The Record Game, Round 2 (Commentary Part 1)

Well, now I have been nominated to play the game by my cousin Brian Baker and my friend Geannie Friedman. Apparently the Almighty Algorithm has been shielding them from my posts. That’s OK; it gives me a chance to move into the next area (or three) of my life. So let us begin.

I don’t remember when I first heard Robert Johnson. It could have been after learning that “Crossroads”, performed by Cream, was actually a cover of Johnson. I had been interested in the blues way back when I was playing piano in high school, along with Leon Russell and early Elton John; the “devil’s music” had a part in helping me get out of Christianity with my mind intact (somewhat). And after my Punk Rock period, when I was working with electronic music, I thought it would be interesting to approach that from the perspective of the blues, which led to my song “Big Black Chariot” with my group Life On Earth.

I spent several months over the summer of 1985 living in the East Village of New York City, and a woman I knew while I was there gave me a cassette tape. On one side of the tape was the music of Mississippi John Hurt; I don’t know which album it was. But it certainly got me reassessing and diving further into the original blues as part of a project of mine to reimagine the performance space as a shamanic tribal ritual for our “tribe” of underground misfits, based on my reading of Joseph Campbell and a blending of several different influences at the time (more on those later). And that would have led me directly to the music of Robert Johnson again. It continues to have a profound influence on my way of hearing and performing music.

During the life of Miracle Room, we all experimented with creating electrified “instruments” out of primitive elements. My best success with that was the creation of the “electric 2x4”, a length of 2x4 lumber with three piano wire strings tuned with piano tuners and raised off the surface, played with a slide. Several years later I saw a documentary about the original blues musicians in the South, with the filmmaker traveling around and talking to players. One of them took some wire, wrapped it around a nail on his front porch post, pulled it down over a pill bottle and wrapped it around another nail, then proceeded to play it with a pick and slide; it was just like my 2x4!

I also don’t remember the first time I heard Can, but they have had an equally important part in my musical development. I’ve never been much of a jazz head, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love improvisation. Much of what I have learned about that has come from listening to Can. There is something at once psychedelic and punk about their approach, especially the early half of their career. The hypnotic rhythms, interesting textures, and intricate melding of parts all happen because they know how to listen to each other. It’s not a case of “just play whatever you want and it will all be genius”; they hear a space and decide if it needs to be filled or not. And they all have the same understanding about that process so it feels like one voice. Tago Mago may be my favorite Can LP, but I’m pretty sure a cutout bin copy of this was my introduction.

Remember that tape the friend gave me with Mississippi John Hurt on one side? Centrafrique was on the other side, and I probably played it a LOT more. This was a series of field recordings made in the Congo region of Africa of various performers playing mbira and chanting. Everything about this music resonated with me at the moment I heard it, and not least because of my growing involvement with mushroom culture and psychedelic shamanism. I could hear in the voices of the singers the specific tones that came up in me while under the influence of the sacrament. There is a hum that develops in certain ideal conditions, like alone on Enchanted Rock in the dark; it bubbles up and needs to be articulated in the mouth or it threatens to blow your body apart. But in the articulating, your body instead becomes a non-factor and one becomes One. This tape had so much to do with the development of the ideas, sounds and visual elements of Miracle Room that it cannot be overstated; it embodies the tribalism that I was seeking to merge with my underground music. And those ideas still inform my process and progress, so yeah, it has been and continues to be a HUGE influence!