Some time yesterday my life was taken over by the pursuit of music by Gary Lucas. These things happen in a basement.
Lucas is one of those musicians who had kind of passed me by, someone whose name I had heard mentioned in hushed tones of reverence over the years but who, for some reason, I had never really followed up on. I knew that he had worked with Jeff Buckley on Grace, for instance, but I had no idea of the list of people he has worked with over the years, nor, really, any idea of why he is so revered.
So this is me doing the stalker thing, trying to fill a gap in my knowledge.
What started it all was this god-awful piece about Tom Verlaine over on the eMusic site. Specifically, the author (Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith’s guitarist) mentioned an album by Lucas that included a version of the old Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett) song, ‘Astronomy Domine’. Okay, that piqued my interest.
So I checked out Wikipedia and discovered that:
Lucas has played and collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, Captain Beefheart, Jeff Buckley, Chris Cornell, Lou Reed, John Cale, Nick Cave, David Johansen. He has also worked with Mary Margaret O’Hara, Onetwo, Peter Stampfel, Fred Schneider (The B-52’s), Bob Neuwirth, Geoff Muldaur, John Sebastian, John Zorn, Bryan Ferry, Patti Smith, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Matthew Sweet, DJ Spooky, Damo Suzuki, Iggy Pop, Dr. John, Allen Ginsberg, Graham Parker, The Dark Poets, Future Sound of London, Van Dyke Parks, Adrian Sherwood, Richard Barone, Bob Weir, Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule), Kristin Diable and many others. Jazz collaborations include Roswell Rudd, Steve Swallow, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, and Billy Bang. Some of these collaborations appear on his retrospective album Improve the Shining Hour, which also features his film and TV music for ABC News, 20/20 and Turning Point. He has produced albums for composer/saxophonists Tim Berne and Peter Gordon, and for the French avant-rock band Tanger. He co-wrote Joan Osborne’s Grammy-nominated song “Spider Web” from her triple platinum album Relish.
Lucas co-wrote two of the songs, “Grace” and “Mojo Pin“, from Jeff Buckley’s popular and critically acclaimed album Grace.[4][5] Early collaborations can also be heard on the recent Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas album Songs to No One, which charted internationally with worldwide sales approaching 100,000.
Dutch lutist Jozef Van Wissem has collaborated with Lucas on several albums, which include “the Universe of Absence” and “Diplopia.” They have appeared and performed live on Dutch national tv together.
The collaboration with the lutist sounded interesting, so I found the album on eMusic and had a listen to the samples. Pretty nice, from what I could tell. And, of course, there was a YouTube clip of them together. It’s short and sweet.
The next thing that piqued my interest was the fact that he had just released an album with the woman who sings on the “unledded” version of “Battle of Evermore” with Plant and Page:
Lucas has recently collaborated on a new world music collaboration with an Indian vocalist from the UK, Najma Akhtar. Their album “RISHTE” combines rock, blues, folk, and raga, and will be available mid 2009, on Harmonia Mundi/World Village.
Gotta say, the phrase “world music” makes me reach for my gun, but anyway, I had my free downloads from eMusic available, so I thought, what the hell, and I downloaded the album.
So I’m just in the process of listening to that and it is holding my attention. There is some lovely stuff in there — I do like Najma Akhtar’s voice, and there is some great guitar playing — but sometimes these cross cultural collaborations backfire. That is, instead of combining two great forms of music and creating something new and wonderful, they often come closer to cancelling each other out, as elements of one are subsumed by the other.
For instance, what goes missing here is my favourite part of Indian music, the rhythmic complexity. Or at least, on my brief listen so far, it seems to. The track, ‘Woh Dhin’, for example, seems to be trying replicate Indian-style rhythms underneath the repeated blues riff that forms the basis of the song, but the form ultimately limits what can be done. Still, it is interesting to hear how they handle it, and Lucas plays some pretty special lead over the top of it all. So I’m starting to see why the guy is so revered.
Anyway, I’m still burrowing away through reviews and back-catalogue of Lucas’s work and look forward to uncovering more. A man often referred to as the greatest living electric guitarist is probably worth some effort. If you know his stuff, feel free to fill me in. If not, the link below collects most of the links I’ve used here. Help yourself….
2 Comments
there’s a great solo guitar track from lucas on the excellent “ice cream for crow” album the last one from the good dr and his magic band. and the film clip to the title track is one in a million.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqRHr5pEIFU
Dear Tim
Another one to dig up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Holmes
Original author of Dazed and Confused and co wrote a Sinatra album before going on to create the “wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too?” “be all you can be” and “the best a man can get” ads among many others.
His the above ground sound is the strangest most beatiful almost emo record recorded in the 1960s.
I see him as the anti Alex Chilton, the creative genius who adjusted to fit the business. Perhaps Mr Lucas is in the middle of the two.