Last November I posted Tran Quang Hai's "Jews Harps Of The World" album, which resulted in two responses: one from Rich Lindsay, heppin' me to the strange tale of Bruce Hodges, master of the E.J.H. (Electric Jews Harp), and another from The Netherlands's danibal, whose entertaining jews harp + beatboxing (!) album appropriately entitled "Ploing!"
is available as a free download, 10 tracks that fly by in 21 minutes. It boasts inventive harping backed by beatboxing that would prove difficult to rap over, sometimes resembling yodeling or Tuvan throat-singing as much as anything found in old-school hip-hop.
And that would be good enough, but the man provided a wealth of other jews-harp resources as well, proving that this odd instrument is alive and well. There are musicians playing things besides guitars, drums and keyboards. Lots of 'em. Danibal sez: "I am involved in the
International Jew's Harp Society , some info about our activities, like the international festivals which are held in different countries.
jewsharpguild.org which is very friendly american initiative with their own festivals.
Anton Bruhin - Swiss virtuoso, he has some great recordings from avant garde to swiss folk music (VIDEO)
Aron Szilagyi (son of a great jew's harp maker); he makes some cool music solo CD or with Airtist (a trio of j-harp, didge and human beatbox)
music from Yakutia (Siberia) is also very inspiring stuff. jew's harp is their national instrument played also by a lot of great looking women in costumes:
Thanks so much to danibal. Especially for those amazing Siberian babes.
As much as I like covering the whole spectrum of strange music, from experimental composers to thrift-store records, I am pleased that this year has begun with a bumper crop of outsider musicians, thanks to good Maniacs working to bring these musicians to the public eye and providing us with their fascinating back-stories: Bernie Sizzey, the return of John North Wright, and now, thanks to Rich from the great Kill Ugly Radio show up in Portland, the master of the Electric Jews Harp, Bruce Hodges. Rich sez:
"One evening I was looking on my local Craigslist for musical gear and I noticed an ad where a person was selling a mixer I'd been looking for, along with some guitar effects pedals. The Craigslist poster had supplied links to a CDBaby page where he said you could hear what these pedals sounded like. He failed to note, however, that it was how these guitar effects would sound if one wanted to route the sounds of a jaw harp through them. With curiosity I listened to all the samples on the album which he had entitled he EJH: Electric Jew's Harp. He was named Bruce Wayne Hodges and he’d recorded an entire CD’s worth of tunes on an electronically processed jaw harp. It all sounded sort of the same, like outtakes from the Dr. Who theme but I was fascinated that someone would do it and it did have a certain early Electronic, Electro-acoustic appeal.
And considering that he was a local artist, it seemed natural that I would make contact with him. He turned out to be a 60-ish looking old guy who knew nothing about Avant Garde music,Noise music or anything. The only 'weird' music he knew about that he could compare himself to was Pink Floyd. He explained that he really just wanting to sound like a guitar player but could never master the instrument after many attempts over the years. He’d always had a jaw harp, or Jew’s Harp as he’s inclined to call it. Running the sound through guitar stomp boxes just seemed natural to him.When I offered that he could be considered an Outsider musician, he sort of bristled, then seemed to warm to the term. I was fascinated by Bruce and that an ordinary guy would make such weird sounds with no preconceived notions of strange music - like it just seemed natural to him, coming as if from some innate impulse.
We corresponded back and forth a few times and made plans for him to come onto my radio show on KBOO. In the intervening months leading up to the date, I got numerous emails from his then-fiancee, who apparently was acting in the capacity as his business manager. She wanted all kinds of assurances from me and demanded to know how many people would be listening, how would this show be promoted and wanted me to plug his CDBaby site.
When the event rolled around and Bruce showed up with his adult son in tow (his manager had apparently stayed home), he shocked me by telling me that he had lost all of his equipment to a pawnbroker and that he was using equipment with which he'd never rehearsed with.He spent more time getting used to the equipment, but managed to do a brief but fascinating set. Listeners were calling in, wanting to know the origin of the strange sounds over the airwaves.
The next day, his 'manager' emailed me to say that while Bruce was a nervous wreck before the show, he was energized at having been on the radio and was ready to perform live shows.I suggested that Bruce try out for No Fest, a local noise festival in nearby St. Johns, Oregon and he eventually got himself on the roster after I'd introduced him to one of the bookers. Bruce showed up with his whole family. He seemed terrified, even though he seemed to think the rest of the noise musicians made his music fit right in. I stuck around for Bruce's set (he was billing himself as B.A.T.T. now - Bang A Twang Thing) and he'd added a few more harps and was deftly switching between them like changing chords on a guitar. In this configuration, he was now backing himself with a stiff 4/4 drumbeat on a guitar processor’s drum machine preset. He sounded exactly like what he had endeavored to do in the beginning: emulate a guitar player with a Jew's harp.He did OK, though, even though the noise crowd seemed to turned their nose up at the drum beats, the many young kids and older people in attendance thought he was cool.I chatted a bit with Bruce and he seemed stoked and disappeared into the crowded festival to catch more Noise acts. I think he felt like he had found his tribe at last.
I should note that this whole time, I'd been getting emails from his wife, who insisted that any day now, Sony, Warner Bros, etc. were going to beat down their door with a contract. She wanted to book Bruce on Leno. Everything. She wanted my advice, based I guess on my expertise as an unpaid volunteer community radio programmer. She just knew rock stardom was right around the corner.I replied back to her once, telling her my take on what to expect with an outsider act and how they could at least make the most of something with such limited appeal. I told her most self-styled artists create out of the sheer love of the act and that if you produce any CDs, tapes, etc., don’t be disheartened if they end up in piles, forming coffee tables in your living room. The goal, I told her, is to have Bruce record, record, record. She wasn't having any of it. She knew that Bruce would be discovered and that he'd be making movie soundtracks, tv specials, you name it. Bruce couldn’t get a more determined manager if he paid 50% of everything he gets out of his act. She really believes in him and his strange music.
I still occasionally get emails from Bruce. His experiments where he does something out of sheer expedience - like his overdubbing himself by playing with multiple layers of self-shot YouTube videos - affirm that the man’s still got it. He’s still twanging away in his own musical world. - Rich Lindsay"
I received an interesting comment on the John North Wright post, and, as it is not the first such comment we've received here, I thought I'd not just let it hide as a post comment, but turn it into a post of it's own, as I believe the commenter probably speaks for many, and I'm sure some of you would like to chime in as well.
radioman said: "I can see the appeal of this kind of stuff, yet, at the same time, it feels almost as if one is back in the 1700s, laughing at the inmates in the asylum. In some respects, that guilty feeling is ameliorated by knowing that, since he's dead, he isn't aware that we're poking sticks though the bars of his cage.
Keep up the good work. Sort of."
I responded: "Hi radioman, I understand your ambivalence towards this kind of outsider music, but I, and plenty of other readers of this blog, really, genuinely appreciate the honest nature of this kind of music - it challenges the idea that "real" music (music suitable for review/criticism) is only made by professionals who are often only interested in making it in showbiz, becoming stars, glorifying their egos, etc. As opposed to the likes of Wright who appear to have more pure motives. As Lee Ashcroft wrote in the Bernie Sizzey post, they make music because they HAVE to.
Sure, there may be a freak-show aspect, but it's deeper than that - I find it fascinating to peak into the brains of those who are otherwise invisible to our homogenous culture. Also: These people have often been lonely and alienated throughout their lives, and it means a lot to them to have people finally listening to them.
Hearing someone come from out of left field and approach music from a completely fresh, unaffected perspective can be a delight, in contrast to the predictability of "normal" music, even in the so-called alternative world. There's no denying that it can be a little disturbing at times, but it can also humanize the kind of people we might otherwise turn away from.
That's a lot to chew on, ultimately making it all a lot more rewarding than tossing another coin into Lady Gaga's bank account."
Thanks to radioman for forcing me to sit down and spell out the philosophy of this here web-log!
Amy Beth is an Elvis impersonator who sounds NOTHING like Elvis. She does, however, make a great cat-being-run-over-by-a-steamroller impersonator. And if she does indeed have her own band, they do a great impression themselves - of cheezy drum-machine karaoke backing tracks. "Heartbreak Hotel" like you've never heard it before. You've been warned:
My ears, my ears! Hey masochists, buy a whole album of this stuff. What, you want more?!? Here's a dog of a "Hound Dog," complete with canine noises:
UPDATE 2/2/12: I removed the "Turkey In The Straw" video and replaced it with "Colonel Corn" because it's not only better, it's really just totally great.*
Freddie Fisher & The Schnickelfritz Band were a fun, nutty novelty band from the 1930s, pre-dating Spike Jone's debut in 1942, and if their music has a familiar sound to readers of this blog, they should - most of the members left band leader Fisher and formed the Korn Kobblers. A nice person has posted an album of Fisher & Co. songs of wildly-varying sound quality, but hey, it's free, so who can complain? Gonna have to find an album by these guys. For further study...
Bubo, Tuco & Tumbo are one and the same, making inexplicable instrumental (with vocal gibberish) thoroughly obscure music that is by turns, annoying, fascinating, grating, compelling, always highly original, and frequently rewarding. They exist in that rarefied world of abstract esotericists like Zoviet France, or Nurse With Wound.
I literally have no idea how most of this music was made. It's not jazz, tho it sounds improvised at times, and doesn't sound especially electronic - there's an organic hands-on feel to these steadly-thumping rhythms that just go shambling on along like some Rube Goldberg device (perhaps machines were used?) as all manner of hard-to-identify mystery sounds create dense, odd textures; it's self-described as "Totally Free - SoundAndFormDeconstructor -CrumblingAntiMusic."
It's a hugely prolific project - when I was first contacted, 12 releases were up and I see some more have been added, but much of it is of a visual nature. And like our old pal The Everyday Film, I've been given not a shred of explanation or biographical information. When I asked, they replied:
-You should create your own opinion about these lines. It's better if you first listen to all the albums.
-I have no web space other than mail. Bubo/Tuco/Tumbo is my temporary project. I am a painter; took a long break away from other projects earlier this year and devoted some time to creative areas in which I have no natural talents, skills or knowledge.
Material that arrived to you, was created between March and August 2011.
-Bubo/Tuco/Tumbo is only the soundscape for an art catalog which is now nearing completion and will be totally free, just like Bubo/Tuco/Tumbo vibrations – this material is in no way intended for marketing but is meant as collective property.
-BuboTucoTumbo of Humal/Animan Collective All free downloads, all available here:
The first batch: I started with album #1 and wasn't sure if I'd continue - it's mostly in the Hafler Trio/Derek Bailey school of plunk-and-scrape improv that doesn't do much for me. But the final 3 tracks really got me, and I continued to find some really good stuff scattered throughout, e.g.: "Reverberatordog" on album #5; the first couple tracks on #6, an album that features lots of amusing jibbering/chattering; and what are those sounds on #7: porn on one track? Monkeys on another? It all makes the Residents sound like Air Supply. "APOPHENIANIMALS" on #8 is really good, tho it doesn't need to be 19 minutes long.
#9 is called "THE BEST OF TUCO," and they ain't kidding. The whole thing's pretty solid - start with this one.
The second batch (all album titles named after lines from "The Good The Bad & The Ugly" for some reason): "TUCO -1- A" is a pretty interesting album, tho I can't tell if it's on-line anymore. It, like, "TUCO -1-B" feature some atonal Jandek-like guitar thrumming (I like tracks # 134 and 139). Much of "TUCO - 2 - A" sounds like hitting guitar strings with drumsticks, except for the last track, the ghostly disembodied voices of track # 152. And since that album also seems to be off right now, check it out in all it's 15-minute glory:
TUCO -2- B starts with industrial drones and silences, ends with string instrument scraping. I like #156. "TUCO -3- B" is nothing but noise tracks, all exactly 1:15 long. Didn't like.
That's as far as I've got. Along with some lovely artwork, they've added some new albums since - anyone want to check 'em out and leave a comment? Color me intrigued...
As I wrote back in '06: In 1995, The Phoeniz (AZ) New Times received a demo tape from one John North Wright. The tape began with the growly voice of a middle-to-senior aged man announcing, ""Hi, I'm John Wright. Uh . . . all these songs are copyrighted 1985, words and music by myself. Uh, conceptually, they form the songs for a, uh, rock video opera I have written in my mind. It's set mostly in Hawaii and the Orient. It's called Teenage Volleyballers." What follows is an interminable tuneless guitar & voice meditation on, yup, teenage volleyballers, with little to say about them except that they're "out of sight."...Obsolete slang, hilariously inept music, and a generally creepy pedophile-ish aura all come to together to create the stuff of outside-music legend.
John North Wright Soundcloud page Wright was an anti-Semetic paranoid conspiracy-theorist and Dylan-influenced singer songwriter (tho he blamed Dylan for telepathically stealing his woman) from Port Huron, MI (he pronounced it "Port Urine") and left this world back in '04, but thanks to the good people at Hott Lava, 15 songs (and possibly more to come) are now up for free listen/download. All the old 'hits' are featured, like "Teenage Volleyballers" and "Down In The Land Of Evil" which, as I wrote in a Wright update, has something to do with Satan's, er, "schlong." Some great new tracks have been added - "I'm On Medication" really is as good as its title. Outsider essentials.
