RTX, Transmaniacon (Drag City)

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My history with Royal Trux is a long and strange one. Right about the time Cats & Dogs came out, and I saw them open for Sonic Youth, I was in high school, and in the midst of probably the most wide-open time a kid can have for discovering music. Here was this band that both live and on record was totally shambolic, occasionally hellacious or pretty, depending on whatever mood they felt like putting across. I remember standing front and center, watching them, being totally bewildered by Jennifer Herrema’s uncompromising and confrontational stage presence: black Oakland Raiders jacket, platform tennis shoes, hair over eyes, and hand over crotch. That her partner Neil Hagerty generally exuded the opposite, a weird aloofness that sometimes obscured how fucking intense a guitarist he is, made it all the more confusing for me, then a pretty dumb teenager.

Over the years I checked out more Trux live shows, heard records, but there was something that still bewildered me, even though I started to get it. And then, in 2001 it all fell apart. Neil and Jennifer split, the Trux was over, broken up by the difficulties they always were rumored to have with drugs, perfect gossip fodder. At least, that’s what we thought.

While Neil has continued to make incredible music under his own name, it wasn’t really clear what Jennifer would do, or even if she’d be able to continue making music. Let’s face it, rock is still stuck in the realm of the sexist past; even for the most politically progressive rock fan it’s easy to assume that, in a male-female creative partnership, the dude does the heavy lifting. This is a whole ‘nother can of worms I ain’t gonna open.

So here it is, Transmaniacon, the first we’ve heard from Herrema in a few years, under the RTX moniker. And despite there being no Neil to be heard, continuity with the Trux years is evident. Yet at the same time, RTX is its own magnificent beast. Put simply, this is the best rock album I’ve heard in years, and stands up to any of the best Royal Trux material.

How’s that, you say? Well Neil and Jennifer always had an awesome way with production, and RTX continues that while taking off in a different style. Transmaniacon, as you could probably guess by the Blue Oyster Cult-ish title and butterfly skulls artwork, is a heavy metal record but it’s produced like a modern pop record (which was Neil and Jennifer’s secret strength: everything they did seemed influenced by pop radio, in the most brilliantly non-obvious ways). This record might be the first time a rock band has used computer production in a blatant and totally psychedelic way. We got crazy auto tuned vocals; layers of clipped, thumping drums; Jaimo Welch’s bizarre and twisted guitar riffs and leads and it all works through the force of its own internal logic. This music is perfect, from “Stoked” to “Low Ass Mountain Song” to the ending number “Resurrect” (whose coda sounds like Nicks/Buckingham-era Fleetwood Mac on speedballs).

Last week, I was driving down a mountain in New Mexico, in my dad’s pickup truck. The sun was shining bright in the west, about an hour before sundown; the air was warm and crisp. I rolled down the windows, blasted Transmaniacon, and entered a state of perfect bliss. I can’t think of a more important function for a rock band to achieve.

HUGH DAVIES, RIP

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Well much like at the end of 2004, I have another bummer of a music-related death to report. British composer, performer, instrument inventor, lecturer and musicologist Hugh Davies has died. He was 62. I am most familiar with his sounds on the Music Improvisation Company LPs (one on Incus and one on ECM) and on the Work on What Has Been Spoiled LP with the mighty Borbetomagus. I never got a chance to hear his many other projects, though a number of them were recorded for posterity. This academic biography sums up his work nicely, and the GROB label also has an interesting sounding reissue of Warming Up with the Iceman from 2001.

First Utterance

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I got my first taste of Comus not too long ago. Comus, for those of you who don’t know, was a band that released two records in the early 1970s. I have never heard the second one, To Keep From Crying, and by some (but not all) accounts it’s not worth hearing. But I recently picked up a CD reissue of their first LP, First Utterance, and it’s been burning the proverbial hole in my stereo ever since.

So what’s special about it, you ask? Well, uh, I dunno how to answer that exactly, but I guess I’ll try (since that’s probably the whole point to this dang blog thing). I didn’t know a damn thing about Comus before picking up the CD, besides the name, but in searching around on the ol’ InterWeb, I see that:

“In Greek mythology Comus is the god of revelry, the son of Circe and Bacchus. Comus is also the title of a dramatic poem by the renowned 17th Century English poet, John Milton, and the poem’s central theme – female chastity tempted in the archetypal ‘wild wood’ of moral perplexity by the demonic enchanter, Comus – sets the tone for First Utterance, especially ‘The Song To Comus’.”

That’s from this exceptional short essay on Comus: A Million Fleshy Things: The Songs Of Comus – by Chris Blackford, which prolly provides more information than I should attempt. Needless to say, tho, I do know that First Utterance is an absolutely engrossing listen. But it’s not the easiest thing to get into at first. The singing on the first song by Roger Wootton, “Diana,” may be enough to turn people off, and I have to admit that when I first heard him squeal out a gutteral “Di-ane-NUH!” I was a little non-plussed. However, it’s grown on me, and is now one of my favorite songs on the album. It took me a little bit to realize, but what’s so great about Comus is the way they combined complex British folk melodies and harmonies with a none-too-subtle edge of dark, almost macabre lyricism. Plus the playing is just super-tight too, and the instrumentation is varied. But yeah, the voice, it’s an acquired taste. But then again, there’s also Bobbie Watson’s contralto (at least that’s what I think her range is) to play off Wootton’s growls and faux-Elvish-ness (that’s elves, not Elvis)…

That’s the Bag I’m In

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I’ve been on a major Fred Neil kick lately. Should make sense to anyone who knows me that I’d be into Mr. Neil, but I’ve only recently (i.e. within the past year) really made a point of looking for his music. First I found a vinyl copy of The Other Side of This Life in Milwaukee last year, which pleased me greatly. This disc was recorded live in Woodstock, New York, and features nice acoustic run-throughs of most of Neil’s best known songs (“The Dolphins,” “Everybody’s Talkin’,” “That’s the Bag I’m In,” etc.). Vince Martin, one of Neil’s long-time collaborators and a great songwriter/performer in his own right (saw him last Fall with Black Dice, oddly enough), guests, as does the late Gram Parsons.

The other day, after listening to this and most of the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack (which features Harry Nilsson’s more famous take on “Everybody’s Talkin'”), I decided I needed more Neil in my life. So I was at Mondo Kim’s, and they basically had two choices: Bleecker & MacDougal and a two-disc set called The Many Sides of Fred Neil (which includes the entirety of The Other Side of This Life on one of the discs). Remembering that my friend Josh said something once about not being so into the former, I opted for the two-disc set even though I already had some of the tunes.

So, it turns out the purchase was an excellent choice. Disc One has the entirety of the self-titled album on Capitol, which is pretty difficult to find for a good price, as well as Sessions. The self-titled starts with “The Dolphins,” which is one of my all-time favorite songs by anybody, much less a favorite by Neil. It’s kind of an amazing feat in that it manages to speak about the weariness of the world on both a macro and micro level. That is, the voice of the song goes from the extra-personal to the personal and back, shifting many times. And there’s something about this voice that seems both experienced/wary and yet longing for innocence. And hey, who doesn’t like dolphins? Eeeep!

I don’t want to get “too heavy” in all this, or over-analyze or whatever, but damn Fred Neil’s good to listen to. Anytime works, but when the chips are down and you’re feeling low, Fred’s baritone seems to just really hit you in this sweet spot. At least, that’s what it does for me.