Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #21 by Stephen McClurg

An Interview with Jad Fair

Jad Fair has had anything but a conventional music career. Known for collaborations with everyone from Daniel Johnston to Moe Tucker to John Zorn, he made a recent album with songwriter and puppeteer David Liebe Hart. Also a visual artist, Fair is probably most well-known for Half Japanese, a band featured in many books and documentaries about outsider music.

He is currently releasing at least two albums every week this year. I was lucky enough for Fair to spare some time to talk about this series of albums. Since New Year’s Eve, he has (as of the time of this writing) released thirty-six albums using his own art as the covers.

After the interview, I offer some listening suggestions.

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TDO: When we first chatted, you said you were trying to get a new album out every two weeks. You seemed to have made that goal and then some.

Jad Fair: It’s not an album every two weeks. What I’m trying to do is add two new albums every week. I have twenty-four albums so far. I think I should be able to easily have 100 new albums this year.

TDO: Wow! I misunderstood that! Even though you mentioned these were about 50% archive and 50% new material, I can’t imagine getting that many albums together. The covers, gorgeous on their own, also seem to visually unite the work as a singular project, though that may not be in mind at all, given the range of song and music material.

Jad Fair: I’m glad that you like my art. Thanks.

TDO: I’ve seen mention of your influences being some of the great bands that were around Detroit as you were coming up: The Stooges, MC5, and Destroy All Monsters. Some of the current songs have a vocal cadence and structure that reminds me of poetry readings, almost like the Beats collaborating with DEVO or the Residents. I hear Martin Denny in certain musical elements. I was curious about your influences beyond those great Detroit rock bands.

Jad Fair: I grew up in Michigan and some of my favorite bands were from Michigan. I was also a big fan of The Velvet Underground, T Rex, The Shaggs, NRBQ, Captain Beefheart, and The Modern Lovers.

TDO: You mention movies and many characters, particularly monsters, in your lyrics. I grew up in Michigan and my grandparents lived in Coldwater, where you were born. Did you ever watch Channel 50 out of Detroit? Channel 50 was the first station where I saw monster and horror movies.

Jad Fair: I’m a huge fan of the early monster movies. I remember watching Sargent Sacto on Channel 50.

TDO: “An Evil Wind” mentions the movie Demon Wind, which is a wonderful mess of a film. A couple of the lyrics I particularly liked could be referencing the movie as well as relating to daily life.

I like that these films—and by extension your songs—could have grains of deeper truths in them. I particularly liked, “Teens don’t think about eternity, not on a Saturday night” and “Fool following fool following fool.” Were you just riffing on the film or mixing ideas about it with lyrical concepts you already had?

Jad Fair: A lot of the songs I write are written very quickly. A lot of it is just off the top of my head.

TDO: Some songs reuse lyrics or references (Nosferatu, zombies), some reuse musical settings, and a few seem like the same tracks. Cultural phrases also appear: for whom the bell tolls, all fall down, time waits for no man, etc. How much of that intentional and how much is your process open to the moment? For example, most writers I know would have edited those phrases out. Maybe they would mention Nosferatu in only one song. Is it in any way related to the repetition that goes into making the visual art? The recurring figures of monsters, stars, and hearts?

Jad Fair: I’ve written hundreds of songs. Repetition is fine with me. It’s not something I aim for, but I’m not bothered if it happens.

TDO: I’ve read that you don’t tune your guitar and never really have. Do you try to pitch the strings at all to something you like?

Jad Fair: I sometimes will tune up, but usually not. The guitar sounds more like a percussion instrument to me if it’s untuned.

TDO: I saw a video of you playing a very interesting guitar. I assume it was built for you, but at one moment there was a slow-motion clip and you were rocking like a classic guitar god, but then the neck starting bending forward at a strange angle off the guitar and was almost folding up–the clip didn’t have audio, but it struck me how it bordered on punk rock or those Detroit bands you grew up listening to and something like The Muppets. Then it showed you later folding the guitar up in order to get ready for another gig. I just think of the anger and catharsis of most footage of destroying instruments and how whimsical this was in comparison though so many elements were similar. Ultimately, it appeared that it wasn’t destruction at all. It was an image that reminded me of the phrase on your website: “Enjoy Your Life.”

Jad Fair: While touring I grew tired of having to carry around a suitcase and also a guitar case. I wanted to have a way to fit my guitar into my suitcase. I shortened the neck and have the neck attachable with rubber bands. The rubber bands make it easier to bend notes.

TDO: Is that a particular guitar that was made for you?

Jad Fair: The body of the guitar is one I bought in Glasgow in 1987. I’ve replaced the neck with a shorter one so it’ll fit better in my suitcase.

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Here are ten songs to check out from the ever-increasing Bandcamp collection currently being released by Jad Fair.

 

1. It’s Go Time: “234-B”

The most recent record (as I’m typing this) is loop-based. The robot on the cover may allude to this. The whispered syllables and almost constant looping had me envisioning the consciousness of a dying robot. Strange and beautiful.

2. Wonderland: “MMMMM”

One of Fair’s cut-out art pieces representing the White Rabbit and Alice graces the cover. He has similar art available at his website. I picked this one because I like it as an album opener setting the mood for the record. There’s a whistled almost-melody that comes in and out, like the whistler is getting your attention and disappearing like a ghost. Echoey, dub-like drum sounds, and keyboard strings fill out the rest of the track that feels like entering a sound world and descending with it.

3. We Win: “Invaders from Mars”

This one mixes several strains of Fair’s music that I like. One, it’s one of his sci-fi/monster songs. He writes more songs featuring movie monsters than maybe Danzig has seen, much less wrote about in the Misfits. The other strain I like is that the aliens are invading in order to get things like peppermint twists, Daisy Dukes, and strawberry cake.

4. Nature: “You Know What They Say”

I thought I should include a more traditional song in this group, at least as traditional as Fair gets. You get gongs, four-on-the-floor-beats, and some guitar strums to go along with some understated vocals. “My love’s a tiger, Tiger. My love’s a darling, Darling.”

5. Beautiful Music: “Three” and “Four”

There is a certain streak of Fair’s output that seems influenced by exotica. “Three” is a mix of Yma Sumac and Martin Denny in a dark carnival ride. “Four” is an anthemic, reverby acoustic jaunt.

6. Midnight Eyes: “Vampire Doll”

Swinging drums, barking dogs, and rumbling thunder weave throughout a story of a vampire/devil/voodoo doll in New Orleans.

7. Entertainment: “Come On”

A track built on various vocal effects and beat boxing. “I want more romance. / I want to see eye-to-eye. / I want to be belly-to-belly / Just you and I.”

8. Sunshine: “You’ve Got Me In A Spin”

A Fair love song featuring an array of unexpected dub and panning effects, the latter possibly representing the spin of the title.

9. Monster: “One Way Ticket”

A strummed drone of an acoustic guitar reminiscent of the Velvet Underground forms the basis of this track that lyrically becomes a celebration of shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, fears, and small-town life. “Oh, we can’t have the barbecue without you.”

10. Oh No: “Bad Seed”

I love Fair’s spoken word songs. This one has one of my favorite lyrics: “Shrunken head in a cigar box listening to Steely Dan.”

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Stephen McClurg (Episode 24 and Episode 374) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #19 by Stephen McClurg

Silica Gel: May Day (2020)

Silica Gel’s May Day opens with the title track, a lilting version of an estampie by twelfth century troubadour de Vaqueras. The liner notes say, “We hope our rendition, with drums-a-pounding and whispering voices reminding you of all you love but cannot possess allows you to dance the heartsickness away.” Since the title at once references revelry and rebirth, International Workers’ Day, and a distress signal, the title serves the playful seriousness and layers of sometimes contradictory meanings of the music. Silica Gel’s approach on this tune is to take folk and classical vocal forms, harmonious and airy vocals, and meld them to brute percussion and jarringly contemporary electronics.

May Day features gorgeous artwork and engaging liner notes, sometimes historical, sometimes poetic. The lyrics range from a variety of early song texts, notably twelfth and fourteenth century folk songs, and originals. Silica Gel is not a period-specific revival band. Instead, they commit to having old songs speak to contemporary times, honoring traditions while commenting on contemporary life.

My first reaction to the album was that it was a kind of folk horror score written by Julia Holter. Silica Gel, and the label Sweet Wreath, often create with seasons and cycles in mind: sounds and songs become articulations of light and weather and water and thunder. Similarly, the songs here connect to the physical, emotional, and liminal: these are songs of art and thought and love and protest, topics that cycle through humanity’s collective life and creativity. “New Year’s Dream” evokes not only the larger seasons and cycles, but also the scene of an early morning, vaguely lightheaded walk after a party to watch the sun rise.

It’s difficult to balance these conceptual and thematic threads, but the album manages it well. One of the best examples is “Pan Pan Medico,” a title that itself was used as a former distress signal. The song seems obscure at first, but every listen brings in more clarity, but also other layers of ideas. Playful and dark themes combine with folk songs, children’s songs, codes, and a sequence from “Yankee Doodle.” The ending deconstructs “Sweet Home Alabama,” one of the most unexpected, eerie and sublime moments on the album.

This is a collection speaking toward similar themes and ideas rather than a straightforward narrative. Like much folk music, it can be at once abrasive and balming.

Silica Gel’s May Day is available on Bandcampthrough Sweet Wreath.

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Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #18 by Stephen McClurg

Christopher C. King’s Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music (2018)

In an interview, Christopher C. King said that he doesn’t listen to music after 1940. The least generous image that came to my mind was a Mr. Show segment in the episode “The Velveteen Touch of a Dandy Fop” in which a man offers a doughnut to someone who refuses and says he doesn’t eat food “approved by the masses.” He also carries a mini-Victrola and says it’s the only modern piece of equipment he will touch. When asked about listening to a CD, he says, “People were not meant to hear music with such clarity. People need to hear snaps and pops and that shit.” This leads to a skit about two rival megaphone crooners, who I believe are meant to be stand-ins for the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop rivalry of the time.

I’ve come to appreciate King’s perspective, though alien to my own. He offers the most generous image of the dandy fop, which turns out to be neither dandy nor fop, but an idealist searching for the point where music and humanity meet. The lament in the title is a type of music, but also meant to be a longing for music lived within a community, when music was the fire and breath of a people responding to the immediate world around them. This is music not as commodity, but as air taken in during celebrations and mourning, but also part of living daily life. The lament is not just an Epirotic genre that King gives us insight into while relating it to other forms like the memento mori, but also the lamentation for music in general and how we have chosen to relate to it.

Epirotic music comes from the Epirus region of northwestern Greece. This folk music is frequently driven by mournful clarinet or violin melodies set to drones or dancing rhythms. Think of something like Appalachian fiddle improvisations with lots of trills interspersed between long notes or imitations of bird song while being played as Roma ballads.

The book offers a listener’s journey, maybe something more fanatical in collectors like King, who travels to Istanbul and around Greece searching for living and recorded forms of Epirotic music, the focus of the book and considered to be the oldest surviving European folk music. This particular journey is cushioned in the ideas of the larger journey of how we search for meaning in our lives. Evidently, he is willing to take in certain types of live music performed obviously past the 1940 expiration date for recordings, though I’m sure the date holds for the time of composition of said live music. Given this, King has to weigh in on one of the trickier terms that one hears in relation to music and music criticism: authenticity.

Though the writing is worth reading on its own merits and covers related music history and theory in ways any reader can enjoy, I think even King would find it strange for someone to read the book without going to the music. There is a spectacular collection made for the book, and since its release, several of the artists have also had newly issued collections of their own work.

The music is undeniable, earthly and ethereal. Somehow familiar, but in total also not like anything I have heard. I hear qualities of American Appalachian music, itself borrowing from various European, African, and Native forms; there are drone qualities reminiscent of Eastern or Middle Eastern styles, elements of klezmer, Roma, and imitations of vocal and natural sounds. Taken together, the book and the music collection make a spectacular project.

Christopher C. King’s Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music is available online and at book stores. The Lament from Epirus soundtrack is available from Tompkins Square Records.

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Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #17 by Stephen McClurg

J.J. Anselmi’s Doomed to Fail: The Incredibly Loud History of Doom, Sludge, and Post-Metal (2020)

A music history flavored with memoir, Doomed to Fail could be a user’s guide for anyone interested in metal and its hideous progeny. Along with histories of the guitar and distortion effects in popular music, JJ Anselmi trudges into the story of metal, its argued origins, various subgenres, and its connections to the wider world of music from Ma Rainey to La Monte Young. If you’re not sure where to start in terms of listening, the book has value alone in several years’ worth of suggestions within the text and in a great annotated discography at the end.

Anselmi offers a few reasons how such an ugly music creates such a devoted fan base. Metal, like horror movies, allows fans a catharsis. Many fans—including Anselmi himself—have pessimistic personalities and look for ways of purging emotions that they feel living in a world out of tune with their own ideals of justice, art, politics, etc.

In terms of culture, Anselmi suggests that young, creative people related to metal and then reacted to it in the way early punks did to prog rock and disco. While metal was appealing, the music became more and more technical and out-of-reach, and guitarists who didn’t want to spend time practicing as opposed to creating songs or expressing themselves began playing slower and heavier, a response already encoded in metal’s DNA through tracks like “Black Sabbath.” It’s a reaction similar to youth art movements that make do with what they have, from B-boys and scraps of linoleum to Z-boys and empty concrete pools. Anselmi mentions the intoxicating rawness and immediacy of the music and the tribal effect of shows in general as characteristics that bind the audience to the music.

The typical chapter opens by highlighting an important band within a sub-genre followed by shorter sections given to other bands, which then ends with a listening guide. If I have a criticism, I wish the band profiles profiles were longer, which isn’t necessarily the project of this book. I’m eager to find Anselmi’s other music writing.

Along with the sometimes comical expansion of subgenres, the expansion of the mindsets of metal listeners and performers is welcomed, interrogated, and celebrated in Doomed to Fail. A music known for attracting outsiders all over the world, metal is sometimes too well-known for problematic misogyny and homophobia. Obviously intellectually interested, but also passionate about the music and what it represents, Anselmi highlights problematic aspects of bands and band members, even as he values their music. Some chapters are specifically devoted to women and members of the LGBTQ+ community in metal.

While I’ve listened to bands that might fit here, discovering Sun O))) through the book is something I can give Anselmi thanks for. Sun O)))’s Monoliths and Dimensions (2009) is now a favorite record of mine in any genre. A partial collaboration with composer Eyvind Kang, and containing a tribute to Alice Coltrane, it’s not what I originally had in mind as doom metal. It’s also a spiritual record. On a good sound system it pulses through one’s body.  It’s terrifying at first, though ultimately, completely vivifying.

Doomed to Fail: The Incredibly Loud History of Doom, Sludge, and Post-Metal is a wonderful addition to metal literature.

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Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.