(by Bob Tarte, originally published as "Hell on Wheels" in The Beat magazine, Volume 15, Number 4)
The Technobeat Summer-Fall '96 National Tour
is underway, and I've had a great time reviewing cds in front of live audiences
from Lake Erie to the Big Muddy and beyond.
The breakfast regulars at the Traxler Cafe in Newton, Iowa, went
easy on the homemade tart-cherry pancake syrup and heavy on the compassion
as I served up an on-the-spot appraisal of a bittersweet favorite of my
own, the Cooking Vinyl label's American release of the late Biggie Tembo's
1992 Out Of Africa album. Maytag Co.
employee Martha Dysart, 26, whose hobbies include herb gardening, crewel
stitch, and minding her own damn business (she joked), elbowed table mate
Susan Greiner, a fit and trim 32-year-old Gemini who also works the Maytag
assembly line, as I pecked away at Technobeat's Mac Classic computer I'd
set up along the breakfast bar. Traxler Cafe co-owner Dave Roda, an outspoken
quintagenarian whose hard-bitten edge hides a softness for economical prose,
suggested I take advantage of the early morning fresh air as a stimulus
to thought. While that left me nowhere to plug in, falling back on pad and
ballpoint pen forced me to slow down and reconsider this cd as I planned
my route out of town.
As I had been telling Ms. Greiner before her unfortunate coughing bout,
Biggie Tembo's final solo release is a biggie, one of the rare cds where
you can find something to say about every single track. The off-again, on-again
member of Zimbabwe's U.K.-based Bhundu Boys crams so many elements into
his jit mixture of southern African and Anglo pop styles you'd expect the
cracks would show. But even the sleepwalker "Harare Jit"--which
purposely strives for the generic--easily soars above its mundane intentions,
thanks to a vocal exuberance that prods the stalwart pace and melody to
life. Busy arrangements with lots of changes keep everything in constant
motion, and the resulting complexity brings an edginess that makes me think
of the more aggressive songs as the musical equivalent of pointillism. "Mushonga"
is a miracle of engineering. Squint half attentively and it holds together
as a unified object. But focus on the individual instruments churning with
gamelan intricacy, and you may wonder how any band member knows what to
do and when to do it. A frantic high-hat seems to be backing anything but
the phrases chanted by the vocalists, while the lead guitar ties itself
in unfathomable rhythmic knots as the intervening rhythm guitar and bass
follow their own arcane internal clocks.
Wonderful as the instruments are, the songs on Out of Africa are
indisputably the property of the singers. Biggie and the boys steal the
show with power harmonies, hooky refrains, comic groans, motet tricks, and
other acrobatics, and whenever the singers are absent even the most compelling
instrumentation ends up marking time for their return. For proof, check
out "Ngaraire" where a fluttering bass drum pedal and out-of-breath
horns set the stage for the most protracted, dramatic entrance by a fat
man since Sidney Greenstreet in "The Maltese Falcon." After delivering
just a few verses, Biggie drops out again for a long, extended stretch,
then the cut slams shut shortly after his reappearance. The one song to
avoid is the title cut, whose lament over continent-wide troubles is easily
read as Biggie's despair over his career. "I am running away from myself,
leaving behind what I am, trying to be what I never can," he complains.
The irony is he made an amazingly good record in the process.
After putting the finishing touches on this last review in the heavily trafficked
lobby of the Quality Inn motel in Davenport, Iowa, I found myself
unexpectedly delivering an off-the-cuff lecture to a bright-eyed group of
students from Henry W. Armstrong High School in Rockford, Illinois. "You
youngsters have your whole lives ahead of you," I told them. "So
beating me up and stealing my car will only lead to serious trouble later
down the road." A friend in need, and thus a friend indeed, was Jason
Mulvihill, 41, the night manager of the local Wendy's restaurant who joined
our gathering in the parking lot when one of the high-spirited high schoolers
used the Technobeat columnist to block the drive-through window. After escorting
the teenagers off the property, Jason invited me inside his place of work
for a late night cup of coffee, an order of Biggie Fries--fittingly enough--and
a napkin compress for my nose. I tried this out on him:
The Bhundu Boys sans Biggie Tembo put in a game performance on 1993's
Friends on the Road compilation, also
just issued in the U.S. by Cooking Vinyl. Friends finds the Bhundus crafting
warm fuzzies with a variety of collaborators, including U.K. group The Latin
Quarter, country crooner Hank Wangford and Celtic harpist Savourna Stevenson,
who contributes one of the finest moments on this spotty disc, a gorgeous
remake of the Boys' "My Foolish Heart" called here "My Foolish
Harp." Creative pairings such as this plus songs where the Bhundu Boys
are clearly at the helm indicate what could have been but for a limp choice
of material. The album starts strong with "Radio Africa" a peppy
jit-drenched English language ditty co-inhabited by the Latin Quarter, a
song with so much going for it from kindling guitar to sultry vocals that
the steep plummet of the two other Latin Quarter cuts is especially disappointing.
"Bitter South" appears to have been written in a dry spell after
falling asleep to Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble," and "Church
on Fire" throws buckets of ironic attitude at another Graceland-derived
hulk. As bizarre as the former songs are bland is a version of Johnny Cash's
"Ring of Fire" which shows how well the Bhundu's layered guitar
sound can mesh with American country music. But this warhorse is too tired
to resuscitate and Wangford offers nothing new to the vocals.
Not every stop along the Technobeat Summer-Fall '96
National Tour has been unscheduled. After writing ahead to dozens of
book stores, including national chains Barnes & Noble, Brentanos, Little
Professor, Waldenbooks, and Borders, I received an invitation from Crook's
Used Book Nook in Chillicothe, Ohio, home of the Mound City National
Monument. Beverly Gerrard, proprietor, a round dynamo of a woman in her
late '50s, jumped up from her plain wooden desk at my arrival. Informing
me how glad she was that I could make the trip, Beverly immediately installed
me on the linoleum in front of the Mystery and Adventure paperback stack
where I sorted and priced a carton of recent Historical Romance trade-ins.
At noon she graciously allowed me to half-man the front desk while she retired
for a bowl of minestrone soup at the Evermore Avenue Dunkin' Donuts, brewer
of the best cup of coffee I've ever tasted from a pastry franchise--I know
because she brought me back a partial cup. Beverly's absence gave me the
break from the Fantasy and Horror inventory duties I needed to assess a
new African/Latin music meld that for all its New Authors energy might better
occupy the Classics shelf.
Kinshasa-born Californian Richard Lemvo rips up a tough set of Afro-Cuban
songs with his band Makina Loca and assorted guests on Tata
Masamba (Mopiato Music). Guitarist Syran M'Benza and his Les Quatres
Etoiles bandmates throw sparks all over "Prima Donna (Petit Nzele)"
as soon as it settles into a flat-out soukous groove, Sam Mangwana adds
vocals to "Minha Querida," and legendary Zairean singer Nyboma
thickens the chorus of two other cuts. Lemvo's energetic take on Cuban sources
of enduring African popular music styles is reminiscent of Africando's two
cds, but without the wildly creative arrangements that made their every
note seem new. Lemvo's more interested in updating and expanding the sound
of great Cuban bandleaders like Bene More, whose "Yiri Yiri Bon"
closes the disc. The result is consistently satisfying but lacking a knock-out
punch, especially in the bouncy but unexceptional horn charts that add more
texture than muscle. Still, it's a long way from pro forma with song after
song instantly imprinting itself in memory. So if my response to Lemvo's
cultural juxtapositions is how familiar the innovations seem, that might
be precisely his point.
A big hello to all my friends in Peebles, Ohio, just a holler away
from the Kentucky border. Peebles is home to the serpent effigy mound and
Technobeat reader Jamie Prucell, who sent this columnist an e-mail taking
him to task for an unfavorable review of Mickey Hart's 100th Olympiad opening
ceremonies invocation theme in The Beat, Vol. 14, No. 7. An Internet
search quietly netted Prucell's full name, address, and phone number, but
I didn't call ahead since I wanted my visit to be as unexpected as her shucking
of my musical judgment. For two days I parked a couple of houses away from
the Prucell family home, watching the comings and goings of husband, Walter,
cute-as-a-button kids Walter, Jr. and Normandy, and taking down the license
numbers of neighbors and visitors. I followed Prucell to the IGA Food City
market, tailed her to Slaphappy Baby Daycare, and crept up on her that evening
as she left an anorexia nervosa support group meeting. "Ms. Prucell,"
I demanded, stepping out of the shadows and imposing myself in front of
her 1994 Mitsubishi Gallant. "Got any fancy opinions about Romanian
Gypsy music?"
I told her how Taraf: Romanian Gypsy Music (Music
of the World) contains a wealth of styles glued together by the unmistakable
gypsy flair for dizzying instrumental intensity and speed plus vocals that
seem to burst through a crack from forgotten centuries. The songs teeter
between the fringes of a shadowy east and west, carrying the roots and responses
to nomadic styles that sprouted flamenco, klezmer, fado, plus some Turkish,
Armenian, and even Celtic vernaculars. The performances here opt for fever
over frenzy with throbbing double bass and dulcimer rhythms and mostly accordion
and violin leads. Two long suites of love songs and entertainment songs
at the front of the disc help set the sustained mood of expectation, and
the choice of common denominator material for the entertainment of a wide
gagi non-Gypsy Romanian peasant audience contributes to the seamlessness
of this excellent collection. Among the standout cuts is the dissonant bluegrass
ritual wedding dance, "The Hora of the Fir-Tree," where the plucked
dulcimer resembles a skewed banjo as the violins launch a tempest of a hoedown
in a mere 1:11.
It's a physiological fact that listening to the Village Pulse label's Bougarabou: Solo Drumming of Casamance actually
gets my heart racing faster than my morning cup of mud. Playing the disc
at work is a disaster, because I end up zipping through jobs in record time,
defeating the whole purpose of charging by the hour. This collection of
solo pieces by Saikouba Badjie, member of the Jola people of Senegal's
Casamance region, is anything but stark. Saikouba augments his superkinetic
hands with bracelets of jangling banana-shaped bells and the women accompany
him with palm-frond clackers, clapping them in double or triple time and
contrary to his rhythms for a dizzying dose of complexity. Shouts and other
vocalizations also add to the excitement. A four-cut improvisation is the
centerpiece of this pristinely recorded cd, functioning as a virtual history
of bougarabou drumming as Saikouba begins performing on a single drum then
progresses to all four. Until this century, according to Adam Novick's liner
notes, the Jola played just one drum, adding two later, then finally graduating
to three or four in the late '70s perhaps as a response to the popularity
of Cuban salsa in the region. Solo Drumming is a terrific disc, but
don't play it if you're trying to cut down on stimulants.
One day on the road blurs into another. I wake up in a mom and pop motel
on Ohio's effigy mound stump circuit, kick the groupie out of my
room--in this case, it's pop--apply Lotrisone ringworm ointment to my cheek,
and try to forget yesterday's run-in with the cops in the last small town.
My spirits rise as I drive through the village of Newark past Buchanan
Road to Fairway Avenue and salute the guard at the wrought iron front gate
of the Mound Builders Country Club, a golf course which incorporates the
prehistoric Octagon Mound of the ancient Hopewell peoples. Though I have
neither club membership nor bag of clubs, I have no trouble gaining access
to the grounds. A pair of bolt cutters goes through the chain link fence
like butter at the shaded west side of the course. Once inside, I marvel
at the sight of golf carts bobbing up and down the ancient earthworks, and
wait until the girl at the snack bar steps out for a cigarette so I can
slip in and steal three slices of cold pizza and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi.
Crouching under the bridge at the water hazard, I do an on-the-spot review
of Spirit Chaser (4AD) by U.K.'s gloom
merchants Dead Can Dance. Ever since the duo of Brendan Perry and
Lisa Gerrard ran short of 17th century Italian dances to plunder, they began
adding Bulgarianisms and Middle Eastern glossalalia to their millenarian
milieu. Now the world music influences have grown to include Mesoamerican,
flamenco, Australian aboriginal, classical Indian and other motifs standing
side by side with guitar quotes from Neil Young's "Down By the River"
("Song of the Stars"), cello glissandos plucked from George Harrison's
"Within You Without You" ("Indus") and instrumental
noodling straight outta King Crimson's "I Talk to the Wind" ("Song
of the Dispossessed"). Pop quotes plus world beat divided by pretension
usually yields a negatively compelling big bang of a bore, but I have to
admit an increasing fondness for this disc once I realized that the Dead
probably don't take this piffle any more seriously than I do. In fact, I
find portents they're actually having fun after a poker-face Buster Keaton
fashion. Perry drops his Francis Albert Ian Curtis Sinatra crooning in favor
of a more relaxed Perry Como mode. Plus, who else would even think of transforming
salsa into a dirge?
England's technopop world beat cut-ups Loop Guru make Dead Can Dance
seem like classicists on their debut American release Duniya
(Waveform). It isn't just the omni-reliance on synthesizers, which
the Dead also use to cavernous effect, it's the incessant primacy of the
drum machine which strips body, soul and momentum from one sample-heavy
assemblage after another. Gurus Salman Gita and Jamuud cite Can as a major
influence in the liner notes along with Captain Beefheart, The Mothers of
Invention, Franco, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, and many others whose potency
comes from their capriciousness and a rhythmic elasticity that canned bits
can't match. Loop Guru's loopiest material is predictable as a stuck clock
as ethnic instrument emulations and foreign language vocal snippets beat
empty skulls against beat box tick-tocking that eschews development for
the consistency of a robotic beat. Even Kraftwerk knew better. Even "Aphrodite's
Shoe," where a dubwise reggae rhythm caresses floating Bulgarian vocals,
is ultimately static, lost in the tiny interior of your favorite labor-saving
electronic appliance.
Speaking of gurus, Krishna Das left his in India in order to spread
his fame in the West, and the result is One Track
Heart (Triloka Records). Teaming up with Indi-beat repeat offenders
Jai Uttal and Jim Wilson, the modestly monikered Krishna modernizes traditional
Bhakti Yoga chants by transmogrifying them into yogi rock. How useful you'll
find these amplified texts depends on your reaction to the inside back cover
liner note photo, in which Mr. Das strikes a devotional pose with an anthropomorphic
statue of the monkey god Hanuman reminiscent of Maurice Evans' best-known
role. If you own more tubes of incense than pairs of shoes, you may want
to tuck this insanely exuberant disc inside your Indian cupboard after all.
But as a hedge against inadvertently transgressing divine law, I'd recommend
reprogramming your cd player so that the first track every time you pop
in One Track Heart is "Prayer to the Goddess for Forgiveness."
Speaking of devotion, casual listening couldn't crack Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan & Party's Intoxicated Spirit
(Shanachie). While I enjoyed hearing pop's newest avatar sing traditional
qawwali compositions with his Pakistani bandmates on harmonium, backing
vocals, tabla, and handclaps, sprawling song lengths plus coughs and throat
clearings throughout this live recording put me off. Phlegm and rapture
usually don't mix. But Ali Khan's Sufi roadmap to the divine plumbs allegorical
connections with earthly excess. He compares a state of bliss to continual
drunkenness and--in lyrics that must give stricter Moslems fits--equates
his beloved with the Kaaba, telling her, "Since I have found you and
have become the worshipper at the altar of your love, I don't require a
mosque to prostrate myself and say my prayers." These strategies are
interesting enough to warrant and often reward pious attempts to drown myself
in the boisterously prayerful atmosphere. Still, music that promises a glimpse
of enlightenment has heavier goods to deliver than your average fm-radio
ditty. Live, Nusrat and Party would probably tear the top of my head right
off, but here the ebb and flow of ecstasy in 23:00-long cuts is tricky navigation
indeed. Just as limbs began to tingle in response to lusty group vocals
and Ali Khan's swirling scat singing, the bottom would drop, stranding me
in another false denouement all stressed up and with no known place to go.
This may be all part and parcel of the brotherhood's wake up technique,
but, thanks, I can lose my way on my own.
Deciding to give the bookstore franchises another chance, I made my way
to Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Coliseum Drive in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Concave chest puffed out with pride, I located several issues of The
Beat hidden at the back of the magazine stacks, dusted off the most
recent, and moved it to the front tier next to the current copy of Dog
Fancy. At the Software Center, I plopped down at a Mac that was demo-ing
the medical adventure game Cyst and replaced it with Bob Marley's
Soul Almighty, Vol. 1 (JAD Records)
which I'd borrowed from the CD sales area. "Gather round me!"
I cried. "I'm about to write a review." Software Specialist Jan
Smits deadpanned, "I've notified security about you, sir." I teased
her back, "I'm armed with musical knowledge--and dangerous," and
produced a photocopy of the unanswered letter I'd sent to the store manager
announcing the Technobeat Summer-Fall '96 National Tour. As Jan relocated
her customers to the parking lot, I toured the CD-ROM section of the disc
until an inexplicable power outage confined to my section of the store curtailed
my explorations.
Soul Almighty contains laboriously restored musical tracks from Bob
Marley's 1967-68 sessions with producer Joe Venneri and leading R&B
musicians of the day. Read all about it in The Beat founding editor
Roger Steffens' liner notes. The audio portion of the disc is great, if
quirky, positing digitally reconstructed and in some cases re-recorded instrumental
tracks with vocals that are occasionally so constricted they sound phoned
in. Of course, it's a miracle these tracks exist at all, and the performances
and material--plus the dynamics of the instrumentation--are strong enough
to make this disc a must for Marley fans. What really puts Soul Almighty
over the top is a batch of multimedia files playable on CD-ROM-equipped
Windows and Mac compatibles. This stuff is great fun and includes photo
galleries, biographies, a Bob Marley discography, interview snippets with
the producers and others, a video of the "What Goes Around Comes Round"
re-mix featuring generic footage of the Wailers plus inserts of new vocals
by Lynette Lewis, and a chronicle of Haile Selassie's visit to Jamaica that
I have yet to locate.
Graphically, the interface is beautiful, full of photo treatments sporting
earth-tone tints, weathered edges, haloed typed, and other hip Adobe Photoshop
effects. Operationally, the interface suffers a few minor hiccups. For instance,
each time you leave the main screen for the Rude Boys submenu, "Strangers
On the Shore" starts up, providing mood music as you decide which direction
to go from there. Click on a pic to hear an interview snippet with a Marley
insider, and when you return to the Rude Boys submenu, "Strangers"
starts all over again--and again each time you revisit that screen. Every
submenu is similarly tied to a particular song. I'd rather have songs cycle
randomly than trudge through the kind of repetition that CD-ROMs are tailor
made to avoid. And be careful when you access the CD Jukebox screen which
lets hear a track from the audio-only portion of the disc by clicking on
the title. The sound kicks in at a substantially higher level than on the
CD-ROM-only material, so mind your ears and speakers.
Soul Almighty's biggest wow is a feature which lets you toggle back
forth between the original, unenhanced versions of a song and the restored
versions, revealing the extent of producers Joe Venneri and Arthur Jenkins'
genius. For $15.99 retail, this disc is unbeatable. The multimedia portion
is as extensive as a few pricey first generation CD-ROMs I own. (Roger Steffens
estimates there's ten hours worth of material to read and listen to on your
PC.) In terms of presentation and sheer smarts, I'd also rate it higher
than some current $50-and-up CD-ROMs such as Peter Gabriel's Xplora 1.
Too bad there isn't a CD-ROM component to El Caiman,
the Corason label's showcase of the furious son huasteco. Though the canon
of this Mexican folk style is small and the songs stylistically similar,
the individuality of the ten trios in this anthology is as obvious as a
pie in the face. My favorite change-up comes once the first group, Los Caporales,
shows its stuff with the nonstop, bumblebee violin, chugging huapanguera
guitar, and yodeling interplay the style is known for, only to be succeeded
by the unexpected grittiness of Los Cantores de la Huasteca--featuring outstanding
falsetto vocalists Martin Godoy Sanchez and Juan Balleza Rodriguez, who
also snaps out an unnerving rhythm on guitar. Among the gems on this irresistible
disc are early performances by Los Camperos de Valles vocalist Marcos Hernandez,
recorded in 1971 when he was the 17-year-old wunderkind of Los Cantoes de
la Sierra, the restrained sizzle of Los Camalotes' Veracruz variations of
the son, and Los Trovadores del Panuco led by Esperanza Zumaya, the only
woman I have ever heard sing huapangos. I only wish there were a video included
on the disc so I could see what this amazingly energetic music looks like
when it's being performed.
I didn't think there was a band alive older than Jethro Tull, but lo and
behold from Cuba comes Septeto Habenero, founded in 1920 after an
aborted start three years earlier as Cuarteto Oriental. The line-up has
inevitably changed over the decades, but not as frequently as you might
think. Lead singer Manuel Fure joined the Septeto way back in 1952--the
year I was born, I believe--and German Pedro Ibanez broke his first guitar
string with the band in 1964. As expected, the Habeneros excel in the classic
style son, but with nary a trace of creakiness on 75
Years Later (Corason/Rounder). The first thing that got my attention
was a trumpet rising boldly from the tres guitar, bass, and bongo backbone,
and though it initially seemed jarring by its lone self in a stringed instrument
setting, a few minutes of listening confirmed its essential role in the
band. Trumpeter Barbaro Teuntor's parts are as economical as they are sharp,
leaving ample space in several six-minute-plus numbers for tres guitarist
Felipe Ferrer to chime out brightly. The Habeneros have honed plenty of
tricks over the years for generating excitement, such as gradually increasing
the tempo of "Cuartos Palomas" and "Guaguanco de Tipico,"
adding a jump-up bongo solo to "Cuando Me Toca a Mi", or piling
on the call and response climax of "El Orgullo de los Soneros"--though
all it ever takes to up the intensity several notches is for Manuel Fure
to switch to his declamatory style as the cowbell kicks in behind him. This
is easily one of the strongest releases in the Corason label's American
releases of traditional Cuban music.
I apologize to the Latin musicians for the slapdash manner of these last
two reviews, to the unknown resident of Erie, Ohio, who loaned me
a car for a couple of hours, and to the sanitation workers at Cedar Point
amusement park, Sandusky, Ohio, for another unfortunate incident. My own
weak nature plus the strain of living in the shadows of one small town after
another has undermined what I had hoped would be the public relations coup
of a lifetime. Watch what you say and do the next couple of months. Look
around before you step out of your workplace to a street that seems deserted.
Don't trust the stranger leaning back in his seat beside you on the bus.
Above all, stay away from your newsstand. Technobeat is coming to your town.
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