What a fershlugginer AMAZING week of really different kind of musical performances for me...some different shit, for sure...and yet, despite the radically disparate nature of each project (electric Indian heavy dub-groove mashup vs. heavy metal transmogrification of 19th century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner), somehow-- really similar--insofar as the 2 projects I'm so enthusiastic about here both partook heavily (drank the long draught down, indeed) of the ecstatic, the transcendental, the spiritually immanent-- qualities I seek out in all the disparate sonorous trajectories I've pursued to date (limbs gone out on, you might say)--including excursions into 1930's Chinese pop, radical Jewish music, avant-garde rock, jazz, folk, blues, and beyond...

First up was the performance debut at Joe's Pub, the wonderful plush nightclub/boite carved (in part) out of the former 80's screening room/ theater in Joseph Papp's imposing Public Theater space, of a new ensemble consisting of myself on electric guitar and fx along with my friend the Indian world music star Karsh Kale (tabla and percussionist extraordinaire, vocalist, electronic dubmaster organizer, all around impeccable musician--check his solo albums on Six Degrees), the hypnotic, charismatic Indian quawwali singer and harmonium player Vishal Vaid, and genius electric bassist/producer Yossi Fine, who's played with Lou Reed, Bowie and many other greats...

and I must say we truly WRECKED the joint at 9:30pm in front of an absolutely sold-out house... and then did it again, maybe even better (some did say) at 11:30pm to a pretty damn nearly sold out house, that included lots of friends like the Rubin Museum's Tim McHenry, Invasion Group's Steve Saporta, insane-in-the membrane fox Shaista Hussain and comix maven Gus, my guy the newly appointed Soros Foundation's legal eagle/3rd world corruption roto-rooter-outer Kenny Hurwitz, my other mainman, Cineastispumanti imbiber (drink the long draught down again) Richard Porton, composer Lukas Ligeti and galpal whose name I shamefully forget--sorry!--BBC music producer Allison McGourty, Karsh's wife Anya and her lovely daughter, fetching Kate DeRosset, and myriad gorgeous and hip multi-kulti/ multi-coloured men and women,...it was quite a magic night, we played as one with very little rehearsal, both Karsh and myself each bringing his own compositions to the table which we distributed equally amongst the guys... started out with Karsh and myself playing in an acoustic duo format of tabla and acoustic guitar, and then were joined by Yossi and finally Vishal, and the whole thing started throbbing and pulsating and wailing like some (un)holy carnal Karnatic carnivale... until ASCENSION...a particularly awesome, eerie synchronic close at the end of the first set when Karsh and I faded out in precise sympathetic unison, me with a tremelo'ed pulsating pattern I set up and sustained, eventually decaying and dying away exactly as Karsh faded on tabla with the same pulsating pattern, yes o my brothers and sisters we were rockin' in rhythm...really such a pleasurable sonic throwdown/experience, I LOVE playing with these guys! Wait till you hear this...

And then it was up up and away after very little sleep once again, outward bound on a plane to Montreal, where my old friend the crafty amusing and brilliant intellectual tummler Sandy Pearlman was waiting..and after lunching at the famous Schwartz's deli (their smoked meat sandwich--Canadian parlance for pastrami-- is a killer--literally, cholesterol city... but what the hey) I got down and dirty at the Schulich School of Music building at McGill University where Sandy is a Distinguished Fellow, the better to test out the Marshall and Vox stacks Sandy had assembled for my delectation in order to shatter eardrums and minds with, as I was ear-marked to perform my Bruckner Fantasia the next day to his and music school Dean Don McLean's graduate and undergraduate seminars signed up for their joint course entitled "Bruckner and Heavy Metal" (yes, Virginia, there is more than an elective eclectic electric affinity here)...Sandy told me he was inspired to make such a connection upon hearing me perform Wagner excerpts on my '64 Strat at the old Knitting Factory in the late 80's, and he and Don make a very persuasive case for Bruckner being a major precursor to modern headbanging round the world, what with the massed armory of 19th century orchestral wood and metal at Bruckner's disposal and the dramatic and emotionally fraught (some would say frightening) way in which he chooses to fling their stacked-up sound around in such luminous and transfixing masterworks as his 8th Symphony ( a/k/a "The Apocalypse")...

Sandy and Don had suggested I retool fragments of the 4th movement of this sublime composition and reforge them in the smithy of my friendly Fender fire... and thus I spent many long man-hours working out suitable arrangements of the major themas and stratifications inherent in this movement over the last few months so as to suitably capture the sturm und drang and clang of the Alpine reaper...and i did not disappoint, receiving sustained applause and much good feedback at the conclusion of my performances (I threw in lots of electronics along with the needle-point lacework, the cleanly articulated skirling lines of the piece, which, in a return to my Beefheartian past, I learned by ear and memorized sequentially, without benefit of score--the stuff sticks better that way, I feel, as I truly know this piece now "from the inside"...)

The Canadian network CTV was there to film it, and I hope to have a clip up on my website soon...it was really a thrilling experience for me, and the music haunts me still, in fact it's indelibly burned in my brain...and after much convivial hanging out with Don and Sandy at various wonderful restaurants (Mythos and Il Cortile especially--highly recommended if you're going to Montreal) I was very sorry to leave..I love Montreal, such a great feeling of feng shui, world in harmony, overall there...

and what do both these 2 musical worlds have in common? (well... I once met Sandy quite by chance in the mid-80's when he was fresh off of his Clash producing experience after tussling with those young British punkers on their "Give 'Em Enough Rope" album, at a screening-- in that very same Public Theater space that is now Joe's Pub-- of "Alexander Nevsky", where we both went into paroxysms of awe and astonishment at Eisenstein's adroit visual deployment of the massed batallions of the Knights Templar, in tandem with Prokofiev's glorious score)...

(No, that's not it) :-)

I would say, the thing that unites Bhangra-beats and Bruckner, is nothing less than a "Going for the God-Head" impulse...a storming of the reality-asylum...a glimpse of the redemptive and healing force of the universe...a/k/a the Big Note...call it the Shekinah or the Shiva...you know what I mean...

Happy Passover/Happy Easter/Happy Rabi Ul Awal

xxLove

Gary

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Posted By Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 4/04/2007 03:44:00 PM