Guerilla Toss

After signing with Tzadik, music Czar of New York John Zorn’s label, and recording their debut CD for them, Peter Negroponte, told Zorn where he could go and insisted on putting out the G Toss’s own mix instead of the remix Zorn wanted. On first listen, you can see why Zorn freaked out. It’s muddy, murky, and fucked up. I had to turn it off way before the second song ended. So I tried again. “This is groovy,” I said to myself. Lightning bolts blasting the roots of trees. But I had to turn it off again after the third or fourth song. This is paranoid psychotic stuff.

An analysis of music like this is for fools, and a 49-year-old like me isn’t even going to try. This is the new generation’s music, kid’s stuff if you like, and it’s the kids who are going to find a place for it in our culture, like they found a place for the band’s live shows, as hardworking as James Brown. They are a phenomenon, and it’s a sexy, cerebral, wild time and scene whenever they play at a basement house show, at cop-killing volumes.

This is an all-star band, and that’s their one liability. “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” and that happens sometimes. But today’s music is more about process than project, giving the fans a chance to jump into the act, where everyone’s a star.

Negroponte is a great artist, just like a great jazz musician. Simon Hanes, bassist, is a sexy, Robert Mapplethorpe of rock and roll, and eat your heart out if you never got to see him play on stage in his birthday suit. This is a band of personalities. Guitarist Arion Shafiee gives it a sexy look and sound, cute-as-a-button girl-next-door singer Kassie Carlson can be savage or sweet. And synth guy Ian Kovac is a hero of integrity, roping the whole thing together with blankets of buzz. I won’t tell you how to judge this music. Just buy it. 

Deep Thoughts

Deep Thoughts JP on an early April afternoon, just before five, the sun still shining on the tiled floor: among their large and varied holdings of LPs, two Pink Fairies LPs, an early ’70s English psychedelic group with grinding guitars heavier than Led Zeppelin. Sit down on the light gold velvet couch, behind the antique trunk covered with left-of-center magazines, glance over to the other side of the store, with The Beatles’ red album, and an obscure Blind Faith.

Behind, on the back wall, the CDs, fewer in number, but just as varied and surprising. Check out the new Sun City Girls singles collection. Bounce back to the LPs on the other side, for the new Flaming Dragons of Middle Earth album, brilliant Western-Mass. stars of outsider music. Nick Williams and Peter Negroponte, the owners, already have the latest new stuff in noise and weird on vinyl, and they’re starting to get new CDs. But used stuff will always be among the great things they have to offer. And they are very liberal as to what they accept from local sellers, whether it’s Duke Ellington, Ahmad Jamal, or Alice Cooper.

“We want to be the link between In Your Ear and Weirdo,” two stores in Cambridge focusing respectively on ’70s rock and cutting edge experimental, says Peter, drummer for local psych/cut-and-paste rockers Guerilla Toss. But Deep Thoughts is a more pleasant environment, spacious and cozy. Part of the experience is just being there.

Nick is the founder of Cave Bears, a duo featuring him and whatever musician friend is around him at the time. He also co-founded the label Feeding Tube, so he’s an insider. So, when I asked him what he expected the half-life of the store to be, he had no trouble saying, “I expect it to be around until I retire.”

Peter and Nick bring complementary ethics to the store, which are reflected in their music. They both have many connections, but Nick’s music is more community based, where Peter’s has a wider appeal in the hip rock world, so the store has a way of bringing worlds together and building community. Already it is doing good business, and in two years they expect to double their holdings.

The two started talking about the idea on a tour early last fall, but nothing was done until February. Then at the end of winter, they had the space, at 138b South Street, and in five weeks it was up and running.

Deep Thoughts also has a nice collection of art on the walls, with a stuffed-animal assemblage and painting by local artist Lucy Watson. And they have about two shows in the basement every week. And this isn’t your average house show dingy basement. It’s clean and painted, with funky murals on the walls.

Deep Thoughts is a one-stop Mecca for people, art, and music. With JP already becoming a burgeoning cultural society, it’s bound to boom, and open up new doors to musical cross-pollination, and give the neighborhood a shot in the arm of love and excitement. Stop by any day from 12-8.

Arkm Foam

Foam… advancing and receding on the shoreline. It’s where the sea breaks free of its wateriness, and becomes part of the atmosphere. It’s where Adam Kohl draws the human element out of his sound, whether the funky, industrial chaos of Bang Bros, his duo with Mark Johnson, or the psychedelic romance of Peace, Loving he does with his fiancée, Kate Lee. He can test the threshold of intensity, in his wheelbarrow/bass clarinet project Farmhands, or be surprisingly funny, with his bass guitar loops and blips when he joins Nick Williams’s Cave Bears.

Yes, Foam is everywhere, flipping the State on its head, turning it into the music of the great Woodstock festival late last summer: all kinds of disparate music somehow reconnected back to his dream of music as sheer expression, the expression of an evolving spirit. “Will is strong enough to change the world”, he believes. And it’s what his music offers, each performance a special exhibit of his powerful vision, in its various stages of ferment. Sometimes it’s a brew delightfully seasoned with hops, sometimes it’s green and astringent, showing you the angst that is at the base of all his creation, his blithe disposition notwithstanding. And it’s always about foam,  mounting in the glass under the tap, to be passed around. His new LP is The Foam Doesn’t Fall Far from the Shore (Hot Releases).

THE FLASH notes on the Boston scene

Gordon Marshall

Volume 3

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Loudville (Northampton)

Discovery Zone, June 22

black ravens interzone

Loudville is soft and mellow in a nice way fruit chew sour bite to the singer’s vocals sometimes I wish I was in love so do I but I am and the bass beats slowly

Drummer enters guitar strums with energy unleashed she slows down the pace and picks up the beat two sticks together in the woods starting a fire and she’s the band type of Ringo at times with the English march she closes the lid on the simmering pot and it boils up and down and the fuzz wah on the guitar is cool like an ice storm in a fire

Triple play in the next like palm trees in the Pacific dropping coconuts but it’s cowboy too kai-yai-yippy-yayay

The rhythm picks up like a posse and it’s a groove trippy flowers in the sun

But the drums batter on she’s waving her hair like a mop looks good in her body physical but suave

Andrea Pensado & Walter Wright

Weirdo Records, June 24

ask Venessa

Gamelon gong sound Andrea blitzes with fuzz sneaky alarm buzz bubbling static it’s an amphitheater echoing in the dust of the desert Aida starts to sing sexual in innuendo she traces her fingers across screen seductively video arcade conundrums give and take like playing catch with a softball serene as a lake the wind splicing the ice of winter is this midsummer night’s dream Andrea speaking a soft Morse code a stop start motion like a shopping cart in a supermarket the freezer bins steaming a haze mysterious as if a goddess rose there she does but she’s made of sound Andrea athletic in sleeveless gown a secretary in an office in a ghost town Wright stays still and calm a focused smile on his face squeezing the tightest smoke rings sonic from the flat black square in his hands Andrea shimmers with lush wails sporadic like seeds spit out of long grass in a meadow

It’s an airport alive with air traffic x-ray screens set of by a pack of double mint gum the mint scent rises it’s a garden at night cicadas singing mad Mack trucks on the highway spewing diesel smoke and now Roman candles on the queen’s birthday oblong blue box twisted by Walter’s fingers then just Andrea’s urgent half whisper summer heat thunder under platinum cloud bank humming thuds from Andrea’s index finger harmonious tints of the keyboard like a sparkling painting of a glistening fishing village at sunset