by Kevin Lee
(kevin@astsoft.com)
For those not familiar with current, or even past, lounge/exotica music, you may not know who Brother Cleve is. As trendy as the whole "space age bachelor pad" phenomenon has become over the past year or two, there exists many who have been at this game for quite a while. Br. Cleve, although currently the touring keyboardist for Combustible Edison, has also played many gigs with soul man Barrence Whitfield, and is also a respected lounge/exotica/soundtrack musicologist. He's currently helping the one and only Juan Garcia Esquivel produce some brand new arrangements, as well as putting together CD compilations of crime jazz and exotica. This interview conducted via e-mail.
K.L.: "What do you feel is the validity of writing and recording music that's "already been done"? Is there enough room for progress left?"
B.C.: "A professor I had at the Berklee School of Music (from which I dropped out) said that Bach wrote everything already, all we do are variations. Essentially, most everything's "already been done"; this is especially true in pop music formats. The major thing that changes is the technology involved, from the instruments to the recording. Look at country and blues : what's really changed over the last 40 years or so? - the updating of the instruments and amplifiers, and the way it's recorded (and not necessarily for the betterment of the music, in my opinion). I don't see room for much progress in most pop fields (especially rock, which is based more on personalities). But exotica/SABP/etc., because they've been untouched/unmined/reviled for so long, has the most capacity to progress, especially in light of the available technology (i.e. synths, samplers, computers). Don't forget, the bulk of this is "instrumental music", so new instruments can only make it more interesting."
K.L.:"Does it ever seem like the music you're playing is TOO light?"
B.C.:"If it is, I find it a welcome relief from years of music that's TOO HEAVY. "Emotion" does not only connote anger and pain; and the volume doesn't have to be to 11 to be heard. (or to get 'tone', the musicians excuse for playing too loud. Ike Turner got more tone out of a cracked 20 watt amp than anyone can get out of a stack of Marshalls)."
K.L.:"Do audiences ever start talking and paying less attention to the music and more on what each other is wearing?"
B.C.:"The average American has the attention span of a gnat. They talk through movies, through TV shows, through concerts; they gab incessantly, usually about nothing. It's no different at a "lounge" show. But there have been times when everybody gets so mesmerized they shut up and listen, in awe. It's extremely exciting, as a performer. The best time was at a midnight show we played in Portland, OR a couple of years ago. Lily was singing "Cry Me a River", and you could hear the proverbial pin drop. It was, to use a hackneyed expression, intense."
K.L.:"How did you get hooked on exotica/easy/space-age/etc.?"
B.C.:"In a way, it's a rediscovery of my "roots". My favorite record when I was really young was Percy Faith's "Malaguena: Music Of Cuba". Now, I know all about the composer, Ernesto Lecuona. When I was a prepubescent lad, I was really into movie soundtracks, used to collect 'em. (Still do.) Between the ages of 9 and 12, my idols were Mancini, Bacharach, John Barry, Neal Hefti, Lalo Schiffrin and Jerry Goldsmith. This is around '64 -'67. (I started playing piano in '65) It came from movies and TV: Bond and spies, Batman, Peter Sellers. Mind you, I also liked the Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, etc., but not as much. In '67 I discovered Zappa, Beefheart, Lenny Bruce, Terry Southern, and psychedelic music, and my world changed. I played in and/or fronted bands that played rock, funk, R&B, C&W, reggae, you name it. In the early 80's I joined the Church of the SubGenius; it was Bob's will that I got to know Byron Werner and Irwin Chusid. Byron played me the first SABP I ever heard, at his apartment in LA; Irwin made tapes of the "Golden Throats" before anyone called them that. But when I really got hooked was in the late 80's, when my friend Pat McGrath, who owns a used record store in Boston, started heavily turning me onto the stuff. Once I started, I couldn't stop. It was so much more avant garde than anything that was happening, and it was 30 years old! He turned me onto Ferrante & Teicher's prepared piano stuff- I thought they only did lush orchestral schlock. How did I know they took John Cage's applications and rescued them from the boring hierarchies of academia, seriousness and high art? Similar deal with Esquivel and the others : they took pop standards and de- and re-constructed them to their own weird visions. It was radical and ostentatious. Liking this music, too, seemed to make a statement, not that I was trying to. It really pissed a lot of people off; still does, especially baby boomers. "This is what we rebelled against! It goes against rock's stance!" Spare me. Rock, or should I say Pop music in general, is a corporate conspiracy (with thinning hair and a tiny ponytail) ranting about units and demographics. It's a commodity designed to sell product. Some people don't want to hear this, but the '60's are over. Fortunately, lounge music is not machismo enough to sell beer and cars. But if they want music for fine liqueurs or satin sheets, tell 'em to give me a call."
K.L.:" This is really interesting. I didn't know that Chusid was a subgenius. Mark Mothersbaugh is one too right? This is some kind of conspiracy! I have to confess ignorance of who Byron Werner is..."
B.C.: "Yes, it is a conspiracy. Me, Chusid, Mothersbaugh, Werner; we're all old time men o'Bob. Anton LeVey said EZ listening is the only true devils music - and, by "Bob", we're here to help prove that. Music for ultrasinnin', thats what it is! And Byron Werner, the Los Angeles artist who coined the term Space Age Bachelor Pad Music some 10 years ago, is the one most responsible for setting all this music up for renewed entertainment/revival."
K.L.:"Tell me about your impressions of the European lounge scenes, compared to the American scenes."
B.C.:"Well, the Europeans don't yak all through your show. If they're not listening, they're dancing. And that's the big difference. Dancing. People dancing up a storm to Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes, Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, Burt Bacharach, spy and crime jazz, Moog and organ records, Italian and French film soundtracks, softcore porno movie music, and yes, Combustible Edison and Pizzacato 5. There are some interesting new artists playing a kind of EZ/Trip Hop/ambient hybrid, like Visit Venus, The Gentle People, Dimitri From Paris, Jimi Tenor, The Easy Alohas, The Intuners. Dance clubs that feature House, Techno, et al, now have at least one night for EZ listening (or EZ Tunes, as they call it in Benelux). There's a little less Exotica and Space Age Pop, I guess 'cause it's tougher to dance to. Plus, Europe has no tiki culture, and cocktails (and their primary ingredient - ice!) are virtually nonexistent [and when you do find them, they're $10 a piece and up!!]."
K.L.: "Do you sense that the current, more mainstream lounge "fad" is dying out already, or just getting started?"
B.C.: "I think/hope the media circus is dying out ("Hey, it's kids dressing up and drinking martinis!" Please.). But I think the real deal is just getting started. People had to hear the older artists, and bands like Combustible had to get the past out of their system, to move into the future. You have to advance from the camp "fad". I've seen a big increase in new fans on every ComEd tour I've done. Of course, there's got to be more bands doing it for it to become a, ahem, movement, but that raises a big question. This isn't like, say, garage or punk rock (or surf), where you can hear a sound, think: I can do that!, then go out and start a band with people that might be novices musically/instrumentally. You can't hear Combustible Edison, then say: I can do that!, without a certain level of musicianship. That's why Joey Altruda is so great at what he does, whereas a lot of other groups just get jokey. I love what I've heard from Europe and Japan, and I wonder if that type of dance-based scene will happen in the US."
K.L.:"And how sincere do you think most ComEd fans are towards the original classics? Somehow, I imagine the majority of them would never bother to look up Nina Rota's "Cadillac" in their music stores after hearing your version..."
B.C.:"It doesn't matter if they know the originals or not. There's hundreds of songs in the history of rock that I heard the originals of after I heard the cover version. Sometimes they were better, sometimes not, but it was great to hear 'em. Maybe some ComEd fan will be sitting there watching "La Dolce Vita" and go, "hey, wait a minute..........""
K.L.:"Want to plug the upcoming compilations you've been working on?"
B.C.:"We're still doing the licensing, so I can't divulge them all yet. But I've got 4 in the works for Scamp, one of which is called "Space is the Place", a comp of Outer Space records of the late 50's-early 60's; and I'm working on a couple of projects at Rhino. I'm co-producing Esquivel's "Merry Christmas From The Space Age Bachelor Pad", which will be coming out on BarNone this fall. It has his 6 songs from "Merriest of Christmas Pops" from '59, plus 4 other "holiday-like" songs of his. I'm producing an intro and outro, with narration by Esquivel, for it."
K.L.:"Tell us about your project with Juan Garcia Esquivel."
B.C.:"Esquivel is a good friend of mine, and we have a few things going on. Most important is his new album, which he has begun writing. I just got the first arrangement from him the other day; it's Mendelssohn's Wedding March, written for 20 instruments and voices. He's got a new original called "Guacamole" that's almost done. I've sent him some piano parts to songs, like "Singing In The Rain", that he's going to arrange. We're talking to some labels, and I've been talking to musicians. I told Juan I thought we should use a "Lounge Super-Group", for lack of a better term, of people who were influenced by him, like Combustible, Altruda, Mike Flowers, Joey Sehee, etc.; he loves the idea. Once a whole albums worth of material is written, we'll be ready to go. I've been talking to Neeley Plumb and Mark Mothersbaugh, both of whom will have input into this. It's in the early stages right now, but it's very exciting. I brought a sampler and sequencer to Esquivel's house last year, and we had fun making up some songs. He's got a computer now, and I've talked to Apple about getting someone in Mexico to show him how to utilize it. I'm helping him get a MIDI keyboard, and Mark has helped us get him sequencing software from Opcode. I'm anticipating that these will be useful tools for him."
K.L.:"Want to talk about your involvement with the Church of the Subgenius?"
B.C.:""Bob" is my load, and he's coming again."
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