
Band. En Phillip Johnston is een bezig baasje uit de New Yorkse
downtown sien. Als scholier luisterde hij vooral naar oude jazz
van Duke Ellington en zo. Maar dan ontdekte hij begin jaren zeventig
op een goedkope verzamelplaat een paar songs van Captain Beefheart.
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: The first time I heard
them it just ripped my brain up. It was the most amazing music
I had ever heard. And it was also the first music other than
early Duke Ellington that I identified with and that spoke out
what was inside of my head. The Captain Beefheart thing was the
thing that I really felt like: "wow, this is my music".
En dan, in 1971, was er het eerste concert
van Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band in New York. Avant-garde
jazzcats als Charles Mingus en Ornette Coleman kwamen luisteren.
En ook Phillip Johnston en Gary Lucas zagen daar de Captain voor
het eerst live: een onvergetelijk concert dat hun leven voorgoed
heeft veranderd!
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: It was totally absolving
and it didn't scream "look at me". It just said: "here
it is, here's my vision of the universe and you can enter into
it or not". It just reminds me of the first time that I
saw Sun Ra for example; it just blew my mind in the same way.
I remember I came in a little late to the concert and Sun Ra
was playing with a very big version of his band and he was in
the middle of the most screamingly loud synthesizer solo, there
was a light show and it was just like taking acid just walking
in the door. And that was how it was when I first saw Captain
Beefheart. Just things that opened up my head to a different
reality.
GARY LUCAS: Beefheart to me was the best synthesis of
rock and jazz I ever heard. He really took all these innovations
of free jazz and applied them to the most primitive of country
blues dialling with off-sprung rhythms on the guitar. And then
there also was a bit of Stravinsky in the music. His organisation
is like a classical composer. Anyway it's all music. He's the
one who said: "Lick my decals off, baby". Which meant;
get rid of the labels, music is music. Either you like it or
you don't like it.
En zo hoorde je ook Gary Lucas over zijn
grote voorbeeld. Met Fast 'n' Bulbous willen hij en Phillip Johnston
de muziek van Captain Beefheart nieuw leven inblazen. En de naam
voor hun project halen ze uit een stukje spoken word van Trout
mask replica, hét meesterwerk van de Captain.
 artiest: FAST 'N' BULBOUS
song: Pachuco cadaver
cd: Pork chop blue around the rind
label/referentie: Cuneiform/Lowlands/Rune205
Fast 'n' Bulbous met Pachuco cadaver
uit Pork chop blue around the rind. De plaat werd vorige
zomer opgenomen, maar eigenlijk zijn Gary Lucas en Phillip Johnston
al sinds 2001 bezig met dit project. En een van de eerste Europese
concerten vond plaats in De Werf in Brugge, waar Jeroen Revalk
en Zjakki Willems toen ook dit interview maakten. Vier jaar geleden
al en dus nog vóór de reünie van The Magic
Band in 2003. Een reünie die Gary Lucas eerst helemaal niet
zag zitten.
GARY LUCAS: I've put so much of my early
musical life into working with Don Van Vliet, I really had to
step aside from it, to get perspective on it and just move on
to do my own thing. I didn't really want to have the influences
pursue me into the music I was making. And a lot of people had
come to me in the past and said: why don't you put The Magic
Band together again. I was like well that seemed pointless. To
go back to slavishly recreate these arrangements in the instrumentations
with the same people, or in combinations of the old members.
It had some appeal, but without Beefheart's voice it would not
work.
Ondertussen is er dus toch een reünie
van The Magic Band geweest en er is zelfs een cd van verschenen.
Maar de nieuwe plaat van Fast 'n' Bulbous is veel interessanter,
juist omdat daarop Captain Beefheart niet slaafs wordt nagespeeld
en alleen de geest van de originele muziek is behouden.
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: The original is so
good that you have the original, why just copy it? But to take
that music and express your love for that music through trying
to take it to a new place and trying to keep the spirit of Captain
Beefheart. We wanted it to be nice and messy like the original.
GARY LUCAS: He would never have liked his music described
as messy. In his own way, he thought that it was classical music.
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: It is absolutely, there's no doubt about
it.
GARY LUCAS: It's very precisely.
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: It is, it's very pristine. When I say
"messy", I mean more the wildness, the wild life. And
we wanted to keep the wildness of it, not to make it antiseptic,
not squeeze all the juice out of it. I was very intending on
not doing that.
Phillip Johnston en Gary Lucas zijn het
erover eens: het werk van Beefheart is eigenlijk klassieke muziek.
"En die komt pas echt tot zijn recht zonder de zang",
zegt Phillip Johnston, die alle arrangementen voor Fast 'n' Bulbous
schreef.
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: And it's like a problem
solving or a puzzle. How do you communicate the same spirit of
this music? And how do you treat the vocal in a way that you
still use that material but don't use a vocalist? It's really
like a reorchestration and that's the challenge of it. In each
song I've tried to treat the vocal in different ways. Sometimes
the vocal is played by an instrument, sometimes it's played by
several instruments, sometimes I use part of it, sometimes I
dropped it completely. But from the first time I heard the music,
as much as I loved the words and the singing style, immediately
my ear started to listen to all stuff underneath and the different
parts. Some people are so dazzled by the vocal that they miss
the incredible complexity of what's going on underneath. I wanted
to really bring that to the surface as part of what we were doing.
artiest: FAST 'N' BULBOUS
song: When Big Joan sets up
cd: Pork chop blue around the rind
label/referentie: Cuneiform/Lowlands/Rune205
When Big Joan sets up, nog een nummer uit Trout mask replica
van Captain Beefheart en hier onder handen genomen door Fast
'n' Bulbous. Ook in de originele versie was het al zo'n potje
chaos dat deed denken aan free jazz improvisaties. Maar daar
heeft het helemaal niets mee te maken.
GARY LUCAS: Like he himself was against
anybody improvising in the group. What sounds like chaos was
definitively organised and sculpted by Beefheart and you were
not supposed to deviate at all from the script that was laid
down in the rehearsals. He would talk about throwing you out
if you tempted to improvise. Anyway, I thought that Phillip's
idea brought in the best of both worlds in that he brought in
these elements of improvisation that exploded to pieces and opened
them up to further breeding space. But they preserve the integrity
and his arrangements of the original.
Maar ondanks al dat respect voor Captain
Beefheart en zijn werk, blijft toch de wel vraag wat die zelf
ervan vindt dat er zo met zijn muziek wordt gerotzooid.
GARY LUCAS: I'm sure that he would say
that: "What are you doing fucking around with my music,
Gary?!" I don't really care. He's going to get the royalties,
so what he's got to complain about?
PHILLIP JOHNSTON: We all build on the work of the past
and at best the most innovative composers and musicians just
push it forward a little bit. No fantastic changing the world,
but just put their own vision and their own slant on it. And
that music is out in the stream and I would love to think that
he would hear it and like it. But for every composer, once you've
put your music into the world, it has its own live and goes on
evolving with or without you.
artiest: FAST 'N' BULBOUS
song: Suction prints
cd: Pork chop blue around the rind
label/referentie: Cuneiform/Lowlands/Rune205
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