]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]] ]]]]]]] ]] ]] ]]]]]]]] ]] ]] ]] ] ]] ]] ]] ] ]]] ]]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ] ] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]]]] ]] ] ]] ]] ]]]]] ]] ]] ]] ]]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ] ]] ]] ] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]] ]]]]]] ]] ]] ]]]]]]]] ]] ]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]] ]]]]]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]]]]]] ]]] ]] ]]]]]] ]] ]]]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ]] ] ]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]]] ]] ]] ]]]]]]]] ]]]]]] I S S U E # 1 7 : O C T O B E R 1 9 9 6 DO UNTO PUMPKINS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THkm...AAAACK!!! ============================================================================ - The Specialists - DJ Johnson.................Editor Jim Andrews................HTML coLeSLaw...................Graphic Artist Lauren Marshall............Administrative Assistant Louise Johnson.............Administrative Assistant and Keeper Of The Debris - The Cosmik Writers - Jim Andrews, Cai Campbell, coLeSLAw, Robert Cummings, Shaun Dale, Phil Dirt, David Fenigsohn, Alex Gedeon, Keith Gillard, DJ Johnson, Steven Leith, Steve Marshall, The Platterpuss, Paul Remington, and John Sekerka --------------------------------------------------------------------------- T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S EDITOR'S NOTES: Happy Halloween! Contest winners announced. ANYTHING BUT HARMLESS: Lance Kaufman's music demands attention. With Yard Trauma in the 80's, he provided powerful Farfisa organ. With Harmless in 1990, he unleashed an album filled with shattering and cerebral music that demanded even closer attention. This year, he has taken on an alter-ego, Karla Pundit, and released an exotic album of organ music. What he'll do next is anybody's guess. In this interview, he discusses all of those projects, his 56 unusual roommates, and his fascination with the dark side of music. INVASION OF THE BOSS MARTIANS!: Seattle's awesome surf combo is on the rise! Guitarist Evan Foster discusses his music, his gear, and his zeal for the entire scene. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS: Satan takes a break from whatever it is he does all day and talks to our nervous interviewer about Halloween and whatever the hell is on his little mind. POLITICAL PLAYBOOK: The Fat Lady Tunes Up - As the Presidential elections near a conclusion, the results are looking pretty obvious. Shaun Dale takes a look at the good and the bad of it. RECORD REVIEWS: Loads and loads of 'em. Oodles, even. (What the hell's an oodle, exactly?) BETWEEN ZERO & ONE (Steven Leith): Mr. Leith looks at another possible future for the Internet, and shares a little advice: use it while you've got it. PHIL'S GARAGE (Phil Dirt): Sir Dirt's short story, "The Lady In The Reverb," with a main character that doesn't resemble any living person. Nope. Not one. Not him, either! Nobody. Back off! We have a lawyer! THE AUDIO FILE (Cai Campbell): Cai's final Cosmik Debris column deals with an affordable tool that can make all the difference in the world for your sound system. dead STUFF I NOTICED (DJ Johnson): Do you love your band? Do you want to keep playing together forever and ever? Then DO NOT let this man interview you! TAPE HISS (John Sekerka): A double dose of rock and roll, as John interviews Killdozer AND The Upper Crust. THE DEBRIS FIELD (Louise Johnson): Our Debris Keeper, Louise, has outdone herself this month! It's a Halloween potpourri. RAISE THE DEAD (How to contact us!) You can either go through a medium, which means all that down time while you wait for our spirit guides and all that, or you can just...you know...send us e-mail. It's always good to have options, isn't it? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- E D I T O R ' S N O T E S By DJ Johnson Happy Halloween! My favorite day of the year, actually--probably due to my overactive dark side. In honor of the season, we've decked this issue out in our own version of Halloween decor. Right off the bat, I'd like to thank two people who worked a lot of extra hours to make it all come together. coLeSLAw, our artist type guy, spent a lot of late night hours on the phone with me this month batting ideas back and forth, creating great titles and just generally being indispensable. I'd also like to thank Louise Johnson, my wife, who has rescued The Debris Field from neglect by spending a lot of time searching for cool stuff to put in there--and forsaking sleep in order to tweak the Field until it looked absolutely incredible. Make sure you check it out. We're losing a writer. One we've lost before! Cai Campbell was one of the four original Cosmik writers, and one of the people who helped shape Cosmik from the beginning by sharing ideas and offering creative feedback on other peoples' ideas. Cai has some great ideas for an E-Zine of his own, and he's decided to make it happen. As soon as it's ready to fly, Cosmik Debris will have an announcement, and we will have a link directly to Cai's page. We'll miss his Audio File column and his educated reviews. Good luck, Cai. I also want to take this opportunity to thank KFJC-FM disc jockey Anne Arbor for inviting me to be interviewed on her drive time radio program, Dancing In The Fast Lane With Ann Arbor. It gave me a chance to spend 20 minutes going on and on about my favorite topic--Cosmik Debris--to listeners in San Francisco and vicinity. Thanks, Ann. Finally, we have last month's contest to talk about. Our Halibuts CD and T-shirt giveaway, to be precise. The winners are: Jorge Rosas of Aveiro, Portugal; Dave Wood of Rockville, Maryland; Peter Pugliese of Quebec, Canada; Pat Stevens of Oxford, Connecticut; and Boyd Williamson of Columbia, Missouri. They each win a copy of the brand new Halibuts CD, Life On The Bottom, and a Halibuts T-shirt. Congratulations to all. Be sure to check out this month's contest, where you can win a pair of CDs by Lance Kaufman. His 1991 release, HARMLESS: Protect Us From Evil, and his new release (in the guise of his alter ego, Karla Pundit), KARLA PUNDIT: Journey To The Ancient City. If you only get the ascii version of Cosmik Debris, you're still eligible to win. Simple send e-mail to moonbaby@serv.net with your name, address, phone number and e-mail address. Multiple entries will be discarded. Those of you who are reading us on the World Wide Web will find entry forms at the end of the Lance Kaufman interview and also toward the end of the table of contents frame. That's about it. This issue is packed. Hope you enjoy it. DJ Johnson Editor --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A N Y T H I N G B U T H A R M L E S S ! From Yard Trauma To Harmless To Karla Pundit, Lance Kaufman Does It All. Interview by DJ Johnson As MTV and top-40 radio continue to blast out unchallenging music for mass consumption, a much smaller segment of the population waits anxiously for anything that will make them think. If a certain piece of music can catch their attention, it's welcomed with open arms. The music of Harmless grabs and shakes its listeners, demanding not only their attention but immediate participation and analysis. Lance Kaufman's musical vision is quite unique in this world of cookie-cutter recording artists. An immensely talented keyboard player with a jazz background, he walked away from that scene for a time to play with San Francisco's legendary garage band, Yard Trauma, with whom he released two excellent albums. In 1991, he formed a band called Harmless around a semi-fictional storyline he had dreamed up while doing time playing in jazz nightclubs. The music contains several elements of jazz and even exotica. The sax (played by Martin Fierro) acts like an errant bottle rocket all through the album, fizzing and screeching in every which direction, creating a chaotic sonic face-slap that got the attention of the listener and held it for Kaufman's lyrics. His lyrics are most definitely not standard issue boy-meets-girl pablum. Dark, unsettling and sometimes wildly disturbing, the lyrics also demand attention, but more than that, they demand that you form an opinion. Songs like "Richard Bible," a story of outrage at a system that would release a repeat sex offender into an unsuspecting community where he would kill children; like "Hiroshima Maidens," an emotionless verbatim reading of a 1955 article about the medical progress of young women who were tragically disfigured in the atomic bomb blast; like "Harmless," the true centerpiece of the album, which chronicles the progress of an oppressed house jazz band as they rebel against the attitudes of their audience and run amok playing exactly what they really want to play. By the end of the album, the listener is wrung out, but much wiser. Kaufman's old Yard Trauma bandmate, Lee Joseph, released Harmless on his Dionysus label in 1991. Unfortunately, not many heard it. Of course, in 1991, not many were READY for it, either. After a stint as keyboardist for the legendary Oscar Brown, Jr., Kaufman returned this year as Karla Pundit--a dead on tribute to Korla Pandit, the turban-wearing organist whose exotic style made him a star in the Hollywood of the 50's and 60's. With exotica being all the rage, the timing couldn't have been better, but the truth is that Lance Kaufman had been into exotica since his youth. Now, with Karla Pundit sales doing very well, Kaufman is considering giving Harmless another chance to catch on. A lot of horrible musical garbage has come our way since 1991, over television, over radio, over and over. Perhaps people are ready to listen to music that might challenge them. This originally figured to be a fairly quick interview, but the more he talked, the more interesting it became to me. More questions followed, and before we knew it, nearly nine hours of conversation had gone by. Here, then, is a remarkably condensed version of one of the most interesting conversations I've had in a long while. - - - Cosmik: What was your training? Was it classical or jazz, or... Lance: Yeah, I am classically trained. I hope no one holds that against me (Laughs). My parents decided when I was three and a half that I had some musical talent just because I was pretending to conduct the orchestra on some record or something. So they kind of forced me into studying piano, and I studied for I guess about ten or eleven years, pretty much hating it the whole time. That was my way of pleasing them. It was set up so I kind of stuck with it. I was bribed. It gave me a real good foundation in terms of playing what I wanted to do, but it was never [an issue] of whether I'd like the music or not. I mean, occasionally something would catch on just because there would be a piece that was interesting. But it was just haphazard. More than likely, it was something that I was just doing because I was supposed to do it. I've gone back, years later, and was able to do music that I wanted to do and it was a whole different thing, because I like a lot of classical music, but I'm pretty opinionated and have pretty limited tastes. I like a lot of twentieth century stuff, and then...real early stuff, but it seems like otherwise, there's a lot of the standard stuff that I'm really bored by. Cosmik: Like? Lance: Oh, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms...Occasionally I'll hear something by Brahms that I like, but I'm definitely like an all-around classical person. I'm sort of disgusted with the state of performances, and what gets performed and what doesn't get performed. But I could say that, probably, about jazz or any other kind of music. At any rate, I studied for that number of years, and I did pretty well, won some competitions and stuff. And then finally, I got to a point where I just couldn't stand it, and I really blew a competition badly. And at the end of that, I told them that I didn't want to do it anymore. Cosmik: Did you blow it intentionally? Lance: Well...probably subconsciously. But I really just didn't want any part of it anymore. It had been going on too long. And during that time, I had been listening to rock and roll and collecting 45's, and that was really the music, at that time, that I liked. Several years after I quit studying classical piano, I got interested in jazz, and sort of learned how to play jazz on my own. I was playing it before I understood what it was, really. I didn't have any idea of chord structures or things like that. That came later. So I have a background in both, and there's a lot in both that I like. And then again, there's a lot that I don't like. Cosmik: You mentioned that you like some modern composers. Who specifically? Lance: Well...probably anyone who isn't connected with minimalism. My own opinion of Phillip Glass is that he's the yuppie composer of the late twentieth century. I like Schoenber, I like 12-tone composers. There's a composer who I really like who probably has written quite a bit but hasn't had things recorded very much. Her name is Miriam Gideon. I think she's from New York. I like George Crumb, you know, a lot of the atonal people. Actually...You go to the edge, in terms of sound, and you get to a point where noise equals music, you realize you can't go any further. So you have to go back and pick up on some of the stuff that you missed on the first journey. So, there are some people that are a little more conventional, like Benjamin Britten, that I've really gotten to like, and I actually really like his operas. For me, an ingredient that's important in any kind of music is that it's making some kind of an emotional statement. I don't like judging any music either technically or theoretically, or breaking it apart and analyzing it. I think if something moves you, whether it's simplistic or if it happens to be more complex, then that's great, but I don't think I could ever listen to music for a technical exercise. I've never really liked show-offs in any kind of music--pieces that were written in the classical repertoire for violinists to show off, or something like that. I think of people like Al DiMeola, who I've never understood his appeal to anyone, because basically, it just seems like he's trying to play as many notes as he can. In jazz, too, I feel like if you're going to play notes, they should mean something, and not just be showing off. I'm not generally impressed by that sort of thing. I'd rather hear something sparse or simple and find that there's an emotionally compelling aspect to it. Cosmik: Are there exceptions in jazz or avant garde? Players that maybe are technically amazing, but are also playing something meaningful... Lance: Oh yeah. Someone like Eric Dolphy, who was an incredible technician, and I've heard that he was capable of doing anything on the instrument. But he's using sound to say something. I mean, it isn't just bullshitting around on the instrument. Or even going back further...for some reason, I like Art Tatum, and he's, to me, an amazing technician, but for some reason it doesn't seem that superficial. But somebody like Oscar Peterson, who is very much out of that same mold, I don't like at all. I've never liked Oscar Peterson. In terms of newer people, obviously there are people doing some experimental stuff or cross-breeding different types of hybrid musics, but I sort of feel like the current situation in jazz in general is kind of pathetic. I hate to name people and criticize them, but someone like Wynton Marsallis can be considered a legend or something, and basically he's just an okay imitator of about five different trumpet players. There are people around now that are doing a lot more original stuff that I'd rather see getting attention. But it seems like... jazz used to have an underground aspect to it. It was not the accepted music. There was an edge to it. It implied rebellion in its own way. Now, in general, it brings images of jazz festivals and people sitting around smiling at each other and tasting wine and cheese in a completely unthreatening atmosphere. "Let's go to a jazz festival! Happy happy!" And in fact, that's actually how the group concept of Harmless got going. The music has another story, but the whole idea of the Harmless thing is it's this group that's trying to be as inoffensive as possible and they're playing for these nice audiences, but they've just about had it, and essentially they go berserk and tear off their nice clothes and express what they've really been wanting to play all along. The song "Harmless" is envisioning that group...that goes astray and finally asserts itself rather than being willing to continue playing the bullshit to survive. Cosmik: "If we played the music we wanted to, it would make you shit." Lance: Yeah. Which, unfortunately, people don't want anything that they have to digest or they have to think about. It seems that way in film, or in the arts in general. Everybody wants the superficial crap that you can just lay on a table in front of them and they can absorb it all. Like with film... Show me a film that's ABOUT something instead of one that just demonstrates the technological advances that, you know, "we're able to show anything or recreate anything." How about a little humanity in there somewhere, or a little statement about something. Cosmik: I hear elements of both classical and jazz in the Harmless material. Which artists influenced your keyboard playing? Lance: Well that's a tough one, because a lot of the stuff I've listened to over the years has not been keyboard players. I've listened to a lot of standard jazz keyboard players, but in terms of something that I would do now, or something that was relevant now, a lot of the groups that I've enjoyed were keyboardless. Then you get into that whole other thing of keyboards and rock and roll, and what that brings to mind for most people--and rightly so--is overproduced, watered down, and smooth. And I really don't like that, but there's a reason for that label, because a lot of the stuff that's done with keyboards, unfortunately, is that way. I didn't want to do something that way. In doing the Harmless thing, I wanted to do something without guitar using a standard jazz lineup, and using keyboards but to try to use them in ways that might surprise people and show them that keyboards can have an edge, or even acoustic piano, if used properly, can have an edge and can create some of the intensity that you find in rock and roll that would NOT use keyboards. Essentially, I was trying to use sounds that were uncharacteristic. There's a single version of "They Dug Up Elvis," and the flipside is a Martin Denny/Arthur Lyman take-off called "Peaceful Amazon Village." The single of "They Dug Up Elvis" is different from the album version. It's much more "wall of noise." I use something that I call The Lance-a-Tron on it, which is kind of a joke. It's one of the very original electric pianos that somebody just had in their house, and they gave it to me. It's like a little baby upright piano that you have to pull the keyboard out and stick it in, and it just comes out with these two prongs. But it's basically a real piano with strings, and this thing was all out of tune and fucked up, and I just left it that way and ran it through a bunch of effects. I used it on "I Passed For White." That was the Lance-A-Tron on there. It was called The Piano-Tron, but I went out to a stationary store and got letters that matched up, scraped the "Piano" off and put "Lance" on. Actually, that's languishing in a storage shed in San Francisco right now. But anyway, I wanted the album to be jazz influenced without necessarily being a jazz album. But I think there is definitely, like you say, a jazz influence in there, and even a classical influence. I would have to say people like Cecil Taylor, and Muhal Richard Abrahms, or Paul Bley. Everybody's always talking about Karla Bley, and for some reason she's someone I've never warmed up to. But her ex-husband, Paul Bley, before he kind of got old and tired really did some interesting things, piano-wise. And there was probably the influence from listening to saxophones and horns a lot. I like, if I'm going to use chords, I'll use them not as a chord structure, but as a texture. I did that on "Hiroshima Maidens." It's two chords that keep repeating. And I wanted the sax player to listen to that as a texture that was there, and not like "well, that's a G-chord there, so I'm going to play in this mode that fits a G Major chord," or something like that. I wanted him, in fact, to clash against it--to use it as something to bounce off of and NOT fit in with. Cosmik: When did you play with Yard Trauma? Lance: I was on their first two albums, which was like mid 80's. '83 or '84. They went through quite a transition over a period of time. They actually started out as strictly a noise group with someone playing radio broadcasts and stuff. It was just two people, I think. Lee Joseph and Joe Dodge always liked 60's stuff a lot. About the time I joined, they switched gears and went into a neo-60's punk kind of thing. Actually, there was a stage in between that where they were briefly kind of a hardcore band, and I joined them at the tail end of that. I was just playing Farfisa [organ] in the group, and people found it rather amusing that I was playing like hardcore Farfisa. (Laughs) I remember that there were some people that didn't particularly like that idea! And they may have been right, in retrospect. Then it evolved into a fairly hard edged 60's sounding group, which I actually had a whole bunch of fun playing. They were real powerful sounding, and the songs that those guys were writing were real interesting. We were doing a few covers, but it was mainly original stuff. They really evolved to where they wanted to get away from the 60's thing. This was after I left. Cosmik: Why did you leave the band? Lance: I couldn't move on to LA with them. My wife was just finishing up medical school and was just getting ready to start a residency in Phoenix. But I really loved playing with them. Cosmik: With your background, wasn't Yard Trauma kind of a stretch? Lance: Well, I've always been a hard person to understand, from the viewpoint of other musicians. Like when the whole punk and new wave thing started, and I was playing jazz with people in San Francisco, and I would bring this stuff to them to hear, and they thought it was trash and couldn't understand how someone who had the capabilities I had, you know, [in mock-awe voice] to play jaaaazz could actually listen to this "crap." Which shows how closed-minded they were, because this so-called crap was so much newer and fresher and... full of energy than anything that they were doing. But I've always been hard to pin down, and I've actually gotten to a point where I like that fact now. Somebody seeing Karla Pundit is going to think I'm this lounged-out mellow guy, and then play "They Dug Up Elvis" for 'em, and they'll say "Wait a minute, this can't be the same person." I don't know, now I'll have to come up with something else completely different from that stuff to keep people guessing. I definitely don't want to be labelled as a jazz person. I don't mind it being considered that I can play jazz, though I think I'm probably just an adequate player. But again, if somebody has something to say musically, it doesn't matter if they have all this technique, or whatever. Some of the people I enjoyed most didn't even know how to play, and once they learned how to play, I didn't like them anymore. Like Jad Fair, from Half Japanese. They were, I think, just a bunch of kids that got together with their friends and played instruments they didn't know how to play and made some great music. Then the last couple things I heard, it sounded like they learned to play. And actually, Pharoah Sanders is another person who played instinctually rather than learning the theory of playing, and in learning the theory of playing, he sounds completely different and is not nearly as interesting. Cosmik: How did you go about choosing the players for Harmless? Lance: Well, they're people that I knew that were used to...well, Martin Fierro, the saxophonist, is maybe a little more diverse in his background, but in general they are jazz people that have interests in other areas, and are used to following me in crazy directions, and who knew that they weren't going to make any money, but whatever it is, it's going to be something odd that won't be boring. Martin, actually, is kind of a bay area legend. He was around in the late 60's, mainly in a band called The Shades Of Joy, which I think is considered one of the first jazz influenced rock and roll bands. They were on the soundtrack to El Topo. He was on everybody's albums. He did some stuff with Sir Douglas Quintet, Quicksilver...I think he was on some Grateful Dead albums. Seems like just about any album that had a horn section coming out of the San Francisco scene back in those days, he wound up being on it. I've known him for a number of years. But I think this was the first chance he got to really open up... Cosmik: Yeah, there were no rules, were there? Lance: No. Well, I mean, they are songs, so there is some kind of structure to everything. And that was the intent. I didn't want to do an album just of free improvisation, and I actually got criticized by some of the free improvisers because I had lyrics and because they were actually song-length pieces rather than stretching out. Which we could have done, but that wasn't the concept. But back to your question, they were guys who I had done some other stuff with...some jazz and rhythm and blues stuff back in San Francisco. Cosmik: Did Harmless play out much? Lance: (Laughs) No. We played out one time, and it was the wrong place, the wrong time, we weren't organized enough...there were some real problems. And I think that may be part of the problem. There wasn't a band out there... Cosmik: Supporting it? Lance: Yeah, doing any live performances. The timing was really bad. The release date was a lot later than originally planned. And...I'm not going to dwell on this, but I've got some real problems with keeping a positive attitude. I've got, at times, some major depression problems that can effect my functioning as a musician, or as anything else. I think I got discouraged early on, before it was time to, and kind of shut the thing down. But at this point, it's looking like we're going to try it again. Cosmik: I know musicians hate to be pigeonholed, but how would you describe this music? If you had to put it in a section at a record store, where would it be? Lance: I would hope it's not "Alternative." I would rather see it in "Rock and Roll" than in anything else, I think. I'm not sure I would say that it should be in experimental, because it's not really experimental in the way that people think of experimental. So I would probably just say the "Interesting Rock and Roll" section as opposed to the "Corporate" section. Cosmik: I get the impression that "They Dug Up Elvis" isn't necessarily about AFTER he was dead. I wondered if it was more about his later career. Anything to that? Lance: No, it is after he's dead. I'm sort sickened by what we do to people who we supposedly revere and love, and in the name of that love we trash them for our own pleasures and enjoyment without any consideration that they were human beings with feelings. There's this sort of mania that takes over, and I'm just sickened by it. As you'll see by the cover of the single, we did a photo shoot in Phoenix on a Sunday afternoon. I got a bunch of friends together and told them to dress up like the Elvis fans of their nightmares. We got a coffin and a skeleton, and an Elvis jumpsuit like he wore in Vegas, and put it on him in the coffin. And these people were all pouring over him and pawing at him. So it is very much after he's dead. It's like a nightmare happening, and the events that you would expect stupid people to require of him, in the name of their love for him--what they force him to do. Cosmik: You screamed that song at the absolute top of your lungs. I think about the famous story of The Beatles saving "Twist And Shout" for the end of the session because they knew it would shred Lennon's vocal chords, and all I can think of is that you must have practically needed hospitalization! Lance: (Laughs) Well, no, believe it or not I got to where I could do that and still talk and sing and speak normally. It isn't screamed. The way I do it is sort of forcing it out, tension-wise. It's really not at that great a volume--it's not open. It's like a closed screaming rather than open as loud as I can possibly go. But I've got to come up with something else to use that voice on. (Laughs) It's the only thing I've ever used it on. Cosmik: (Laughs) It's effective! Lance: It's such a waste! I mean, it's a good voice. Cosmik: Is there any particular reason you chose that song to open the album? Lance: Oh, I don't know. Possibly because the single of it actually did pretty well. I wanted to open the album with "Harmless," because that would make sense as this group of people that are harmless and then the music proceeds after that because they've started to assert themselves. But I was afraid people would listen to that and hear that first, and it wasn't necessarily one of the stronger pieces in terms of style, and I was afraid that they'd hear that and dismiss it and not go on. So I just felt, in a way, that there were some people out there that would buy the album because they would recognize that "They Dug Up Elvis" was on there. I mean, the single didn't do great, but considering nobody knew who I was, it did okay...much better than the album did, at least initially... I mean, with the new revived interest in Harmless, and the fact that it looks like there is going to be a new band, I'm hoping there's going to be a new album. I had a bunch of new material back then that didn't get recorded, and I'm writing new stuff now, so I'm hoping we're going to do another album and this time actually perform and do it properly. And give it a chance. Cosmik: "I Passed For White" is a strong anti-racist statement. Why did you decide to write it from the perspective of an alien visitor? Lance: Well, some people latch on to stuff I do and see it as humor, and certainly there is humor in there, but I think what I basically am doing is...I think that I'm a person with a moral mission or something. (Laughs) I mean, I'm screaming out in outrage about all these various things. I think you have to be careful in how you approach these things. I think it's real easy to get preachy if you write about something serious or that you feel strongly about. You can get preachy, or pretentious, or self-indulgent. My feeling is that in order to write about something like that, like racism or Hiroshima, you have to come at it from some kind of an odd angle, like with "They Dug Up Elvis" or "I Passed For White," doing it somewhat humorously and definitely from an odd perspective. I use humor and coming from these odd directions in order to be able to tackle some of these subjects and not have it be ponderous. The "Hiroshima Maidens" thing, you know, here I wanted to write something about Hiroshima, and I find this great article by this guy who was writing for the Saturday Review, and just reading it without any emphasis or trying to be cute with it, I think that kind of thing can make a stronger statement in its sarcasm or the absurdity of it than if you're ranting and raving about what happened to those people. The thing about "I Passed For White" that was so weird was that I woke up in the middle of the night and had the idea for the song. I think the name is actually from some old B movie from the 50's. I find things that I want to write about, and then it's like trying to find a way to approach it that isn't going to be stupid. Or maybe it IS going to be stupid, and that will make it work, whereas if you just tried to be straight-forward and serious about it, it wouldn't have the impact. Cosmik: When you first found that 1955 Saturday Review article that became "Hiroshima Maidens," did you immediate see it as a performance piece? Lance: Yeah, absolutely. Cosmik: It just struck you right then and there... Lance: Yes. The way I found it was that I was researching at the library looking for material, and I was getting nowhere because I was thinking "how can I write about this from my perspective," trying to think of what perspective wasn't going to sound like, again, preachy, or overbearing, or maudlin. And then I kind of stumbled on this by accident. And it worked out, I think, very well. Cosmik: Tell us about "Blowjob Parts 1 & 2." The whole "sex is a lie" concept. That's a pretty disturbing song. Lance: There, you've got a whole area of thought that I'm preoccupied by. I guess sex in real life as opposed to glamorized life, and particularly in music. I mean, I don't want you to think that I've been a complete miserable failure in my sexual relationships, but there have been some good things and some real nauseating things. And I get sick of this "everybody has a great time and everything's great," and I guess I'm preoccupied with showing the failed side of sexual relationships, and I'm intrigued by the reality of our sexual relationships with each other as opposed to what we try to make each other believe or what we want to believe. There are enough people writing about sex in a stereotypical way. I'd like to get in a few pieces about the destructive or darker side of it. The "Richard Bible" thing is another side of it. The same thing...my preoccupation with the darker side of sex. Cosmik: That was the next song I was going to ask you about, too. Lance: He was a Flagstaff phenomenon. Cosmik: Was that his real name? Lance: That's his real name. When people read the it, they'll pronounce it "Bibble" because they just can't believe that's his real name. I was living here when that happened, so I experienced the whole community thing that was going on with it. That, to me, if there's one piece that's the strongest on the record, it was that one. There was no way that I could have anything AFTER it on the record. That had to be the last piece on there. I just listened to the CD for the first time in two years. I listened to it in the car when I had to drive into Phoenix for the day, and I was in tears when I was listening to that. Cosmik: Yeah, that song wrings me out. Lance: I think the piece succeeds really well that way. So yeah, I have a preoccupation with sex, and I also have a HEALTHY preoccupation with it that occasionally comes out in more positive ways, but I don't think, in general, that my songs are very positive. (Laughs) I'm actually writing one piece that the new Harmless is going to do that is more optimistic. It's about as optimistic about life as I'm gonna get, I think. It's not all smiles and happy happy, but... I think I tend to zero in on darker things. I love the Marx Brothers, and I love comedy, and I definitely have a sense of humor and love the absurd, but I think, basically, I zero in on the dark things maybe because there's more emotion there or more intensity. The films I like are pretty dark, and the music I like is pretty dark and intense. Cosmik: With "Richard Bible," I didn't feel any humor. I felt outrage at the system. Lance: Yeah, that may be an exception. You're right, because I don't think my little sarcastic bits got in there. Maybe I felt I wanted a purity in there that went right for absolutely what happened and chronicled it. And absolutely didn't mess around with it. Cosmik: The song was more an indictment of system than an indictment of Richard Bible, wasn't it? Lance: Oh, yeah, I mean it's something that has shown up relatively frequently, and I'm not sure why it keeps happening. Cosmik: The title track is probably very funny to the average listener...it's like a sarcastic "fuck you" to the whole jazz club-background music thing. But to musicians who've done that gig, it rings very true, things like "careful we don't disturb a word you're saying." Have you had to play in that kind of atmosphere, or was that an outside observation? Lance: Well, I definitely have had to. The fact that I survived playing music for a number of years...that was the only way I could. I probably didn't have the luxury of getting into recording stuff. I suddenly needed to be making money instantly, so I wound up in the club scene doing that. I think there are many musicians that can relate to that. I'm not sure how non-musicians would relate to it, but I think people that are more serious about their music could relate to that even if they aren't musicians, because they see what those people are like that go into those places. Cosmik: Did you have any hope that the people who treat bands like that in clubs might hear the song and think? Lance: No, you know, I think more and more, I sort of feel like I have no hope that anything anybody is going to say is going to change anybody's mind. I almost feel like what we do when we try to express something that could teach, that somebody could learn something from, what we're doing is reinforcing our own group and the solidarity there. Or releasing these screams that we have to release--that we have to say this even if nobody's hearing it. Cosmik: Because the music is anything but passive, and the lyrics demand that the listener forms an opinion, I wonder if "Harmless" is also a swipe at the bands of the last fifteen or twenty years that don't try to say or change anything... Lance: I don't want to say that, because I think that people do that stuff for a variety of reasons. Like me, I had to disguise myself. The person that people were seeing or imagining me to be like was absolutely nothing like what I was. And I know that I worked with other people who, for whatever reason, needed to be doing this too, and hated it and wound up hating themselves. I went through a self-hate thing and a guilt thing over all the shit that I did. On the other hand, there are people who enjoy doing that. To them, that's what music is. But I wouldn't want to, in general, say that all these people are full of shit for doing this, because you get put into a position where if you have to survive and make a living, it's the best option at the time. Cosmik: Throughout the whole record, the sax sounds like chaos. Sometimes the music in the background, even though it's not simple stuff, it tends to be more of a stable texture while the sax is going crazy... Lance: Yeah, well see, that's what I was talking about. I'll use something texturally, whether it's chords that might be fairly simple, or some other kind of a structure. It's intriguing to me to put something on top of that that would not normally be there or is in direct opposition to that. So that's very much intended. Cosmik: The upheaval in that music is fascinating and dangerous. Are you attracted to chaos? Lance: Oh yes, very much so. I don't think I could listen to album-length constant noise that didn't have some kind of a structural point to guide it, because that can get as dull as listening to the same chord changes played the same way over and over again. But I like chaotic stuff a lot. There are some jazz players I like--mostly reed players--that tend to be pretty chaotic, like Roscoe Mitchell from The Art Ensemble. And then there's a New York player by the name of Marty Erlich that's real talented. And Oliver Lake, who has played with the World Saxophone Quartet, but has done a bunch of stuff with other people. And Arthur Blythe, and then a person who just died recently, Julius Hemphill, who was a great player. They don't all sound alike, but they all have that human screech, screaming, crying quality. Cosmik: How would you describe the role of the sax in Harmless? Lance: Well, it's obviously human voice-like, like screaming. Basically, it's the solo instrument. I don't know why I particularly wanted that sound, to tell you the truth, but I know I hear that kind of saxophone playing as speech; as speaking, or screaming, or crying or whatever. There may be some kind of connection there that I've never really thought about that much, but I think the decision for that sound was based on the fact that I liked the idea, musically. It actually looks like this up and coming version of Harmless may be saxophoneless. I may just do it as a trio. But it's still going to be the same thing. Instead of the saxophone screaming, probably in some way whatever keyboard things I'm doing will have the same kind of chaotic frantic thing going on, to some degree. It may be more subtle. If there was a guitar player, that's the sound I would want, you know. Kind of a constant barrage of sound rather than waiting to play a solo or playing some written line. I do like the idea of bombarding people with sound. I joke about being the Phil Specter of the avant-garde or something. (Laughs) I like toying with people's minds; taking them in a direction as far as I can and getting them out on a limb before they realize that they've been tricked. Which you'll see when you hear "Peaceful Amazon Village." Cosmik: Why won't Martin be back? Was there a falling out between you and Martin? Lance: Well, he's in a band called Zero, which is much more mainstream, but they've wound up doing very well. He just doesn't have time for both projects. Cosmik: Let's talk about exotica, which is a style you perform as Karla Pundit, and you used elements of it in Harmless before it was a popular style again. I know I discovered it because my dad liked it when I was a kid, and I rebelled against it then rediscovered it later. How did you discover that genre? Lance: The same way you did. The one person who I really think of, and this is getting off the track a bit, but Louis Prima, who when I first heard him, I thought he was just ridiculous. I couldn't believe anybody could be that stupid. Then at some point I realized what I'd missed. I'm not really sure how I evolved into liking exotica, but it's been quite a while. I'm an absolutely fanatical addictive record collector. There is no hope for me ever having a place to put my stuff, getting it cataloged and...my studio has turned into a storage place for records. They're in the way of all my keyboards and everything. I listen to an awful lot of music. It seems like...you've got to keep growing, somehow. And so I went through the jazz stuff that I liked, and the rock and roll stuff that I liked...and you keep looking for other stuff. In a way, I like something of everything. There are a couple kinds of music that I'm still struggling with, one of them being rap, but I'm even finding a few things there that I like. And country western being another. I've only recently started listening to earlier country western...I don't think I'll ever like the modern country stuff. Cosmik: How was it that your playing in Harmless had an exotic sound? Was that something you absorbed from hearing it in your house when you were growing up? Lance: No. No, I think absorbing that was fairly recent. If there's a talent I have that's a bit unique, it's not that I'm that great a player in any particular area, but for some reason I can adapt to just about anything and do an adequate job. And have it sound in context, not have it sounding like it doesn't fit. Part of it is that I've always been a group person or an overall sound person rather than a person who wants to show off, solo-wise. I've always been real conscious of what part each individual plays in the overall sound, and that's what you're trying to achieve, whatever that happens to be for that particular group or project. But just by listening to stuff, I seem to absorb the influences, and if it ever comes up later that I want to do something with it, it's there. Cosmik: What's your concept behind Karla Pundit? I thought it was going to be a spoof, but after hearing it, I'd say it's more of a tribute to Korla Pandit... Lance: I was intrigued initially by Korla Pandit because he seems like he's presented like it's going to be this amazing innovative music, and then it turns out to be this kind of interesting but easy listening organ music. So there's an element of humor there, but I don't think that I laugh at him. I think I truly revere him, in a way. I have a framed picture of him up on the wall. It isn't a joke. I do not want to do a spoof, because I do respect him. I have all his albums, and I listen to them, so he's not someone I'd want to make fun of. On the other hand, I've had a concept for a while of doing a Yma Sumac thing that would be low comedy. And for some reason, I don't feel the same way about that. This was not... I mean, the cover was a joke, but I feel like it's making fun of me, and who I am. My little bio on the album is so ridiculous. I'm sort of playing the fool. There's nothing on there that's meant to say HE'S a fool. I think his records, for what they are, are quite enjoyable and there's a kind of magic there. When Lee [Joseph from Hell Yeah! Records] first mentioned the project to me, I wasn't sure what I was going to do because I didn't think doing it as a joke would be appropriate. So I thought "what am I going to do?" I didn't want to do the same standards that he does. So I felt there had to be something to make it unique, which ultimately meant, to me, writing original music. And then the question was, well, what can I write in this style that will be fun and interesting and have some listening quality so it isn't just a cover that's crazy that people are going to buy and put on their shelf and say they have it. I was hoping that some people would LISTEN to it, too. So it's definitely not just meant to be a joke at his expense. Cosmik: The music, the liner notes that tell the story of the songs, everything on Ancient City suggests you studied Korla Pandit in great detail. Lance: No, not in great detail, but I'm used to getting those albums that would take you into a fantasy land... like a lot of the Yma Sumac albums talking about her being taken away from her tribe, and that opposed to the rumor that she's actually Amy Camus and all this stuff. They definitely loved to ham it up back in those days. I think people were being exposed either to music or quasi-music from places that they had never heard music from, and they were having fun getting caught up in these fantasies of all these things and places and people. There's something really neat about that. But some of those liner notes on those records were completely unbelievable, and that's what I wanted to capture with this, as well--to create this village. When I was writing the pieces, I saw--and still see--the events, the village, the processions and stuff. It's crazy and completely off the wall, but I was trying to create a fantasy, and pretending like I'm trying to make someone believe it. Then from the little bio, it just completely deteriorates, and hopefully nobody will believe that. Cosmik: I have to confess that when I saw the four album covers in the liner notes, I wondered if you had really put those out and I had just managed to miss it completely. Lance: Well, that's another thing they would always do on albums, like "these are other records by such and such that you would enjoy." So I wanted to do that, but I thought that rather than coming up with things that were completely outrageous, I would come up with titles that sounded intriguing so if people start ordering them, they would actually become albums. (Laughs) I mean, they don't exist at this point, but I would love to do them. Easter Island Suite, or whatever... Karla Pundit Visits Java... If enough people order them, they WILL exist. (Laughs) At this point, they're a joke. Cosmik: They sure as hell LOOK authentic enough. Lance: I didn't think they were going to come up with actual photos. Cosmik: They did that on their own? Lance: Yeah! I came up with the names of them, and I thought they were just going to list the names, but to my surprise... (Laughs) And the photo session was really goofy, because I had the turban on, and I had the ornament on it, but it was hanging down WAY too low. It was between my eyes. Cosmik: Yeah, it's on the bridge of your nose. Lance: And about two thirds of the way through the photo shoot, they said "are you sure that's where you want that?" And I said "I don't know?!" (Laughs) I looked in the mirror and it looked ridiculous, so we raised it, but a bunch of the pictures came out really goofy looking because of that, and they used some of that for those covers and it looks really funny. Cosmik: Have you seen Korla Pandit on video? Lance: Yes. The first time I saw him was after Lee had asked me about doing it, and I think at that time I was unsure, but after I saw the video, for some reason, I decided yes I could do it. You've seen it, haven't you? Cosmik: I have one video of Korla, but I'm not sure if it's the same one you saw. It's a bunch of clips from his 1949 TV show. The tape is in a yellow cover... Lance: Yeah, see, I haven't seen the packaging. I've been trying to find those things everywhere. They seem consistently to just be him playing... he had the piano on his right and the organ in front, and then they'd intersperse views of him playing with these pseudo-exotic dancers on these real cheap sets with columns and stuff. Considering when that was and who was watching it, there was something almost subversive about it. It was like "Hey, this is pretty weird!" I really enjoyed the shows, and that essentially decided the matter for me--that I would do it. Cosmik: Do you think Korla Pandit is aware of Karla Pundit? Lance: I doubt that he is, and that's a bad area. I think, for a number of reasons, he's not apt to be very happy if he becomes aware of it. I think he probably has always taken himself real serious, and I think he may not appreciate the whole thing. Cosmik: Would that be hard for you? Lance: I don't know. I don't know what he's like as a person. I think if he proved to be an unbearable egotistical asshole, it would be easier than if he's a nice person whose feelings are genuinely hurt. Cosmik: It's almost cliche to ask "Did you write the music or the lyrics first?" But in this case, I wonder...did you write the stories behind the music first, or did the music suggest the stories? Lance: I think, on most of the things, it was the stories leading to the music. I wanted it to be a suite, and I decided early on that it would all revolve around this fictional ancient city, so I started listing things that might be interesting about a city so there would be a nice variety of things. Cosmik: Are the stories actually based on any fact from any culture? Like the hall of snakes, for instance? Lance: No, well, the closest thing I can think of, with that, is that I've read about some of the African cultures where they do similar things with hot coals or irons. There is some basis for things like that in some cultures. But no, in general, I just started fantasizing about this village and what might have gone on there, and that's about it. Cosmik: With "Hall Of Snakes," the visualization is so bizarre and eerie that I think some dark part of my psyche wanted it to be true. Lance: Yeah, that's the whole thing. Sometimes it's just fun to get into these frames of mind. I wonder whether people really believed those things they read on album covers back in the 50's, or whether they just wanted to believe it because it sounded so wild and unlike their ordinary lives. Cosmik: Do you think you probably WILL do more Karla Pundit projects? Lance: Well, I hope so. Whatever I do, at this point, depends on whether anybody's interested in it. I would love to do another Karla Pundit thing, because I had a great time writing the music. It was really fun. It was really fun to record it. I hope that I don't have to become this guy for the rest of my life, but I would certainly enjoy doing some other stuff and maybe expanding it or stretching it a little bit, musically, too. And I'd like to do that Yma Sumac thing, but that would be a major project because it would have to be orchestrated, and I wouldn't be able to hire an orchestra. But I DO have a commitment from a high school band teacher in San Francisco who teaches jazz band, and he said that I can use his horn section for a mambo. But basically, if I was going to use samples, they would have to sound real enough so that they don't sound stupid. And then the trick is to find an Yma--somebody who can sing with the ability of an opera singer, even though she was so corny. It would have to be someone who could laugh at themselves and be goofy enough to put in time doing it, so I don't know if it's going to happen or not. I've got, pretty much, the concept for pieces on that, taking her and putting her into situations like doing a mambo, and an argument in the recording studio while the piece deteriorates and the musicians decide they've had enough and start playing other stuff that has nothing to do with backing her up. (Laughs) So I don't know what I'm going to be doing, though it looks like we're going to do the Karla thing live, and probably Harmless. Cosmik: Are you into Exotica, in general? Lance: Yeah. It's fascinating on various levels. I legitimately enjoy the music. It isn't just a background for doing something else--to put on to create my bachelor pad and seduce somebody, or something. There's such a fun tongue-in-cheek humor aspect to it that I enjoy. Cosmik: Who are your favorites from the Exotica era? Lance: There are two divisions that I see: one is things that were produced fairly well, where there was some planning and an intent not necessarily to be Earth shattering, in terms of the music produced, but with a good idea of production values. The other area is sort of like the cheap low budget "let's get on the bandwagon because this exotica music is doing so well." In the first group...a lot of the Les Baxter stuff I really like. He was an excellent composer. My favorites were The Sacred Idol, which may have inspired Journey To The Ancient City, and I like Jewels Of The Seas very much. And The Passions, which I guess you could call exotica, but that's almost his attempt at serious music. But I hate to say The Sacred Idol isn't serious, because I think it stands up very well, but it's not "classical music," by the way we divide music. But to me, it's serious. There's also an album by Richard Hayman called Voodoo, that I think was very well done. It definitely takes you somewhere, to a fantasy or another world. I think the best exotica always does that in some way. And then just about anything Elizabeth Waldo did, like The Rights Of The Pagan and The Realm Of The Incas, and Maracatu. And then in the second group, the ones that are just thrown together without any care for quality, the one that I like is the Robert Drasnin one. I talked to him a little bit about that. He got the phone call because his label wanted him to do an exotica album to cash in on it a little bit. It was thrown together real quickly, but I think his writing saved it, because it's so interesting. Even though the production level was not that great and not much forethought was put into it, I think it turned out real well. I really liked the voice...I think her name was Sally Teri. I really liked the pieces she was on, and I wish she'd been on a couple more. Cosmik: Are there any others that you like, or styles? Lance: I like a lot of the pseudo-African things that have come out, pretending to be African jungle music...African tribal music, and acting like it's the real tribes when actually it's studio musicians. You can usually tell those, because they aren't specific about the location, the country... And the names sound a bit illogical for something that would be actual ritual music from Africa. It seems like whenever I see something that fits into that category, I grab it. This isn't really exotica, but I really like bongo records. I like Jack Castanzo a lot. I guess that would be more lounge or Latin. He was a studio percussionist in LA back in the 50's, and he supposedly taught James Dean and Marlon Brando to play bongos. He's done all these Latin bongo records that are fun. I like Tito Puente, Perez Prado...all of those. Cosmik: Assuming the exotica thing is a retro-trend that will pass...and that's what always happens...what do you think the next one will be? Do you have any pet forms you'd like to see make a comeback? Lance: Well, I would like to see more of the original jazz people get credit for what they did. It seems like a lot of the be-bop stuff, a lot of the west coast jazz stuff, has had a resurgence and has gotten popular, but there was some semi-obscure avant-garde music from the late 50's to the early 70's that I'd like to see... Cosmik: Like who, specifically? Lance: Early Archie Shepp stuff... Just about anything on the ESP label. Albert Ayler. There's a saxophone player named Charles Tyler who was into that same kind of thing. Oh...Ornette Coleman. To some degree, he's gotten some credit and gotten more popular. I don't know, though... Sometimes it's fun to be tuned into something that you can feel like there are only a few people who are sharing it with you. First of all, you can find it in the bins, instead of having to go to the collectable stores. Cosmik: And pay fifty bucks a shot! Lance: Yeah. I'm actually doing really well back here, now, and I may start trying to SELL some stuff, because I'm finding a lot of things in thrift shops and second hand stores. Not necessarily things that I'd want to keep in my collection, but things that are worth money. Cosmik: How big is the collection now? Lance: Well, I would say about ten thousand, but that's just how many I have cataloged. I probably have again that much that's either down in Phoenix or up here waiting to be sifted through. I mean, it's a joke. I've got stuff I'll probably never be able to listen to, but I keep acquiring it. Cosmik: So check my math, here... You've got twenty thousand albums and fifty-six cats? Lance: Yeah. Cosmik: Where do you sleep? Lance: Uh, with the cats. When Barbara's working down in Phoenix, there's times when I have sixteen or seventeen of them sleeping on the bed with me at the same time. It's fun! Sometimes you get this massive purring... or a sea of ears--I'll wake up in the morning and I'll just see all these ears everywhere. They lay all over me, they lay underneath me, they lay on my head...I wake up completely crunched. And I like it... It's just so neat. But it's good to get away, sometimes. I was out of town all last week, and I missed them, but I slept good. (Laughs.) Cosmik: How do you feel about all the compilations coming out now, like the Les Baxter Capitol stuff, and the Ultra Lounge slash exotica slash whatever...How do you think it's being handled by the industry? Lance: Well, I've got a problem with "best of's." Particularly in jazz, when they take someone like Wayne Shorter--somebody who did an infinite number of great album on Blue Note--and they'll throw together a CD that's "The Best Of Wayne Shorter" instead of reissuing each album in its entirety. And I think we're seeing that with like Les Baxter's stuff. It's like the Reader's Digest Condensed version of Les Baxter instead of his complete albums. No, I'm just not a fan of "best of's." Cosmik: What other kinds of music do you get into now? Lance: There's just such a broad range of stuff that I enjoy. If you were going to ask me about bands that are part of the independent scene, there's a band called Codeine that's probably my favorite band of that kind now. There's a band called Lungfish that I like, mainly because of the lyrics. This guy is, to me, a real poet. But the stuff is really aggressive. It's an interesting combination. They're pieces that are not about stupid inconsequential things. He actually has a strange view of things that keeps coming out in the pieces, and it's real enjoyable. I sort of feel like...I don't know if it's the yuppie mentality, but that's what I call it...it has infiltrated all kinds of music, and now what used to be the underground independent stuff is the yuppie independent stuff. It's all this self-indulgent relationship related complaining griping about "what you didn't do for me" and "what I didn't do for you." Nobody's writing things that are about anything of any importance. Writing about relationships is important, too, but when it gets to a point where it's just whining. Enough! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- INVASION OF THE BOSS MARTIANS! - An Interview With Evan Foster Interviewed by DJ Johnson "Dude," he says, "THAT...is totally boss." Sounds like a character in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, doesn't it? Well, it ain't. It's Evan Foster, guitarist extraordinare and leader of Seattle's coolest band, The Boss Martians. When I first saw The Martians live, in a Seattle night spot called The Crocodile Cafe, I was knocked out by the full sound of the band, by Evan's perfect guitar work, and by his unusual banter between songs. "Hey, man, we'd like to play you a little song we call The Martian Stomp. Dig it! It's a groove." I assumed it was put on. After finally meeting Evan this week, I am convinced that it's no act. Evan is the real article! Everything about the man is authentic, from his approach to the music he loves right down to the way he talks about it. While most surf bands are sticking to the instrumental side of the street, The Boss Martians play a mixture of vocal and instro tracks that run the spectrum from surf to hot rod to good old fashioned garage rock and roll. As I learned during this interview, Evan does a lot more for his band and his scene than just writing great songs. And that's a very good thing for those of us who live in his city, because Seattle really needs all the help it can get when it comes to generating surf culture. Thanks to Evan and his bandmates, Nick Contento (organ), Scott Betts (bass) and Dan Israel (drums), Seattle surf fans have something to brag about. So without further delay, I'd like to turn you on to a groovy cat who I think you'll totally dig, man. Meet Evan Foster of The Boss Martians. * * * * * Cosmik: Where are you from, Evan? Evan: I was born in Chicago in 1971 - then moved out to Hollywood with my parents in 1972 and grew up there in SoCal until 1985 when we moved, once again, to the Pacific Northwest. Bellevue, Washington, to be exact. Cosmik: So you were in LA most of the time you were growing up. Evan: Yeah, we moved out there because my dad was still in the recording industry at the time. He was recording and playing locally, and also began working for a record distribution company and retail chain called Licorice Pizza Records. Cosmik: Oh, are you kidding? I remember Licorice Pizza Records! Evan: Yeah! He was in the buying department, and eventually became Vice President in charge of buying and merchandising. That takes us up to 1979-80, and that's when he decided to get involved in software. That's when he made the jump from making records and working for Licorice Pizza into software. Cosmik: You know, when you're onstage and you're talking to the audience, you've got this great 60's vernacular going, like "yeah, it's groovy, it's hip." But talking to you in person and away from performance, your vernacular sounds more like...Valley. So where did you learn the 60's schtick? Evan: I dunno, man, I guess from watching way too many American International pictures, man...if you can dig. (Laughs) You know, so much stuff in California was ingrained in me, growing up. I was never a Valley Dude, by any means, but living in Hollywood and then moving out to a city named Glendale out by Burbank. We moved out there in '81 and lived there until we moved to the Northwest. You know, honestly, the whole valley thing was ongoing at that time, but I never really identified with any one particular scene. My mom and dad always let me know there was a lot of east coast and mid-west in my family background, there, so they kind of kept an eye on everything there. They didn't want me to become some California burnout child at the age of nine or ten. Cosmik: Did you find that Glendale was pretty insulating? Evan: No, because we traveled a fair amount, so I thought that Glendale was a groovy city with its own ups and downs, just like every other city in the US that we went to just cruising around with my parents. That's something I picked up on at a young age, and I'm glad I did... that there really is no "grass is greener." You'll find that every city's got something you can dig about it, and many things you DON'T dig about it. Like Seattle's a real cool place to live, man, but for me, one of the downers is the weather. I'm not a real Seattleite weather type person. But there's a counter to that, which is that the software industry's really boss up here, so I'm willing to give on the weather to be where the industry's really rockin'. I try to find something positive about each city. Cosmik: Seattle's so culturally rich, but for a surf band, it's not necessarily the place to be... Evan: No, it's not. Cosmik: Do you find that depressing? Evan: Oh... no, not really, because I'm in constant lock-in with guys like Bartlett down in San Fran. Our connections out of the Seattle area are pretty damned strong, so we never lack for any kind of a connection or information or scene. Cosmik: So your dad was a player? What was he into? And what kind of music were you exposed to when you were growing up? Evan: To be honest I was listening to all types of music at home. I heard a lot of rock and roll, folk, bluegrass, country, and rhythm and blues records on the turntable. My parents were in several folk trios in the mid 60's that recorded for NY's Kapp Records label ("New Village Singers", "The Three of Us" and a couple of others I can't remember) and toured the US and Canada with other rock and folk acts of the time like Gordon Lightfoot and the Dave Clark Five on one of their east coast US tours. So because they were always listening to a broad range of music when I was a kid, I guess I was too. Cosmik: How did you discover surf music? Evan: I basically got hip to the real surf and hot rod sound towards the end of high school and into early college. Aside from having the obligatory Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Surfaris, and Chantays records and singles I started looking a little harder and asking record shop owners about more surf and hot rod bands, so naturally I started picking up on Dick Dale, Pyramids, Trashmen, and Astronauts records. I met Dan, our drummer, in 1991 and he had a lot of records by the Phantom Surfers, the Untamed Youth, and a bunch of other Norton Records releases that he'd gotten hip to while living in NYC. So upon hearing these platters I was like, STOKED! So at that time I started seriously looking for more surf and hot rod records and got really hip to bands like the Lively Ones, the Sentinels, the Challengers Band, all the Del-Fi permutation bands, Dave Meyer and the Surftones, the Shockwaves, and a mess of other combos. Cosmik: Let's see...if you were born in 1971, then you were only nine years old when the first surf revival rolled in. Evan: Oh yeah, when Blair and Dalley and all those guys were doing clubs and doing shows at The Troubador, yeah, I was still a kid. That was actually at a time when my dad was playing those places, too. My dad was into folk rock stuff, and he was playing all those LA clubs like The Blah Blah and The Blue Lagoon and The Troubador. And The Whiskey, too. But I was way too young to know what was going on in the local rock and roll scene. When I was nine, I was hell bent on Devo, and trying to get as many Devo records as I could. Cosmik: How old were you when you started playing guitar? Evan: Oh, well, let's see here... It would have probably been my freshman year of high school, so I was probably about 14 years old. Actually, I started taking lessons when I was 15, and that was when I started playing seriously, so I guess you could say I didn't start playing until I was 15. I took lessons at a place in Bellevue called The Academy of Music. It's not too far from the Bellevue American Music [a local gear shop. Ed]. So I took lessons for a couple years and then just took off on my own. Cosmik: Was California much of an influence on your playing early on? Evan: Well, being the child of musical parents, I was around so much music all the time that there was never just one kind of completely dominating sound that I was hearing a lot. But even as a kid, I've always been a complete die hard Brian Wilson fan. I've always been a monster Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. The Beach Boys records that I dig, personally, are like Pet Sounds and on, like Smiley Smile, in its bizarre hacked up version of what Smile would have been. Everything up to Sunflower. I really dig Beach Boys records, period. Cosmik: What is it that attracts you to that music? Was it Brian's production? Evan: Huger than life production, and just the huge rich vocals. I finally figured out that the thing that had gotten me fired up on earlier Beach Boys records was the fact he was using everybody from Billy Strange to Ray Pohlman to Hal Blaine--The Wrecking Crew on guitar, bass, and drums. Leon Russell on piano... and all these great wind players and horn players. I was always so impressed with the instrumentation. And Carl DID play a significant amount of guitar, but the thing that I thought was the coolest about The Beach Boys was also that Brian liked to get the tracks in one to three takes. He wanted maximum energy to the takes. Real spontaneous tracks. That's what I thought was coolest about Brian. Cosmik: Your style of playing, especially live, is very full and rich. Did Brian Wilson's production influence that? Evan: Well, the way that Carl's guitar went to tape was definitely an influence, because before I was able to get really rooted into The Trashmen, Astronauts and Pyramids records, I guess you could say the first surf guitar I heard was Carl Wilson's guitar. And of course Dick Dale. Of course I love early Dick Dale records, but it's just not exactly the sound that I'm into for the most part. I love his aggressive forceful attack, but it's just not my sound. The Beach Boys records that I was listening to did have a big influence on the sound and the tone that I went to. I've always been a big fan of the Jaguar. I play Stratocaster, too, you know, I mean I love the Strat tone. The Pyramids were like the ultimate example of one the coolest bands with the ultimate Strat tones. But I guess Brian Wilson's early records where Carl Wilson was playing were definitely an influence. By the time I got to The Trashmen and The Pyramids and The Astronauts, that kind of defined the sound that I was going for. Cosmik: How much were you listening to hot rod music? Evan: I don't know, probably about as much as I was listening to surf music in general. I was listening to anything I could get my hands on, y'know? One thing that I thought was cool about hot rod tunes was that lyrics were completely focused and dead on and accurate. Cosmik: Of course it's harder to say "this band" or "that band" when you're talking about hot rod music, because so many of them were studio creations, but what were your favorites? Evan: Of course, it falls back to The Beach Boys, but y'know, some of the tunes that The Trashmen were doing that were written by Larry LaPole were totally boss. I was totally into The Trashmen tunes like "Sleeper" and "My Woodie," although "My Woodie" isn't really a hot rod tune. And then The Astronauts, too. The Competition Coupe is completely a rock and roll record all the way through, and I was always into that. Mainly the song "Competition Coupe," which we've actually recorded for a compilation record that was put out by Jeff Martin of The Surf Trio on his Blood Red Discs label. It's out on ten inch vinyl and CD. It's pretty boss. Cosmik: Was it hard finding other players who wanted to play your kind of music, at first? Evan: Not at all! Well that's not entirely true. Here's the story - Scott Betts, our bass player, and I were looking to start a new combo and hooked up with Dan in December 1991. We worked out as a trio while getting material ready to record and started the search for a rhythm guitar player or an organ player. We went through a bunch of organ players until we located Nick in '93 so he's been with us since then. I actually met Nick in college at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, when he joined my fraternity. Cosmik: How do you like recording for Dionysus? Evan: Lee [Joseph] is a real boss guy. He's been great to us. Have you ever met Lee? Cosmik: No, I've just talked to him on the phone and through e-mail a lot, and I interviewed him once. Evan: Lee's a real good dude. Cosmik: Yeah, everyone who records for him seems to be real faithful to him and the label, which you don't always see in this business. Evan: Oh yeah! Lee was the first guy that contacted us because he found our very first single that was put out '92. He found that at a record store in San Francisco, so he dropped me some mail while I was still in college, and he was like "yeah, man, I just wanna put out a record." Cosmik: Dionysus is in California, you're in Seattle... Have you guys played in California yet? Evan: Yeah, a fair amount. More Bay Area than anything, but we've done two tours as far south as LA, and we've also toured out to Vegas. We've done San Fran a bunch of times, Sacramento, hit LA twice, and been out to Vegas once. And each time we've gone out, we've had a really positive reception. Cosmik: Who were you playing with down there? Evan: We were playing with The Bomboras down in LA, and in San Francisco we were playing with the Phantom Surfers, The Trashwomen, and then in Sacramento we were playing with The Tiki Men. Cosmik: The Trashwomen! Evan: Rocked, dude. I'll tell ya, man, for three people, they put out a great record. Cosmik: Well, are the Phantom Surfers from San Francisco? I thought they were from LA... Evan: Absolutely. Phantom Surfers are like San Francisco one hundred percent. Well, actually, Mel Bergman moved from San Francisco down to LA. Mel also did The Gonuts with Derek Dickerson from Untamed Youth. Johnny Bartlett, Mazz and Mike Lucas all live in San Francisco. But Johnny Bartlett left the Phantom Surfers not too long ago to run Hillsdale Records full time and work on his new band, The Saturn V. Russell Quan came in to play drums. Cosmik: Is Johnny on the new album? Evan: Yeah, Johnny's on the new Lookout album. He's all over it, absolutely. Cosmik: I just got that but I haven't had a chance to hear it yet. Evan: The one with the Mad Magazine artwork? That's boss, man. Cosmik: So hey, how did you all react to finding out you were going to be included in the Cowabunga Surf Box set. Evan: We were totally stoked. Everybody was just really really pleased and feeling very good about that. Cosmik: Your track on that set is great. Evan: Thanks, man. Yeah, that track, "XKE" was our first Hillsdale single. That's Johnny Bartlett's label. That came out sometime in '93. Cosmik: Are there other labels you'd like to work with? Evan: Well, right now it's just Dionysus and Hillsdale. But the bottom line is that we did sign with Dionysus for two more LP/CDs, and then when the contract's done, we're free to do LP's with other labels. But in our contract, we have a clause that says we can do singles with anybody. So, dude, let it be known that we are into doing a single with anybody and everybody that's willing to do a Martians record. Cosmik: I'll be sure to put that in there. Evan: Let everybody know that if they want to do a Martians single, we're all over it. Cosmik: You just DID let everybody know, just by saying so. The magic of interviews, y'know. Evan: (Laughs) Yeah, the magic of interviews! Cosmik: Tell me what other kinds of music you're getting into these days? Evan: Well, I just listen to every kind of rock and roll--I mean, I love rock and roll music, period. But I listen to a lot of stuff like... well, The Standells are one of my favorite bands of all time. I think the guy that used to write tunes for them, Ed Cobb, wrote some killer rock and roll. I also dig folk stuff like The Kingston Trio. Cosmik: So you like 60's garage? Evan: Totally. Cosmik: Some of the more obscure stuff? Evan: Well, yeah, but there's also stuff that people might think is totally played out, like The Kingsmen. I love The Kingsmen. Totally awesome rock and roll band. That was a totally cool scene. Thing is, a lot of those bands were playing a lot of rhythm and blues, and I love rhythm and blues music. Cosmik: Do you know what it was about the music that got to you? Evan: Yeah... I guess it was the guitar tone and the feel of the drums. Just really aggressive grooving drums. And I was completely into the guitar tone. Cosmik: When you were putting The Boss Martians together, what was your blueprint? You know, everybody thinks "my band is gonna sound just... like...this..." Evan: Oh yeah, well everybody's got an idea of what they want their band to be like. I was really stoked on The Trashmen and The Astronauts and The Pyramids, so initially, when we were getting The Martians together, we were gonna do a rhythm guitar deal. Bass, drums, lead guitar and rhythm guitar. We were gonna do half and half vocals and instro. But we never ended up getting a rhythm guitar player that worked out. In order to be in the band, the guy has to be able to play and keep up. That's one of the cool things about Los Straitjackets. Those guys are real players and they give it a real working over. Cosmik: They're incredible. Evan: Yeah, totally incredible. So it just worked out to get an organist in the band. All the Martians are huge Untamed Youth fans, too, so I always dug the sound of organ in surf music, man, I really thought it was boss. Johnny and the Hurricanes did some really killer organ lead instrumental rock and roll, too. We just figured we could get an organ and start pluggin' people in and see what worked out, and the organ just kinda stuck. So the 4-piece surf & drag combo was just kind of the model. As it wound up not being rhythm guitar, at least we had an organ going. On our current LP, the one that just came out on Hillsdale, we've actually got a sax lead on one of the tunes. I hired a sax player from a local ska band called Easy Big Fella. His name's Jason Nelson. Cosmik: Easy Big Fella's a cool band. Do you like that kind of music? Evan: Ska music's totally cool. It's like I'm not listening to a lot of ska records, but there are incredible ska bands out there, like The Toasters, who really give it a working over. The coolest thing about those guys is they play just incredibly tight, and their records SOUND good. Cosmik: It's cool that you were exposed to so much music. Were your parents supportive of you wanting to be a musician? Evan: Oh yeah, totally. I mean, they were always into me playing. I guess there wasn't much talk about it. I just picked it up and started playing. I started out with trumpet, and then just sorta gravitated towards guitar. It was like "hey, can I take some lessons?" "Sure, no problem." So they were real supportive. I was real lucky. My dad was real cool with it, so he bought me my first guitar and amp, which was a Japanese Fender Stratocaster, and... let's see, what was the amp... It was a Fender Stage Lead, an '81 or '82 Fender Stage Lead amp, single-12, like a 35 or 40 watt solid state combo. I was ready to start playing with bands. I wanted to start working with people because you can really only get a feel for it so much if you're just sitting and practicing off your notes from guitar lessons and stuff, so you've got to feel what it's like to work with other instruments. Cosmik: Most of us, when we were growing up, playing guitars and listening to rock and roll had to fight with our parents the whole way. Must have been kind of nice to skip all that. Evan: I never had a problem with practicing and stuff. I've always done most of my practicing unplugged, anyway. And I knew that I had a really good thing going with my parents, so the last thing I wanted to do was piss them off by jamming the amp way too loud, man. So I just practiced quietly, and they didn't care WHAT I was playing, just as long as I was busy playing it and trying to do it well. I just turned 25, and I left for college in '89, but all through high school when I was playing guitar, I was never like playing the stereo screamingly loud and trying to jam with it. I went about it in a more controlled way, because I wanted to keep the support going. Cosmik: And what were you playing? Evan: Definitely punk rock. Maybe like more of a tendency toward punk rock and ROLL. I was a huge X fan because of Billy Zoom, and I loved Devo a lot. I was into a lot of true LA punk rock bands like Circle Jerks, and Youth Brigade...Black Flag, of course. Then throughout that whole time I was really digging Chuck Berry records, too, and the really earthy Muddy Waters records. My old man turned me on to people like Charlie Christian, and I was blown away at the speed of that guy's fingers. Then when I was really hip to incredibly fast jazz playing, he turned me on to Django Rheinhardt and then kind of like made the connection into the more whitebread bluegrass music, like Merle Travis and those guys. I recently got hip to Joe Maphis and Jimmy Bryant through guys like Johnny Bartlett and Derek Dickerson. Those guys are incredible. Jimmy Bryant was just an incredible player. So I got hip to those guys through getting into surf music, actually. Cosmik: Sounds like Johnny Bartlett's been damned good for your development as a musician. Evan: Johnny Bartlett is a guy who, in a very hip and cool way, intro'd me to three quarters of the stuff that I'm really cool to, like the real stuff in the scene. Johnny Bartlett's really got me hip. Cosmik: You have a feeling for so many types of music, and so many directions have been taken with surf music... This is almost like my own personal stock question that I ask all the surf players I interview, because I'm personally very curious what they'll say, so I'll just go ahead and ask you now. Is there some new direction you'd like to see someone take surf music, or that you'd like to take with The Boss Martians? Evan: You know what? This is gonna sound completely weird, but in answer to that question: yes. There is a total tone and a total sound that I absolutely love and would bring into it, and I'm kind of bringing in on 13 Evil Tales. See, DJ, 13 Evil Tales, the LP that I'm working on right now, well I just got this wild hair and I said I really want to do a record that's totally Martians, but brings in all these different influences that we're into. So I pulled out the Vox Tone Blender, man. Like, the fuzz box? We busted out a few rave ups, man, and we've got some heavy Paul Revere and the Raiders kind of stuff going on. There are a lot of different sounds going on in this new Boss Martians LP. And, dude, there ARE some purist surf instrumentals as well, there's no doubt about that. But the tone that I'm totally into and would like to see more of is one that would make the guys on Cowabunga [surf music e-mail list. Ed.] say "dude, pack it up and go home," ...DRY! Dry, baby. Cosmik: Really!? Dry? Evan: Totally! Listen up, man. The tone that I'd be totally into would be just Jazzmaster and Jaguar tone, like 12 or 13 gauge flatwound strings, through a Showman--dry! Cosmik: Whoa. So you're talking about a true Fender body-tone, then? Evan: We're talking about a pristine Fender tone, man. For example, my main rig is an L-series 1964 Fender Jaguar, Olympic white. That's my guitar. I use .12 gauge flatwound strings. And I'll be honest, occasionally I'll bump down to an .11 gauge when I want to be able to bend a little more, but I always use a wound G, no less than a .22 gauge. I also have an Olympic white Strat that I use quite frequently like when we're doing overdubs and stuff where I need to overdub a rhythm track. I run that into an October 1964 black face Fender Reverb, and then I run that into a 1965 Fender Showman amp... I mean a stock Showman amp. A single Showman head that dumps a full 85 watts, 8 ohms, into a single Showman cabinet with a single 15 JBL D130-F speaker. And that's my rig, right there. But see, dude, the thing is that I love pristine tone so much. One of the coolest things about The Fireballs, other than just like the studio tape echo, was the fact that these cats cut their tracks dry, man. These dudes sat down with their guitars and these guys just...played...tunes! And the thing is, it's all right there, all up in your face. And there's nothing more embracing than the crystal clear low end punch of like a Fender Jag or a Jazz just being played through the Showman rig, man, just with those low E's--with the low strings just punching out of the D130's. It's the ultimate tone, man. Cosmik: Do you think that the seed for that might have been planted by your practicing so much unplugged? You mentioned that you practiced dry all the time. Do you think your respect for that tone came from that? Evan: Absolutely, man. And also listening to guys like Merle Travis. That dude HIMSELF was just like an incredible amplifier. He was playing those Gibson Supers, man, and he was playing bass, rhythm and lead at the same time. It wasn't just that he played so well, it was the fact that he had awesome tone to begin with. It took him a guitar, a cord, and an amplifier for tone. Even his 40's recordings! He was playing acoustic guitar. But yeah, absolutely, when I was practicing my guitar, first getting into it, I was never using fuzz or whatever. I was just plugging straight into a Fender amp. And the little Fender combo that I had DID have reverb, yeah, and I always dug a clean reverbed guitar, but when I was practicing, I was just hip to hearing exactly what I was playing, you know? I wanted to KNOW what I was playing. I didn't want to wimp out and cover anything up. I wanted to make sure that where I sucked I was getting my stuff together--and where I was good, I wanted to strengthen it. Cosmik: Let's talk about 1996 for a few minutes. What has this year been like for The Boss Martians? Evan: '96 has been real good. When we started out, we were still in college and it was easier to slack off and do more band stuff, but I've been working in software for the last three years since I got out of school. Everybody in the band has a real busy work schedule full time, so any spare time that we can pull away for band stuff, you can believe we're doing it. So for as much as everybody's got to work, '96 has been very good for us. I've been gaining a lot of momentum locally putting together shows. I do shows called "Evan Foster Presents..." Some of the bands I've booked have been...like The Bomboras, and us... I did a major Dionysus two-day weekend thing... Cosmik: You put that together?! Evan: Dionysus Demolition Derby was my baby! Cosmik: I had no idea! So is this something you have aspirations for? Being a promoter? Evan: Um, not really, believe it or not. It's just out of necessity to get more garage shows going in the Seattle area, man. It was the brainchild of Lee Joseph and me. We got tired of just talking about it, so I said "dude, we're gonna do this thing, man. We need something like this in Seattle." So I started contacting bands, and I talked to Girl Trouble, who was into doing it. That's what kicked off the whole "Evan Foster Presents" thing. I've booked Girl Trouble, Bomboras, The Mono Men, The Makers, and lots of local bands like The Statics, and The Primate Five, and The Splashdowns... A lot of local garage-slash-surf-slash-punk acts. So this has been a good year for me in getting momentum built up, and fortunately a lot of the club owners have been really cool to me, especially Dan Cowan at The Tractor Tavern in the Ballard area of Seattle, and The Backstage as well. And The Colorbox has turned out to be real cool. As far as booking The Martians, locally in '96, it's been one of our better years, for sure. And now all I'm into doing is bringing more bands into town and doing more shows and hopefully building up some visibility. And a reputation for putting together solid shows. From The Martians standpoint, we've gotten more releases out in '96 than we ever have before, period. Our last LP release before Jetaway Sounds was in 1994, which was our self-titled Dionysus LP/CD. We hadn't had an LP since then. Just a couple weeks ago, we had Jetaway Sounds come out, and we've got 13 Evil Takes coming out in January. So I'm trying to pump out as much material as possible. Cosmik: What have you learned about promotion that you didn't expect? Evan: I've learned that there is more leg work involved than anybody could possibly imagine, if you want the show to go over well. That includes knowing artists that can put together decent looking flyers. I've been fortunate to come across two great local artists that really crank out some great flyers, and they've got their own art company called Art Anywhere. These guys are real heavily influenced by The Pizz, and Big Daddy Roth... a lot of the real hot rod art guys. They do great flyers for me. So I do everything from flyers to radio promotion to local print media promotion. If you really want a show to go over well, and you want to create the visibility, you gotta be dedicated to making sure the word gets out that the show's going on. Cosmik: Sounds like you're very passionate about it. Do you get a real buzz from making a show go well? Evan: I do, yeah. I get a real big kick out of it. I guess you could say my favorite thing in life is making records and... playing guitar and recording is my favorite deal. If you have a band and you also work full time, it's real hard to do a full time band thing. So a lot is in your hands to promote your own band and to promote your scene. I just decided to stop sitting back, and to kick it out and see what happens. Cosmik: What was your best show? As a promoter, I mean... Evan: As a promoter, it would have been the Demolition Derby, definitely. I booked The Surf Trio to come up from Portland and play the Saturday night show and open for The Bomboras, The Boss Martians, and Girl Trouble. But they couldn't make it up because I-5 was flooded out, so a great local trio called The Splashdowns plugged in at the last moment. They came and opened up the show and we ended up going on second that night, because The Bomboras were from LA, and they flew all the way up here, and I wanted to give them a real good exposure spot. So we let them play third, and then Girl Trouble went on. It was the most well attended show I'd ever booked. There was a line out the door, and it was really boss. The Tractor Tavern was just completely packed. It was great. Cosmik: Where do you see this going? Evan: You know... as a matter of fact, DJ, I think I'm just going to leave it open on that, man. Let it be known that I'm going to put out as many Martians records as possible until people are going "dude, gimme a break with all these Martians records!" We will play with any good rock and roll band. I'm not gonna be closing doors and saying "hey, if you're not of this genre, then forget about it," you know what I mean? I like putting together good solid bills. I'm really jazzed about that. I mean, hey, knock wood and hope the stars are in alignment and all that stuff. I just hope the shows keep getting bigger and better, and I definitely want to push that forward and make it happen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- AN HALLOWEEN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS Interviewed by Cosmo Debrinski He's been called everything from Satan to The Prince Of Darkness. What you don't know about him, though, could fill a book. We caught up with His Evil Majesty during the busy Halloween season. He was gracious enough to give us this, his first interview since the Manson trial in 1970. ----------------- * * * ----------------- Cosmik: First of all, I'm a little surprised that you have...well...this is an office building. Satan: Oh! Yes, I get that all the time. I don't know why everyone is so surprised by this, though, I mean how do they think I do what I do if I'm not organized about it? Cosmik: How much organization is needed to... Satan: An enormous amount of organization. Cosmik: Well...how much org... Satan: Meticulous all-consuming organization. Cosmik: More than, say...NBC? Satan: Please. Cosmik: More than IBM? Satan: Who's to say we're NOT IBM? Cosmik: Point well taken. What is it you do, specifically? Satan: Well, of course, the world being what it is, or has become, I don't have time to do everything I used to do. And I have a bad back, now, too. So I delegate most of the pestilence and misery work. I like to keep my hands dirty, though, so I stick with my personal favorite. Acquisitions. Cosmik: Acq... Satan: Soul purchasing. Cosmik: Oh. Uh, what's involved? People want something so badly that they say "I'd sell my soul for this" and you appear? Satan: Oh! Noooo. You've seen too many Twilight Zone's. It's not like that at all. Mortals rarely even realize they've made the sale. They almost never know they've been in my presence. Cosmik: But how do they consent to sell... Satan: Well, it's really very simple. They fuck up. They do something very bad that they know they shouldn't. So you see, it's an implied thing. Cosmik: So doesn't that mean just about anybody... Satan: Yes, and I'll be seeing you again in about 29 months, young man. Cosmik: WHAT?!? NO!!! Satan: Kidding. Cosmik: Jesus!!! Satan: Language... Cosmik: (After considerable recovery time:) And when they die, they're cast into a terrible pit of fire and... Satan: (Laughing) Oh! My boy, please! Hell is not like that at all. No, I'm the Prince of Darkness, but I'm not ALL bad! We don't have terrible pits of fire, tiny spiked rooms or even refrigerators filled with empty milk bottles. I love that commercial, by the way. Very funny stuff. No, we have a much quieter eternity here. It's basically a lot of very long lines. Cosmik: ....lines... Satan: Like bank lines, only you never reach the front. Really quite survivable. Cosmik: Any small children in the lines? Satan: Yes, well...after all, it IS hell, isn't it? Cosmik: Let's talk about your servants on Earth. Tipper Gore and many others think it's the heavy metal bands, like Slayer or Megadeth... Satan: Haven't heard the new Slayer. Megadeth...please. Mustaine gives 20 percent of their income to a certain hocus-pocus religious organization whose name I won't mention. Cosmik: Dave Mustaine? Are you sure? Satan: I think...Well, maybe that was Ozzy. Heh. You gotta love Ozzy, don't you? Cosmik: Is Ozzy one of... Satan: Do you think we'd be that obvious? No, boy, none of the above. The metal bands are simply a diversion. They just like wearing makeup. Cosmik: Well, who DOES do your work in the music business? Satan: Ever hear of Kenny G? Yep! How about Michael Bolton! You see? It's always the ones you least expect. Cosmik: What about Dick Clark? Satan: You have to ask? Cosmik: How about Kiss? Satan: BZZZT! Wrong again! Go ahead, guess who my best selling agents were in the 70's. Cosmik: The Village People? Satan: No...but you're way warmer than I expected. Cosmik: I dunno, who? Satan: THE OSMOND BROTHERS! Hahahahahaha! WHO KNEW? None of ya! Cosmik: Wow! That's really impressive. I never suspected them. How about rap music? Satan: Rap music? Cosmik: Yeah, some of those performers MUST work for you, right? Satan: I'm sorry, just one moment please. (Satan speaks quickly and angrily into an intercom, telling his secretary to get all available information on rap music.) I have no comment on...rap music...at this time. Check back with me on that one, okay? Cosmik: Techno Rave? Satan: No. Cosmik: Acid Jazz? Satan: No... Cosmik: Hip Hop? Satan: What hop? Cosmik: Well, I'm really surprised that you're not up on all of these genres of music. I mean, isn't it in your best interest to be present where the kids gather? Satan: OH!! Yes! That's why we have Nintendo! We kill a dozen birds with one stone. Cosmik: Very shrewd! Satan: Yes, well, ya gotta be. There are so many conflicting sources fighting for the same souls... Cosmik: You mean the churches? Satan: (Laughs hysterically for several minutes.) The CHURCHES!? (Laughs hysterically for several more minutes. Tape runs out. Interviewer turns tape over and wisely waits for Satan to calm down before hitting "Record.") Son, most of the CHURCHES are just little shops in our franchise chain! C'mon, you didn't know that? Cosmik: Uh, well, I... Satan: Boy, you're easy! No, I didn't mean the churches. I meant political correctness. Cosmik: Pol...you mean the practice of it? Satan: Yes, the whole cultural brainwashing. It gnaws away at the key element of our attack. Hatred. Cosmik: So you're saying that if political correctness causes less people to grow up hating, Hell will be out of business? Satan: Don't be so dramatic! We still got Nintendo. Cosmik: How about the movie industry? Satan: One name...Jack Nicholson. You saw Witches Of Eastwick? Cosmik: Yeah, of course. Satan: Well NOBODY is THAT good an actor. Cosmik: Well, that one, I suspected all along. Satan: Yeah? How about Meryl Streep! Cosmik: Knew it. Satan: Oh...okay, how about Sandy Duncan! Cosmik: ...okay. You got me on that one. Satan: Here's one you didn't know. Annette Funicello. Cosmik: Oh, I think we ALL knew about that one. Satan: You young punks think you're so smart. Listen, time is money. I have work to do. Let's wrap this up. Cosmik: Okay, let's just do a little word association thing here and then we'll wrap... Satan: Oh goodie. Yeah, that sounds fun. Cosmik: Fermament. Satan: Wine. Cosmik: Brimstone. Satan: What is that, coffee? Cosmik: Newt Gingrich. Satan: Amateur! Cosmik: Ted Turner. Satan: MOOK! Cosmik: Really!? Why? Satan: Because he wants to colorize all the great old black and white movies! Cosmik: And that upsets you? Satan: Hey, just because I'm the devil doesn't mean I got no soul! Ted Turner, now, HE don't have a soul! HEY TEDDY! KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' HANDS OFF THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY! Cosmik: Bob Dole. Satan: We're just good friends... Cosmik: Christian Coalition. Satan: Stay the course, boys. Stay the course. You're doin' juuust fine. Cosmik: God. Satan: He never calls anymore. Cosmik: MTV. Satan: The motherlode! So many lost souls, so little time. Cosmik: Now how about looking at a few ink blots and telling me what you see in them. We'll start with... Satan: No. Cosmik: It'll be easy. We'll start with... Satan: I don't do ink blots. Cosmik: What do you see in this blot? Satan: I see your charred and naked body rotating slowly on a spit over a lava flow, cooking and crackling as my minions dance around you, applying barbecue sauce liberally to your... Cosmik: Well, that about does it, I think. Any parting words for our readers? Satan: Yes, I hereby decree that from this day forward, my name shall be this. (Points to a symbol on a piece of paper.) Cosmik: Yeah? What does it mean? Satan: "The Entity Formerly Known As The Prince Of Darkness." Cosmik: But what should we call you? Satan: "The Entity Formerly Known As The Prince Of Darkness." Pay attention, will ya? Cosmik: But isn't that just like the symbol Prince uses? Satan: No, no, that's "The Artist Formerly Known As Popular." Cosmik: True... Well, The Entity Formerly Known As The Prince Of Darkness, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Satan: No problem, kid. By the way, most of your relatives send their love. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITICAL PLAYBOOK: The Fat Lady Tunes Up by Shaun Dale "...right now, I'm calling four more years..." Political Playbook, March 1996 ...and I still am. Yep, after seven months of ups and downs, primaries and conventions, charges and counter-charges, polls and predictions, not much has really changed in the quadrennial Presidential sweepstakes. Sure, there are still big questions left - Will Bobdole pull within 10% by election day? Can Bobdole get over 100 electoral votes? Does Bobdole have a first and last name? Is Ross Perot's home town really in Area 51? Who *is* Harry Browne, anyway? Big questions. But this one is, for all practical--if not political--purposes, done. The woman in the horned helmet and breastplate is warbling softly in the corner and she'll be singing full throttle in a month unless, as one wag put it, Clinton gets caught partying with Michael Jackson and his little friends. Everything's fallen in place for the man in the White House. The Federal Reserve Bank took a pass on its last chance to raise interest rates before the election. Netanyahu and Arafat came to the White House to shake hands and make nice for the TV cameras. The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed their first Democrat in decades. Susie McDougal kept her mouth shut. Everything's gone wrong for the "ordinary citizen" from Kansas. He's taken as many shots from prominent leaders in his own party as from the other side. In his effort to run away from his long (and in many ways distinguished) service in Congress, he's robbed himself of his ability to take credit for his accomplishments and has been caught up in reversing himself on longstanding and well documented positions on issues. He's using up valuable resources trying to hold on in places like Arizona and Texas, which Republican candidates usually assume as safe. Though the tracking polls everyone sees on TV or in the papers show some ebb and flow--Clinton's lead ranges from 10 to 25% from week to week and poll to poll--the electoral college predictions are generally consistent, with Clinton steadily holding a 2 to 1 lead. Everything seems to move the popular vote. Nothing seems to move the electoral vote. So what's left for election watchers to watch? Lots. *YOU SAY YOU WANT A (COUNTER) REVOLUTION* As the inevitability of the Presidential outcome sinks in, attention has turned to the Congress and the prospects of giving Clinton a Democratic House and/or Senate to work with. The great Republican revolution of 1994 turns out to have been something less than advertised. (Seen anyone waving a copy of the Contract on America lately?) With narrow majorities swept in by about a 1% national margin in a low turnout, off-year election, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that the Dems have a better than reasonable shot to regain the House of Representatives and a slimmer but still possible chance to take back the Senate as well. From my base in Washington State, it looks like the prevailing wisdom is on target. This was a big one for the GOP in '94 - six Republican freshman were elected to seats held by Democrats in the previous Congress. Of the six, four were under 55% of the vote in our recent primary, with two actually drawing fewer votes than their Democratic challengers. This is shaky ground for incumbents, who usually look for 60+ as an indication of safety in November. It's reasonable to expect at least three of those seats to go D again. If that trend holds up nationally, you can look for Speaker Gephardt to gavel the next Congress to order. The Senate is a tougher nut to crack, especially with the retirement of some popular southern Democrats like Sam Nunn (GA) and Howard Heflin (AL), who would ordinarily have been seen safe for re-election. Recent years have seen southern seats in both houses of Congress shift inexorably to the Republicans. But this year, anything can happen. How many people would have picked Clinton as a sure thing for re-election two years ago? It's dicey enough now that Bobdole himself saw fit to take a day off from the Presidential campaign to drop in on his old Congressional colleagues and deliver the reassuring message that his failure probably wouldn't hurt them as badly as they were reading in the papers. *THE STATE OF THE STATES* There are also Governors and state legislators being elected all across the country. These races are more important in policy terms than they've been in many years. One area the Gingrich/Dole Congress had some success in was the devolution of programs back to the state governments. The highly touted (or defamed, depending on your perspective) "welfare reform" bill, for instance, doesn't really eliminate welfare, though it does dent the federal welfare bureaucracy. What we will have are 50 beefed up or trimmed down state welfare bureaucracies, delivering or not delivering vital services at the whim of Governors and legislatures--very possibly accompanied by an exodus of the poor to states with more compassionate governments. Which, of course, is why welfare programs were moved to the federal level in the first place. If there's another Republican Congress, we'll be looking to state government for environmental protection, workplace safety, and a host of other things as well. Things, frankly, that they often didn't take care of when they last had the chance. If you're a US voter (yes, I know there's an international audience out there), then take a closer look at the bottom of your ballot than you usually might. Every state rep will count next year. So there's lots to watch, and a lot of good reasons for you to get out and vote, but as someone (I think it was me!) said in this space seven months ago... "...right now, I'm calling four more years..." *SCOREBOARD* I suppose I'd be cheating if I didn't make some hard predictions after shooting my mouth off for all these months, so here's my best guess for November 5th: President: Clinton - 51% and an electoral landslide Bobdole - 45% and a well earned retirement Perot, Browne, Hagelin, et al - 6% US House: Democratic - 220 to 215 US Senate: Republican - 51 to 49 Check in next month to see if I'm crowing or just eating crow... (Speaking of crow, an apology to my faithful readers (assuming you're out there) but in last month's installment I misled you. It seems that Susan Molinari's husband isn't an ex-congresscritter after all. Mr. Perkster is the still serving (and running for re-election) Rep. Bill Paxon. Either one is representing a district he or she doesn't actually live in (which is allowable under the Constitution) or they apparently don't share a domicile outside D.C.--which didn't prevent the conception of their infant daughter. Congrats to the happy couple and consolation for the strain of a working mom struggling to raise a young 'un on a scant $270,000.00 a year...) ============================================================================ [[[[[[[[ [[[[[[ [[ [[ [[[[[ [[[[[[ [[ [[ [[[[[[ [[ [[ [ [[ [[ [ [ [[ [ [[ [[ [[[[[[[[ [[[[[[ [[ [[ [ [[[[[[ [[ [ [[ [[[[[ [[ [[ [ [[[ [ [ [[[ [[[ [[ [[ [[ [[[[[[ [ [[[[[ [[[[[[ [[ [[ [[[[[[ ============================================================================ MONTY ALEXANDER: Yard Movement (Island Jamaica Jazz) Reviewed by Shaun Dale Island Records has selected Jamaica born pianist Monty Alexander to help kick off their new Island Jamaica Jazz label, and a better choice couldn't have been made. While Alexander has lived in the US since the early sixties, his early experiences as a Jamaican session player and solo artist are very much a part of his music today. While he has played with an amazing list of jazz masters, on this disc he pays tribute to some of the Jamaican artists he started out with. The disc opens with a three song set from Alexander's 1995 appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, beginning with a version of "Exodus" that marries the movie theme with Bob Marley's "Movement of Jah People." This sets the tone for the rest of the disc, including five tracks recorded in a Geneva studio after the festival performance. The Jamaican influence is apparent in the rhythms provided by Carlton Messan on bass and percussionists Rolando Wilson and Robert Thomas, Jr. Alexander, who usually fronts a piano trio ensemble, is also joined here by Dwight Dawes on keyboards and guitarists Robert Angus and Ernest Ranglin. Ranglin's lead work is as impeccable as Alexander's piano stylings. In addition to "Exodus," I especially enjoyed "Momento," an Alexander compositon that gives a nod to the Jamaican mento music of his early days. It features Ranglin trading leads with Alexander over a rocksteady rhythm that is, well, it's downright cheerful - it sounds like a recorded picnic. Also noteworthy is the closing track, "Sneaky Steppers," a bluesy tune that reveals the stylistic influence of the great Oscar Peterson, with Ranglin soaring like a Jamaican Django. Great improvisational jazz, island riddims and instrumental virtuosity infuse every cut on the disc. Alexander has been a favorite in clubs, festivals and studios for over thirty years. Listen to this one and you'll know why. Track list: Exodus * Regulator * Crying * Moonlight City * Love Notes * Momento * Strawberry Hill * Sneaky Steppers THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND: Brothers and Sisters (Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Anadisq 200 LP) Reviewed by Cai Campbell Duane and Gregg Allman were cutting their chops playing in various bands during the British blues invasion of the 60's. The advantage they had above their brothers overseas was the fact that they were born and raised in the southern United States, soaking in directly the very influences which the brit boys were trying to emulate. The culmination of their journey resulted in the Allman Brothers, where Duane and Gregg teamed up with exceptionally talented and like-minded musicians and started producing a pure, powerful offshoot of rock music tinged with blues, gospel, and soul. Sadly, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971. Duane was such an integral part of the Allman Brothers sound, that Gregg knew he could not simply replace him. Instead, he realigned the band and lead it off on a tangent which would soon become known as "Southern Rock." Brothers and Sisters was the first studio album after Duane's death, and it not only marks a stylistic turning point in the band's career, but also showcases the bands professionalism, versatility, and dedication. Brothers and Sisters is an emotional, technically brilliant work which features the hit "Ramblin' Man," which is arguably the band's most recognized work. In reality, "Ramblin' Man" is probably the weakest tune on the disk, and is not an accurate reflection of its content. The beautiful, thick, pounding blues of "Jelly Jelly" and the forceful, foot-stompin', rhythmic boogie of "Southbound" are more accurate representations of what the Allman Brothers were all about. Not to mention the searing aural textures of Jessica. Mobile Fidelity's presentation of this masterpiece allows the intensity and technical mastery of this recording to really come through. Compared to the original vinyl release, the Anadisq 200 LP raises the resolution and sonic clarity of Brothers and Sisters to such a degree that it really is like hearing the music for the very first time, even if you're intimately familiar with this recording. Some recordings benefit only nominally from Mobile Fidelity's care. Most of them, though, rise to a higher plane. But a few, like Brothers and Sisters, are greeted at the gates of heaven. This is a sonic experience you will not want to miss. THE ALL WOMAN BROTHERS BAND: At 164 bpm (Melodiya) Reviewed by DJ Johnson On this 4-song, 10-inch 45, Canada's All Woman Brothers Band seems to have advanced light years in their songwriting skills. When last we checked in with them, they had released a very good single called "Payback." The writing on that song wasn't the strong point of the record. The slamming rhythm section and the vocal blend of Tanya Gordon and Alisa Garcia were the highlights. "Pure Pressure" puts all the elements together into a track that's musically powerful without being lyrically boring. Side two is the big one. "Looking Down" knocks you on your ass with its powerful vocal hook and a snare sound that evokes images of a hyperactive kid beating a coffee can to death with a ball-peen hammer. Drummer Wolfboy Szabo sounds like one of those Bonzo-types that plays so hard he has to be miked from the McDonalds across the street from the studio. Now, imagine that kind of percussive violence hooking up with a highly-overdriven bass (ridden like a bucking bronco by Clay Culbert) and two crunchy electric guitars, plus deceptively sweet harmony vocals from the ladies, and you've got a general idea of why you want this one. (For info on how to buy this cool platter, write to 2523 17th Ave SW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T3E 0A2, phone or fax them at 403-246-8916, or send e-mail to heggw@cuug.ab.ca) DAVID ARVEDON: In Search of the Most Unforgettable Tree We Ever Met (1967-1974) (Arf!Arf!) Reviewed by Shaun Dale This double disc release chronicles the recordings of David Arvedon and a variety of backup units during the early years of a career which began with the pioneering punk band The Psychopaths and continues today in Boston area karaoke bars. Most of the cuts here are the product of vanity sessions - after the Psychopaths scored with "Till the Stroke of Dawn" and broke up, Arvedon hired a series of session players to back him on self produced recordings--an album, a single and a remarkable 8-track only release titled "The Most Remarkable Tree We Ever Met." All the tracks from these releases are here, along with the Psychopaths two sides and some alternate arrangements of several songs. This isn't always easy music to listen to. Arvedon has some real skill--a pop sensibility that rivals Jonathan Richman (whose Modern Lovers Arvedon once auditioned for), a twisted sense of humor and the knack for crafting a good lyrical hook. He also has a habit of "singing" in an upper register that he simply doesn't possess. There are keys in which he can actually sell a lyric, but he apparently doesn't prefer to use them much. But there are songs worth hearing here--and songs which, given the right treatment by the right performer, could be hits. Enterprising musicians who could look past the vocal quirks and sometimes sketchy production could find material well worth adding to their repertoires. Some of it's even fine the way it is. Arvedon *can* control his vocal excesses when he wants to, and some of the players he hired are quite capable. David Arvedon abandoned his musical pursuits in the late seventies to pursue marriage and business interests. The marriage failed, and the business followed suit, and Arvedon's back in music, making appearances in the Boston area. Sometimes he plays with the latest version of the Psychopaths, sometimes he sits in with local bands, sometimes he hits karaoke night with his own tape to perform original songs. One of his songs was picked up by Dr. Demento and got enough response on the air to merit a slot on one of the Doc's compilation albums. Arvedon figures this might lead to his big break. Until or unless that happens, though, there's music in this package, and some of it bears digging out. David Arvedon's not for everybody, but hey, you're not everybody - you're somebody. You might even be somebody who'd find something to like here... I did. BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 13 in B Flat Major, Op. 130; Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. Brandis Quartet (Thomas Brandis, Peter Brem, Violins; Wilfried Strehle, Viola; Wolfgang Boettcher, Cello). NIMBUS NI 5465 [DDD] 61:12 Reviewed By Robert Cummings As many classical music devotees know, Beethoven originally composed his Thirteenth Quartet with a finale we now know as a separate work, the Grosse Fuge. He replaced it at the urging of his publisher and others because they felt it a mismatch for the work's other five movements. To their apparently delicate ears the mighty fugue's profoundly epic character seemed an overwhelming culmination to an otherwise chipper, elegant work. Though he acceded to their wishes in composing the substitute rondo finale, Beethoven had probably never accepted their judgment and would almost certainly have preferred the fugue over the rondo in performances of his work. In this Nimbus recording, you get both finales. One can therefore program either version of the quartet or include both finales for a marathon seven movement hearing. But this disc's major selling point isn't quantity-it's quality, specifically the quality of the performance. The Brandis Quartet has been garnering favorable notices in their Beethoven Quartet series thus far, and it's not difficult to see why. The group plays with unfailingly accurate intonation, technical finesse to toss off difficulties with seeming ease, and a keen sense of musical architecture. They also impart a feeling of oneness to their musicianship that suggests interpretation isn't arrived at through consensus or by domination of one (usually the first violinist), but rather occurs naturally. While this "intuitive" method of performance is almost certainly not the case here, one can nevertheless hear their collective artistry this way, quite easily discerning the individual players' comfort with the interpretive choices, however they were determined. Listen to their joyous account of the first movement, how they convey an exhilaration that makes you question the music was written by a man possessed of colossal inner miseries, a man who had grown completely deaf by the time of the work's composition. Try the group's mesmerizing Cavatina, too; hear their deft control of dynamics that serves to heighten the passionate outpourings and romantic utterances. Notice here, and throughout the performance for that matter, that they never allow detail to blur or the musical trajectory to sag, despite moderate to slightly expansive tempos. They can be rugged, too, even downright fierce, when the score demands it: hear the passage just after the opening of the Grosse Fuge (track 6; 0:55), where the violinist's fervid attack signals the epic thrust of the movement and his cohorts respond with driving spirit and the last ounce of commitment. Surely this is one of the greatest accounts of one of the greatest quartets ever written. I well remember a concert performance I attended by the now-dissolved Fitzwilliam Quartet of this work, minus the rondo. It, too, was spectacularly played. This Nimbus issue, though a product of the studio, has much of that air of spontaneity, of electricity that you associate with a live concert. It sears the work into the mind, becomes a standard against which to judge other recordings. And while one can obtain excellent performances of these works by the Quartetto Italiano (Philips), Tokyo Quartet (RCA), and Vermeer Quartet (Teldec), this Nimbus disc, which features excellent sound and informative notes, is one that will satisfy almost any tastes. Highly recommended. BUNNY BRUNEL: Ivanhoe (MRP Records MRP027) Touch(MRP Records MRP028) Momentum (MRP Records MRP034) Reviewed by Paul Remington Bunny Brunel has established himself well over the years. Having received his tenure as bass player alongside such musicians as Chick Corea, Larry Coryell, Al DiMeola, Joe Farrell, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, and Tony Williams, it only makes sense Brunel would explore and record his own music. A trio of these solo releases (originally released in 1989) have recently been re-released through MRP Records, and serve to establish Brunel as a formidable jazz/fusion bass player. His talents are not limited to performance. He has the ear to compose interesting and intelligent music, as these three releases prove. The personnel on "Ivanhoe" resembles a who's-who in the world of jazz/fusion. Such musicians as Corea, Hancock, Williams, Farrell, Stanley Clarke, Bill Watrous, and Al Vizzutti are featured, along with a number of others. Brunel's compositional talents reveal themselves in many original pieces, ranging from smooth and romantic, to grooving and rhythmical. Brunel's compositions allow each musician to stretch their musical capabilities. The presence of such a strong supporting cast augments Brunel's playing, producing a sound that is both solid and melodically pleasing. His intonation on the fretless bass is flawless, and very reminiscent of the late Jaco Pastorius. "Touch" picks up where "Ivanhoe" completes. An equally adept rhythm section features Daniel Goyone on piano, Corea on synthesizers, with Nicole Brunel on vocals, Paul Nicola on sax and flutes, Bernard Torrelli on guitar, and Andre Ceccarelli on drums and percussion. The compositions are somewhat softer throughout, and display some beautiful chordal progressions that compliment Brunel's fretless playing. Strings have been lightly added to some of the pieces, conducted by Brunel and Goyone. "Touch" implies sensitivity, and Brunel's sensitive approach to each composition is wonderfully communicated. "Momentum" finds Brunel with a completely different, and slightly smaller rhythm section. Brunel is supported by Kei Akagi on keyboard, Patrick Moraz on synthesizer, Frank Gambale on guitar, and John Wackerman on drums. Unlike "Touch," "Momentum" features a variety of musical styles ranging from lush and melodic to a blend of rock and contemporary jazz sounds. Brunel's ear for chordal changes provides a harmonic foundation that serves as a breeding ground for melodic content, no matter the musical style. The musicianship is superb, with excellent guitar playing by Gambale. Brunel's interest in the bass began with the early contemporary American jazz musicians of the 1970s. A native of France, Brunel was intrigued by the music produced by the early pioneers of jazz/fusion. In the late 1970s, Brunel found himself playing alongside Corea, and performing with the musicians he so adm