Jul

22

On ‘The Memphis Album’, Guy Sebastian nimbly sidesteps earlier issues of writer’s block by travelling to Ardent Studios in Memphis to record fourteen gems of 60’s southern soul, using many of the musicians who had worked on the original recordings. With many definitive classic songs - Knock on Wood, In the Midnight Hour, Soul Man, Dock of the Bay, Take Me To The River - The Memphis Album is a superbly skillful record, less interpretative than evocative, with all the ingredients perfectly balanced to win an international audience for the Australian Idol winner.

Kicking off with the Sam & Dave classic ‘Soul Man’, Sebastian immediately shows his intentions are sincere, respectful, as he fills the song with grace, power, and dignity. The instant immediacy of the backing music makes authenticity unquestionable - there is no mistaking that Stax sound - fat horn lines, funky guitars, and syncopated percussion lock the listener into a perfect groove until the very end of the record. By using many of the original musicians of the era - Steve Cropper, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, Steve Potts, Lester Snell, and Dave Smith - Sebastian has created a perfect platform to display his impressive range of expression and technical prowess.

What is lacking in all these recordings, though, is what makes all of the originals versions so essential. Memphis soul has deservedly achieved mythical importance in the canon of American music. In the 1960’s the small southern city was a mecca for southern musicians; Stax and other local labels produced music colored by racial tension, economic hardship, and the prevalent sense of institutionalized injustice. Less sugar-coated than the Motown sound, Memphis soul uniquely reflected its geography and time, by brilliantly combining the sweeping inclusive beauty of gospel with secularism, carnality and outrage, creating a distinct and compelling sound independent of any specific artist. The original versions of the songs on ‘The Memphis Album’ - by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Al Green, and others - stand tall as a heady mixture of earthiness and anger, lust and hope, joy and sadness; each song imbued with a vital urgency that made the listener feel the artists have LIVED the lyrics, that their own passion and pain bled into the songs.

Of course it is unfair to criticize Sebastian - born two decades and an ocean away from Memphis - for being unable to nail this nebulous vibe, the ’spirit of the times’. What Sebastian brings to the table is a wonderful voice, heartfelt respect and skillful presentation. His range, style and tone are all remarkable, and his technique so polished that it could be argued (at the risk of being blasphemous) that he occasionally improves on the original recordings, sweetly gliding through parts shouted by the originals. With the exception of an insipid ‘Under the Boardwalk’, all of the selections are top-notch, adeptly produced, excellently performed, with Sebastian pouring himself whole-heartedly into the material.

‘The Memphis Album’ quickly went double platinum in Australia, and Sebastian toured Australia with the MGs as his support band. Featuring the Memphis ‘funk brothers’ of Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper, the concerts were hugely successful, culminating in a live concert DVD; the rave reviews generated an international release of the album and plans for worldwide touring.

‘The Memphis Album’ is an excellent introduction to Memphis soul for neophytes, and a good introduction to Guy Sebastian for those unfamiliar with his talent or intellectually averse towards any ‘Idol’ releases. For diehard soul collectors, the backing tracks alone by the MGs and Memphis horns should be enough incentive to pick up the CD; Guy Sebastian’s sheer talent will be a nice revelation. Recommended.

Jun

6

Tom Holliston is a self-taught independent rock musician and songwriter from Vancouver, B.C., who has released solo works under various names,as well as being an essential member of the Canadian punk bands NOMEANSNO and the HANSON BROTHERS. His solo work (under his own name and his band SHOW BUSINESS GIANTS) are generally humorous alternative rock songs, characterized by considerable musical variance with playful and obscure pop-culture themes. His playful sense of humor has worked constantly to shroud himself in willful obscurity, as he has diligently created press materials filled with misinformation, parody, satire and in-jokes specifically designed to give those ‘in the know’ a laugh.

Tom Holliston was born on April 21, 1960 in Victoria, Canada, into a musical family; his earliest musical memories were of Frank Crumit, John McCormack, and Pablo Casals. His older brother Robert pursued a career in classical music as an accompanist and chamber player, performing with Eugene Fodor, Richard Margison and others. Tom remained uninterested in music until a sports injury kept him away from school for a month, during which he became absorbed by the Beatles White album, leading his siblings to give him more of their music to study.

The Victoria scene was heavily inspired by the Ramones and the exuberance emergence of D.O.A. as a ‘local’ punk band, spawning countless young bands in a short period of time (including the influential NoMeansNo and Dayglo Abortions). Tom, self-taught on bass guitar, played in his first band - Pat Bay and the Malahats - in 1978, which Tom has described as ‘one of a thousand score bad punk bands’. There are mercifully no recordings known. As NoMeansno’s local and national popularity grew, Tom found himself being often mistaken for NMN guitarist Andy Kerr, who lived in the same Victoria neighborhood and looked vaguely similar; leading eventually to their meeting in 1984.

Tom became fascinated by home recording, and began work on a collection of songs that would eventually emerge in 1989 under the name of ‘Gold Love’, attributed to the Show Business Giants, nd a more developed follow-up with 1990’s The Benevolent Horn, both released on cassette only. At this time NoMeansNo decided to perform a Hallowe’en show in Vancouver as tribute to the Ramones, and asked Tom to join on guitar. ‘NoMeansNo Clones The Ramones’ was promoted with a poster of the first Ramones album cover, with happy faces pasted over those of the Ramones; the concert featured the first two Ramones albums played breathlessly in sequence. The concert received a delerious reception, planting the seeds of the Nomeansno’ side project The Hanson Brothers.

Andy Kerr and John Wright from NoMeansNo both joined Tom on the recording of 1991’s ‘I Thought It Was A Fig’ by the Show Business Giants, and both occasionally performed as part of the SBG ensemble. Concurrently NoMeansNo created a new act called ‘The Hanson Brothers’, combining the music of the Ramones with the imagery of the cult hockey movie ‘Slapshot’, appearing with D.O.A. and SNFU as part of a ‘Hockey Night at the Commodore’ concert series. Again enormously recieved, the Hanson Brothers, including ‘Tommy Hanson’ on guitar, recorded a debut album for Alternative Tentacles; and began touring hockey-mad Canada as the Hanson Brothers. Tommy’s Hanson’s bespectacled half-wit persona has become an integral part of the Hanson Brothers identity, as have his one-note guitar solos and incredible ability to drool at length.

Tom continued to record as the Show Business Giants, who now regularly included such local luminaries as guitarist/producer Scott Henderson, multi-instrumentalist Ford Pier, bassist Keith Rose, as well as NoMeansNo’s John Wright on drums. After releasing ‘Maybe It’s Just Me’ in 1993; Tom was asked by NoMeansNo to fill in the lead guitar position vacated by Andy Kerr, who had decided to retire from that band to marry and live in Europe. Tom was initially reluctant, given the enormous void created in the band by the loss of the eclectic and talented Kerr, but agreed to join the band, after receiving relentless guitar instruction from Rob Wright, first learning Kerr’s guitar parts by rote, then eventually developing into a solid contributing partner in the band.

In 1995 Virgin Records made a distribution deal with Vancouver independent label Essential Noise, which released albums by D.O.A., Hanson Brothers, and ‘Let’s Have A Talk With the Dead’ by Show BUsiness Giants. ‘Let’s Have A Talk’ was warmly received by Canadian college radio, with several tracks getting considerable rotation; however Virgin was unable to market the album (or any other Essential Noise release), outside of Canada, leading to the dissolution of the distribution agreement. However the interest generated by the album enabled the Show Business Giants to finally begin touring, leading to performances across Canada, into the United States, and some European dates. Three more Show Business Giants albums were released in the next 3 years, 1997’s Will There Be Corn, 2000’s Self-Aggrandizement Keeps Us Going, and the 2001 internet-only release ‘When Wrestling Meant Something’.

In 2002 Tom began releasing records under his own name, developing a rootsier, less punk approach. ‘Tom Holliston & His Opportunists’ was released in 2002, followed by 2003 ‘I Want You To Twist With Me’ and 2005’s excellent ‘Boy in Tub; Rabbit’. All were released independently by Holliston in North America, while being distributed overseas. by independent Smoeff records, leading to more tour dates in Europe. Future plans for Holliston include another solo album, another NOMeansNo album, and he has not ruled out the possibility of future Show Business Giants recordings; all of which is good news for his growing fan base.

Jun

6

Show Business Giants is a quirky, humor-laden independent western Canadian rock band with a rotating lineup centered around guitarist,vocalist and main songwriter Tom Holliston. with most frequent collaborators Scott Henderson (Hissanol) and Ford Pier (D.O.A., Jr. Gone Wild). Contributions have also come from such other well-known western Canadian musicians as Craig Vishek (Pigment Vehicle), Keith Rose (Hard Rock Miners, Royal Grand Prix), Carolyn Mark, and brothers John and Rob Wright (Hanson Brothers, NoMeansNo).

Show Business Giants recordings typically display energetic top-notch musicianship, bursting with musical in-jokes and obscure pop culture references, covering a wide range of genres, from doo-wop and faux folk to heavy metal and punk. Press information, biographies and photos are always wildly inaccurate and humorous, reflecting Holliston’s songwriting bent towards the silly, surreal and trivial. While of a novelty nature, many of the songs have an intellectual depth and such quality playing as to have created a minor cult following around his recordings.

Holliston released the debut Show BUsiness Giants recordings ‘Gold Love’ in 1989 and ‘The Benevolent Horn’ in 1990 as cassette-only releases. His 1991 release ‘I Thought It Was A Fig’ included contributor Andy Kerr, then-guitarist for NoMeansNo, bringing his work to the attention of that band who subsequently released ‘Maybe It’s Just Me’ on their independent Wrong Records label. When Kerr left NoMeansNo in 1993, Holliston was recruited to join that band, which he has remained with since (Holliston also is ‘Tommy Hanson’ in the NoMeansNo side project ‘The Hanson Brothers’).

In 1995 Essential Noise Records, a short-lived Virgin Records subsidiary, released the album ‘Let’s Have A Talk With The Dead’, and worked Canadian radio promoting ‘I’ve Got A Crush on Wendy Mesley’, a humorous ballad about an iconic female CBC television newscaster. Subsequent releases were ‘Will There Be Corn’(1997) and ‘Self-Aggrandizement Keeps Us Going’ (2000), which were released independently in Canada and Europe. The band has sporadically toured, when members can coordinate their schedules, playing in Europe in 1997 and 2000, the USA 1989-2001, and semi-regularly in Canada.

In recent years Holliston has released several solo albums, while leaving the possibility open for future recordings by the Show Business Giants.

Apr

25

Bernard Szajner (ZAY-ner) is a Paris-based unique visual effects artist and musician, who has created ground-breaking works in multiple disciplines while consistently striving to create and explore new relationships between light and sound.

A self-described ‘dilettante in the true sense of the term’, Bernard Szajner was born in Grenoble, France, late in the second World War, and hidden in a cave by his anxious Polish parents. Always creative, he took up painting at the age of 11, then became fascinated by stories of Leonardo da Vinci and his grand spectacles combining music, actors, and mechanized effects. Szajner abandoned paint and brush to eagerly study the details of Etienne Gaspard Robertson and his Magic Lantern phantasmagories, Vaucanson and his mysterious automatons, Oskar Schlemmer of the Bauhaus school, and other great visual effects artists; and his career path was born.

He began working on light shows in the late 1960’s, and became fascinated by the potential of lasers. Steady work as a stage designer and technician with such groups as Gong, Magma, Bachdenkel, and many others led him to become acknowledged as one of the top light technicians in France by the 1970s. In the early 1970s Bernard joined up with inventor Patrice Warrener and electronic music innovator Tim Blake (who had just left Daevid Allen’s Gong), to work on an idea for a new kind of light show. Since 1972 Blake had been championing a concept called the Crystal Machine, which called for controlling lasers with synthesised music. As the Crystal Machine they staged some small laser shows at the Kinopanorama in Paris, and played two week-long engagements at a large Paris nightclub in 1976 and 1977. Despite poor publicity the shows consistently sold out, and created quite a buzz; but the enormous staging, financial and technical difficulties of these productions made them unfeasible.

Sjazner left the Crystal Machine, and continued to worksas a visual effects director, doing laser lighting for music acts ranging from The Who to Klaus Schultze and Jean Michel Jarre. Still losing money and tired of dealing with big personalities, Szajner decided to experiment with smaller shows, asking unknown artists to perform against the backdrop of his visuals. This too proved frustrating, as he could not find artists willing to compose music to go with his presentations; so, self-taught as ever, he borrowed a synthesizer and started teaching himself. He began teaching himself composition, in his words ‘randomly twisting knobs and pushing buttons until I liked what I heard’. He wrote a series of pieces based around Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction masterwork Dune, enlisting the help of some of his musician friends.

Initially released on a small independent French label, this debut recording released under the pseudonym Zed, is now considered an electronica tour-de-force. 1979’s ‘Visions of Dune’ is a synth-based album featured a Zuehl electronica ‘all-star’ set of musicians - Colin Swinburne (Bachdenkel), Clement Bailly (Magma, Gong), Hanny Rowe (Heldon), and vocalists Klaus Blasquiz (Magma) and Anannka Raghel. It was poorly received by critics in the electronic music community in France, but was publicly well received, selling 5,000 copies in the subsequent two years. Accidentally meeting an English music manager, who was impressed by the recording and took on representation of Szajner, Sjazner quickly recievedrecording contract with French major label Pathe Marconi. The re-released album was well received, highly acclaimed by the British press for its unique vision and style. Recently reissued by Spalax, with its layered synths, odd sequencers, distorted bass and Fripp-ish guitars, ‘Visions of Dune’ has been compared to works by Heldon, Richard Pinhas, Hawkwind and Tangerine Dream, and remains one of the great progressive albums in French music.

‘Visions of Dune’ caught the ear of Amnesty International, who approached Szajner and asked him to compose a short 30-second piece about the death penalty, still in effect in France, in his ‘hard’ and ‘tense’ style. The commission led to what many consider his masterwork, the influential concept album ‘Some Deaths Take Forever’. Following an imaginary prisoner into the horrors of Death Row, the album uses hypnotic rhythms, bizarre guitar, sweeping Eno-synths, white noise percussion, radio static and rock guitar riffs to chilling effect. ‘Some Deaths Take Forever’ brought considerable acclaim to Szajner, and was voted ‘Disc of the Week’ as well as named as one of Melody Maker’s Top 10 albums of the year. It has endured, being recently reissued on CD and being named by superstar DJ Carl Craig as his favorite electronic album of all time.

Sjazner then made a high-profile contribution to musical history when he designed the Laser Harp for the 1981 ‘Concerts in China’ tour by French electronica artist Jean Michel Jarre. It was a simple task to rig synthesizer notes to trigger lasers, and Szajner backwards-engineered the concept. The original design, a laser separated into 12 beams by a holographic line grating, creates a fan of light beams which appear to be plucked in order to produce sounds; really a binary trigger is created in breaking the beam, initializing programmed events using a microcontroller to transform the optical data to analogue. Detractors originally claimed the Laser Harp was a sham, as Jarre would visibly play different notes on the same beam; this was explained by foot switches which allow for changing between different scales. Jarre, wearing asbestos gloves, has continued to use the Laser Harp in his concerts, while considerable technological development (most specifically in the areas of wider range values and control data) has improved the device, although there remains criticism of its legitimacy as a musical instrument, the laser harp remains a unique synthesizer elaboration.

In 1981 Szajner teamed up with Karel Beer to form The (Hypothetical) Prophets, crafting a unique set of synth-pop recordings eventually released as a series of 12″ singles and one highly-collectible concept album, ‘Around the World With the (Hypothetical) Prophets’. Both Szajner and Beer used pseudonyms (Norman D. Landing and Joe Veil), and were always photographed with their faces covered. The sound was minimal coldwave synth with some electronic experimentation, with unique vocals alternating in French and English as well as male and female vocals. The ’single’ was PerSon to PerSon’, featuring a male and a female reading personal ads from varous publications, revealing a pathetic listing of sexual desires and ambitions, ending with ‘Looks are not important; its your soul I want.’ The group was short-lived, and the records are difficult to find; although the curious may be able to find two songs, ‘Wallenberg’ and ‘Person to Person’, on the out-of-print 2004 compilation ‘So Young, But So Cold: Underground French Music 1977-1983′.

Also in 1981 Sjazner released his sparsest LP ‘Superficial Music’, the title of which reflects the opposite of what it says. Compiled from the tapes of the ‘Visions of Dune’ sessions, albeit played in reverse at half-speed, it force Szajner to create just by mixing and adding effects. An intellectual effort (and not reissued at this writing) it is a delicate, sensitive experiment in musique concrete, using pitch-change feedback, electronic percussion, slow drones, and other such effects.

In 1983 Sjazner had been interested in adding real literary prose to his work, and was attracted to Magazine’s singer Howard DeVoto because of the tone of his voice and his twisted sense of poetry. Together they colloborated on the album ‘Brute Reason’, a dissonant pop-rock album much different from his previous works. With creative production and arrangements far beyond 1983 standards, ‘Brute Reason’ is a mixed bag of epic electronic rock, with impeccable guitar parts and sweeping synthesizers providing a thoroughly satisfying counterpoint to DeVoto’s typically obtuse lyricism.

French critics made an abrupt volte-face; in 1985 Bernard Szajner was named ‘Knight of the order of Arts’ bu the Minister of Culture of France, and in 1986 he received a ‘culture and Technologies’ prize from that same ministry.

Sjazner released a few more singles, then stopped recording music in 1986, as he purusued his career as a high-tech theatrical and event designer, multimedia composer and robotic artist. Some highlights include “Beispiel” created for the Electronic Arts Festival at Rennes; ‘Brute Reason’ a creation for the Lyrical Theater of London; ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ for the Printemps de Bourges; ‘Spirit of the Revolution’ created for the Bicentennial Mission; a landmark work in the field of robot art, building two interactive theatrical computer-controlled automata scenes (’œLa chouette et le robot’ (The Owl and the Robot) and ‘œPetit Nicolas’) in the 1986-1991 Zoo des Robots installation (in which Szajner was now credited as an animatronics designer); the 1994 eight-minute audio-visual show ‘Vaucanson’s dream’, a show combining real objects - a lathe, a loom, vaucanson machines - with virtual images, to encourage viewers to reflect on artificial beings. He is currently simultaneously creating attractions for amusement parks, designing museum exhibitions, and creating his ’sculptures of light’ - in 2007 he mounted his most recent installation ‘L’absurdite, moins une seconde!’ to considerable acclaim.

After 16 years away from music, Szajner has once again began to create recordings, having mixed and produced 4 albums worth of material in the last 5 years (”Shameless cliches”, “Shadow Boxing Thieves”, “Death And Other Small Illusions” and “Bizarre Pieces For Grand Piano And Invisible Pianist”). ‘Bizarre Pieces for Grand Piano and Invisible Pianist’ was composed entirely with digital pencil and piano samples, with Szajner individually modeling the intensity, velocity, duration, reverbation and other elements of each note. Szajner is now preparing to seek out representation and a record label to release these recordings.

Szajner’s definition of himself as - a dilletante, an admirer or lover of the arts - is perhaps true, given the range of his interests and ‘amateur’ approach to creation. Still, his clear contributions to electronic music and explorations of the relation of light and sound make it necessary to credit him as both artist and innovator as well.

BERNARD SZAJNER’S ARTIST STATEMENT

I create with light. I create rituals, where time becomes suspended. I create archetypes, where everyone has a chance to live in the sensations and emations of childhood again. I create spaces void of the world’s confusion.

To explore. Explore the impalpable and give it form, explore the invisible and lend it a second appearance. To create paths, trails, ways, paradoxes, spaces of fleeting perception, of improbable existence.

To truly ‘touch’ tonalities (the inner tones of black, the outspoken delicacy of white) to provoke the senses (push, scour, feel), to touch to cold acidity of metal, in the ultra-violet darkness, the infra-sonic deafness…

shapes are born, issuing from the light.. and sounds, intimately entwined..Visions materialized..

There are two vintage videos on Youtube:
The Hypothetical Prophets video features Szajner with the Hypothetical Prophets performing ‘PerSon to PerSon’.

Far more interesting is The Big Scare, an experimental Sjazner music video for 1984’s ‘The Big Scare’ which includes a cameo by character actor Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen, Amelie, City of Lost Children’)

To get a real sense of the breadth and range of Szajner’s explorations, please check out one of Bernard’s websites, which has pictures, text, and video of a few of his many creative installations:
http://bernard.szajner.net/

Let’s hope to see some of his new work released soon!

Mar

7

German guitarist, bass player and all-round musician Ladi Geisler has anonymously contributed to thousands of popular studio recordings and hundreds of worldwide Top Ten hits, quietly becoming one of the most versatile instrumentalists of the post-war German music scene and an approachable legend in his own country.

Miloslav Ladislav Geisler was born in November 1927 in Prague, son of the director of an electrical company, who had ambitions for his son to join him in that profession. His father paid for violin lessons, and young Ladi proved to be a quick student; he began teaching himself trumpet as well; but fate and Adolf Hitler intervened. He became a German in 1938, when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland, and then, in 1943 the Nazis, desperate for combat troops, drafted the 15 year old boy into the Luftwaffe, where he was trained to fly the first combat jet fighter, the Messerschmidt 262. He was spared a certain death (the casualty rate by then was almost 100% for young Luftwaffe pilots) when he was captured by the British before completing his flight training, and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Denmark. A young autodidact, while in prison he was given an acoustic guitar and brief lessons by another prisoner, and he took to the instrument immediately with great zeal. Multi-talented pianist Horst Wende, eight years Geisler’s senior, was in the same camp, and, recognizing the young man’s talent, he took young Ladi under his tutelage, teaching him some traditional German lieder and American jazz standards. Around this time Geisler first heard Nat King Cole’s guitarist Oscar Moore playing electric guitar, and, totally infatuated with the new sounds, studied electronics, modified a guitar and built his own amplifier. Electric guitar (and later, electric bass) became the instrument that defined his life and career.

When World War II ended, Wende and Geisler went together to Hamburg, playing as a duo, then a trio, first in the streets and then in the clubs of Hamburg, performing a mix of schlager (sweet upbeat pop), folk, and swing. One night the trio was approached by a charismatic singer, former sailor Freddy Quinn, who sat in with the combo; they were instantly compatible and, playing as ‘Freddy Quinn and the Horst Wende Quartet’, became one of the top-drawing groups in Hamburg, filling the Tarantella Club every weekend and touring American military bases during the week. Geisler was quickly acknowledged as a top-notch and versatile player; his first known record is July 1946’s ‘The Joint is Really Jumping’ by vocalist Evelyn Kunneke, live at the Ohlstedter Hof in Hamburg; typically uncredited, it was an unauspicious beginning to a studio career that would eventually encompass thousands of similarly anonymous recordings.

By 1955 the Hamburg music scene was filled with Europe’s best new talent,as the locals, tourists and occupying soldiers’ appetite for live music seemed insatiable, making that city one of the few places where a musician could earn a decent living. Geisler left the Horst Wende ensemble and, by now a fixture on the scene, became the number one ‘go-to’ guitar player for Norddeutscher Rundfunk Big Band (North German Radio Big Band, aka NDR), an ensemble which included Wende, Bert Kaempfert, and James Last. His contributions to the NDR were so important and well-loved that ‘On Guitar, Ladi Geisler!’ almost became the radio trademark of the band, making him famous to music enthusiasts all over Germany and beyond.

Polydor Records wisely moved into Hamburg, snapping up most of the quality musicians, building studios, and laying the foundation for what was to become a recording empire, with particular emphasis on a pop music department headed by Bert Kaempfert. Affectionately as ‘Fips’, Kaempfert gave Geisler the rarest of honors, making him the number one guitarist in his company while additionally allowing him to record outside of Polydor. Ladi played on all of Kaempfert’s sessions as well as those of developing international stars Horst Wende (and his later incarnation Roberto Delgado), James Last, and Hildegard Knef. Kaempfert rarely toured, and the others hired road guitarists, leaving Geisler free to stay in Hamburg to perform and record with with the orchestras of Franz Thon, Alfred Hause, Helmut Zacharias and Gunther Fuhlisch, while supporting such German schlager and pop artists as Abi & Esther Ofarim, Rudi Shuricke, Margot Eskens, Friedel Hensch, and Freddy Quinn as well as many others. Geisler played on over 1,000 recordings a year, covering every style from polka to pop, rock to rhumba, surf to shlager, with his only credit appearing on his union session sheets as he turned in performances for Polydor, Teldec, Philips and Electrola.

In the early 1960’s he bought a Fender electric bass guitar from James Last, who didn’t like the sound of the instrument; while recording with Kaempfert he developed what became one of the strongest beats in pop music, which came to define the Kaempfert style and separate those recordings from all the soundalike product in the marketplace. ‘Knackbass’ is a treble staccato created when the string is plucked by a pick and immediately suppressed, cancelling the sustain; the impact of the sound propelled such compositions as “Danke Schoen” and “That Happy Feeling” to worldwide hit status and cemented Geisler’s industy reputation as an invaluable contributor.

In the 1960’s he began to release records under his own name, and with his backup group ‘The Playboys’, had German hits with cover versions of such pop standards as ‘Calcutta’ and ‘Wheels’; ‘Little Geisha’ was a top charting single for Ladi Geisler and the Tonics in 1963, and became a hit in New Zealand as well. In the late 1960’s he released his own albums for the first time, Latin and Russian themed instrumentals that showed a great kinship with such skilled American players as Chet Atkins and Les Paul. Even the Beatles came into contact with Geisler; when the band’s equipment proved to be to shoddy for recording their early sessions in Hamburg with Tony Sheridan, Geisler kindly loaned them the use of his gear. Ever versatile, he performed in an avant-garde piece by Pierre Boulez with the NDR Orchestra to considerable acclaim, and played on an album with German hip hop star Ill Will.

A modest person, he was startled to be mobbed by interview requests and fan adulation while touring Japan in 1988 and 1990 with the Alfred Haus Orchestra.
In the 1990’s the ever-astute Bear Family label began compiling some of his work and recording more, making several excellent compilations and new recordings; as well they released the audio-book ‘Anekdoten Eines Gitarrens’, featuring guitar work, tributes and an interview with Geisler.

Since his retirement from studio work in the late 1990’s, Ladi has focussed on jazz performances, playing live in clubs and festivals around Europe with a trio or quartet, often celebrating the works of his idol, Django Reinhard. ‘Work keeps me young’, he invariably replies when asked why he keeps performing in his eighth decade; if that is true, given his prolific high-quality output Ladi Geisler must be the youngest musician on the planet.

Feb

26

Roberto Delgado was an alias of the multi-talented Horst Wende, a German musician, composer, arranger, producer and bandleader, who is rightly attributed as a pioneer for bringing multi-ethnic music themes into western homes, albeit in arrangements far removed from the original source material.

Wende had already had considerable success within Germany, recording ‘Schlager’ - a particularly northern European style combining waltz, polka, and similar traditional structures with catchy melodies to create upbeat ‘party pop’. Fascinated by world rhythms, Wende released several albums of non-European melodies in a Schlager context in Germany to limited success; whereupon Polydor Records decided to release similar future works under the nom de plume of Roberto Delgado. Polydor simultaneously marketed and promoted the Delgado records internationally alongside those of Kai Warner, James Last and Bert Kaempfert to resounding success during the Beat 60’s, establishing major markets in both the UK and United States as well as Europe.

Warner, Last, Kaempfert and Delgado/Wende were all major players in the prolific Hamburg music community. All signed to Polydor Records, they combined energies and talent, recruiting many of the top musicians available in Germany and throughout Europe, as well as sharing producers, studios, and engineers, thereby ensuring conistent quality of recording. Each were prolific, individually releasing as many as six albums in a year, with every title being snapped up by middle-aged consumers enthralled with the happy new sounds emerging from Germany. The musician pool was as talented as Motown’s recently-celebrated Funk Brothers, including such top talent as trumpeters Charly Tabor, Werner Gutterer, Manfred Moch and Ack van Rooyen, trombonists Ake Persson and Jiggs Whigham, sax/flute player Herb Geller, and drummer Rolf Ahrens. Perhaps most important of all was the guitar and bass work of Ladi Geisler, who invented his own ‘crackling bass’ sound, referred to as ‘knackbass’, in which the bass string is plucked with a pick and then immediately supressed, killing any sustain and giving dancers a perfect audio impulse to lead their happy gyrations. ‘Delgado’ himself was an excellent musician, often playing the lead melody on piano, vibraphone, xylophone, or marimba.

Teamed up with producer Uwe Bowien, Delgado brought many international sounds and styles to the ears of his listeners, ranging from Latin American sambas to Greek Bouzouki, soulful Reggae to percussion-driven African pop. Not all of his experiments were successful, and most of his albums are burdened with some average dreck; more often than not though each album would contain a few gems, a jazzed-up pop song or a full-blown piece of exotica, or maybe even a subtle homage to Django Reinhardt or Booker T.

Wende died in 1996, his music seemingly out of fashion, just before the Lounge/Exotica surge led to the rediscovery of his work by younger audiences. Many of his titles have been reissued on CD, and those that have not are quickly snapped up on eBay and other record-selling websites. Roberto Delgado’s upbeat happy interpretations of folk and ethnic material has helped open western doors to the thrilling range of world music, and for that alone Horst Wende deserves a great big Ole! from all of us.

Feb

25

HORST WENDE Biography

February 25, 2008 | 1 Comment

Horst Wende made music through seven decades of the 20th century, recording over one hundred easy listening albums as producer, bandleader, conductor, arranger and musician. Today many of his records, released under his own name or his long-time alias of Roberto Delgado, are sought and coveted by collectors of the German big band movement of the 1970s.

Horst Wende was born into a musical family in Saxony, Germany, in 1919, and was skilled enough that by 6 years old he as able to regularly guest on accordion in his grandfather’s band in a local restaurant. Young Wende played and studied music constantly; by his 15th birthday he was already accomplished at playing piano, accordion, and xylophone, and he was accepted into the prestigious Leipzig Conservatory of Music.

His music studies there were interrupted by World War II; conscripted into the Germany army, he was captured by British troops and incarcerated in a POW camp in Denmark in 1942. There he met a young trumpet player, Ladi Geisler, who had just been given a guitar by a fellow prisoner and was determined to learn that instrument (Geisler became the greatest session guitarist in the German music industry, playing on thousands of recordings and continuing to release his own material even now). On their release after the end of the war, Geisler and Wende relocated to the city of Hamburg, where they formed a trio playing small clubs in the same neighborhood that would later launch the Beatles. Wende started getting recording work as a session musician, then became a member of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Big Band (North German Radio Big Band, aka NDR) with included such band mates as Bert Kaempfert, James Last, and Geisler. The Horst Wende trio grew in popularity, becoming a major attraction on the American military base circuit while ‘Horst Wende and His Swinging Accordion’ headlined the Tarantella nightclub in Hamburg.

In the mid-50’s Polydor Records snapped up all the budding stars of the swinging local Hamburg music scene, making long term deals with James Last and Bert Kaempfert, and signing Wende as a staff producer. There Wende produced, arranged and composed many compositions for Last, Kaempfert, Max Greger and others, contributing heavily to the popularity of Schlager, that particularly northern European style of ‘party pop’ music combining sweet sentimental ballads with catchy melodies. Wende assembled and began producing his own accordion group in the early 1960’s, releasing folk and pop recordings to considerable success in Germany. Always interested in new sounds, he released several accomplished records exploring world music styles, most notably ‘Africana’ and ‘Todos Bailan Calypso’, which were critically acclaimed but had very limited sales.

Feeling there was an opportunity to sell more records in Germany by giving Wende an exotic alias, Polydor decided to release future world music style records under an alias, givng Wende the latin-sounding name of Roberto Delgado. Young producer Uwe Bowien was brought in to add a modern recording sound to Wende’s musical ideas, and the result - brightly-recorded and well-arranged albums of funky, upbeat party music - proved to be a sales bonanza for Polydor, when fans in the UK and the United States embraced the ‘happy dancing’ sound. That label was then opening international subsidiaries, and heavily marketed the Delgado titles simultaneously with two of their biggest priorities, the big band recordings of Bert Kaempfert and James Last. All three orchestras shared many of the same musicians and recording facilities, giving a sleek professional sound that came to define easy listening big band music for several decades. In the name of Delgado, Wende explored many ethnic musical styles, and has been credited with the early popularization of world music, releasing up beat dance albums exploring Asian, African, South American, Italian, Russian, Greek, and Jamaican themes, as well as pop hits and show tunes. As with James Last’s output, Delgado records show a considerable sense of humor, covering such oddities as ‘The Mosquito’ from the Doors’ Morrison-less ‘Full Circle’ album as a Moog ballad; occasional jazzy fills, funky backbeats or brassy counter-melodies (for example) help make the recordings stand up over time

Wende also recorded and accompanied many Germany pop stars, and appears on hundreds of recordings by such stars as Freddy Quinn, Lolita, Helmut Zhacharias, Alfred Haus and Rudi Schuricke. His popularity faded in the 1980s, and he retired from music professionally later in that decade. He passed away in 1996, just as his recordings started to be reissued on CD.

Feb

18

It is well documented that surf guitarist Dick Dale’s career was revitalized by the inclusion of his 1962 recording of ‘€˜Misirlou’€™ in Quentin Tarantino‒s blockbuster film ‘€˜Pulp Fiction’€™; what is less known is the song was originally a major hit for a slender elegant pianist from New York, who was paid less than $40 for the million copies of his version that made the song a fixture in American pop history.

Pianist Jan Augustoff was born on September 24, 1904, the fifth and final child of middle-class immigrants in New York City. His siblings - three sisters and a brother - had all received music lessons while growing up, to dismal results; so when it came time for Jan to study, his parents decided he probably would be as incapable, and his music study was dropped. The youngster however had a natural inclination toward music - he became fascinated with the player pianos at the local movie houses, and would come home and pick out the melodies on the family piano. He had a distaste for mathematics that gave him trouble in school, causing him to finally flunk his courses and drop out; with some natural talent as a cartoonist, he got a job working for Bud Fisher, the creator of the popular ‘Mutt and Jeff’ series. Still, it was music that kept his attention - his brother taught him a simple left hand chord on the piano, and he taught himself the rest; additionally learning to play saxophone, vibraphone, and xylophone as well. He began getting small jobs in Greenwich Village nightclubs under his shortened name, Jan August, and eventually was recruited into Paul Specht’s band. In the 30’s he was invited to play in the highly-popular orchestra of Paul Whiteman, the ‘King of Jazz’, which he did for some years; as well he played occasionally with the young Ferd Grofe.

By the 1940’s popular music taste had shifted to swing, and August - an out-of-fashion ’sweet’ player - had returned to performing as a solo club pianist. His odd way of playing some songs on the high notes attracted the attention of Irving Gwirtz of Diamond Records in 1947, who hired him to make a record; in one night he performed ‘Bob-A-Loo’ and ‘Misirlou’, and was paid union scale for the recording, about $35. The record went on to become a Top Ten hit, selling 3 millions record and launching Jan August into the public view.

He was given his own 15 minute broadcast on the Mutual Radio network, and through 1947 and 1948 became well known to the American public. His popularity coincided with the rise of television as a medium, where his elegant good looks and mannered style made him a natural. He appeared on ‘The Toast of the Town’ (predecessor of the Ed Sullivan Show) in 1948, and again in 1950; and from 1949 to 1951 accompanied singer Robert Quinlan on her NBC variety show, recording several hits with her, most notably ‘Buffalo Billy’. After finishing the Roberta Quinlan show, he hosted ‘Jan August’s Revere Camera Show’ with singer Monica Lewis for several seasons. His public popularity was strong enough that he was the subject of a film short in 1949, entitled ‘Audition For August’ - Kitty Kallen threatens to quit her nightclub job unless the owner provides her with a proper piano accompanist. Enter August, who plays ‘Besame Mucho’ and ‘Jan’s Boogie’, to Kallen’s great delight; they perform together on ‘Stardust’ to end the 9-minute film.

In 1950 he also recorded often with Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats, and they had a big national hit with ‘Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered)’ from the hit Broadway show ‘Pal Joey’. August then signed a long-term record contract with Mercury Records, and began releasing albums of piano instrumentals, the most popular of which merged Latin rhythms with light classical styles, which launched such minor hits as ‘Malaguena’, ‘My Shawl’, ‘Oye Negra’, and a rerecording of ‘Misirlou’. He was able to successfully put together his own orchestra and tour in Canada and the USA, endearing himself by dropping in and playing unannounced sets with local bands.

August’s final hit was with singer RIchard Hayman on ‘A Theme From The Threepenny Opera (Moritat)’, which reached #87 on Billboard in 1956. He continued to be an active performer into the 1960’s, then quietly retired, passing away in his sleep in 1976. Credited by Peter Nero as an inspiration, his work languished largely unnoticed until the Lounge music fad of the 1990’s, when it had a brief resurgence. A small number of CD titles have been reissued, and some of his big hits appear on compilations; fans who want a better idea of his work will have to find the original Mercury titles, many only available in the Mercury 25000-series 10-inch vinyl format, to experience the light piano artistry of Jan August.

Feb

17

photo credit Wired Magazine

Santeri Ojala (aka StSanders) is a multi-media artist from Finland, whose most acclaimed work juxtaposes classic rock video footage with his own recordings to create satirical and humorous parodies of the pretentious playing style of popular guitar heroes. This ‘Shred’ series of videos attracted millions of viewers on Youtube, before being banned due to claims of copyright infringement by artists offended by his work.

YOU CAN WATCH SOME OF SANTERI’S HILARIOUS WORK HERE

Santeri Olaja was born on February 20, 1975, in a small municipality in Finland. A student of both piano and guitar, he moved to the city of Tampere to attend TTVO, the School of Arts & Video. There he created large audio and video installations in such public areas as highway underpasses, while becoming adept with samplers and sequencers, studying music creation while recording demos and doing commercial work.

One day watching a Steve Vai video without sound, he was inspired to pick up his Ibanez guitar and play along, trying to match Vai’s fingering in the video while playing as poorly and comicly as possible. The process intrigued him, so he took the video and began overdubbing, using his considerable skill to create a plausible sound track of amateur riffing and tuneless runs in amusing counterpoint to Vai’s seriousness. ‘Steve Vai Shreds’ was posted to Youtube under the name ‘StSanders’, and received a warm reaction, including good humor from Vai himself: ‘If I actually played like that, perhaps I could finally be on MTV and in Rolling Stone and have a real career,” he said through his label Epic Records.

This sudden notoriety spurred Olaja to continue experimenting in the same vein, and he followed up with more ambitious reworkings of classic rock videos, substituting pointless arpeggios, arhythmic chording, tuneless riffs, limp applause and lame rock references while also reworking vocals and other instrumentation. He created videos spoofing Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Paco DeLucia, Metallica, Gary Moore, Santana, and an ambitious reworking of Yngwie Malmsteen with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. His attention to detail, deft musicianship and spot-on timing fooled many observers - even some professional musicians - into thinking the videos were real, adding to his growing publicity. On the Jimmy Kimmel show, he played his guitar synched to a Guns’N'Roses video, with guitarist Slash in attendance; the obviously-unamused superstar interrupted Olaja’s performance before it was finished. The technical veracity of his playing gave him wide recognition by guitarists and guitar fans, leading to interviews and analysis of his work in such leading gearhead publications as Guitar Player.

Unfortunately not all of Olaja subjects were willing to let their work be parodied - after recieving over 7 million hits, Youtube pulled Ojala’s videos in early 2008, citing copyright infringement claims. Wired magazine and a few other internet sites have posted the videos in stories about the Youtube ban; it remains to be seen if they will persist on the internet. Olaja has expressed his disappointment publicly, but remains optimistic that new outlets and opportunities for his creativity will emerge from his recent notoriety.

Feb

10

Nigerian-born Patti Boulaye has had a unique life - she has lived through one of the great genocides of the 20th century to become a singer, actress, model, activist and fundraiser; a career propelled by controversy, determination, faith, and willpower.

Patricia Ngozi Ebigwei came into this world on the move, born in 1954 in a taxicab between two villages in the Bendel Igbo region of rural Nigeria. One of 8 children, she grew up in the middle of the horrific Biafran civil war, witnessing such horrors as a man running down the street with his head cut off, and stepping around fresh bodies as her family walked home from church. Later she credited her mother’s steadfast faith through these terrible times as the source of her strength and her musical inspiration, later recalling her mother singing along to her favorite music, Louis Armstrong’s ‘Nobody Knows the Troubles I Seen’ and Mahalia Jackson’s great gospel prayers.

At 16 she left Nigeria and moved to London, where she accidentally stepped into the wrong queue and wound up auditioning for a West End musical instead of going to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Palace. She won the audition, and began a career as a stage actress, first in ‘Hair’ at the Shaftesbury Theatre and then ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ at the Phoenix. Her stunning exotic beauty and powerful singing voice landed her in an all-girl group The Flirtations; she stayed with them for a year, and recorded several singles, leaving to perform in Jesus Christ Superstar’ and then the starring role in ‘The Black Mikado’. It was around that time that she met and was profoundly inspired by the then-70 year old English Theatre actress Evelyn Laye, known to her friends as ‘Boo’; in direct homage Patricia Ngozi Ebigwei changed her stage name to Patti Boulaye.

No one will really ever know how Boo Laye influenced the young Nigerian actress, but from this time her star ascended dramatically - more stage roles followed, then she returned to Africa to star in the critically acclaimed ‘Bisi Daughter of the River’. Returning to London she entered the highly prestigious ‘New Faces’ tv competition, and easily bested the competition, getting the first perfect score in the five-year history of the show. New career peaks kept coming - she released successful records, toured around the world, danced with the Scottish Ballet, appeared on ‘Talk of the Town’ appeared in several more movies, and became the highly-visible face of Lux Beauty Soap in the UK for five years. She was named female vocalist of the Year in 1981 by BBC TV, and co-produced her own TV series ‘The Patti Boulaye Show’ on UK Channel 4. She was then hugely applauded for her performances in ‘Carmen Jones’ at the Old Vic Theatre, and many other critically lauded stage and television roles followed. The 100th broadcast of the ‘Patti Boulaye Show’- a Christmas Day special with Cliff Richard - was watched by millions. She performed at the 50th Birthday of Prince Hassan of Jordan, and the inauguration of the President of Nigeria.

Politics became the undoing of her first career. Her support of the Thatcher government came under considerable criticism in the vulturish British press; their attack on her reached it’s peak when The Guardian quoted her as saying she supported apartheid. As a black African, she was outraged; and successfully sued, proving to the courts that she had spoken of the importance of supporting ‘the party’, not apartheid, and had been misheard or misquoted by the reporter. Still, it took until 1999 to get that legal judgement, and in the meantime, her career stalled. Bookings dried up, her tv show was cancelled, her forward momentum came to a standstill.

Boulaye did not stay out of the limelight long, however; rather than being quashed by the political backlash she marshalled her considerable energy and faith, and entered a new phase of her career. She organised a charity, Support For Africa, with a mission to eradicate malaria and generate awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, directly ensuring the money raised went to building screening centres in Cameroon and Nigeria. ‘God took away my career - with a lot help from the Tories - so I could do this’ she was famously quoted. She produced a massive fundraising event at Royal Albert Hall featuring a choir of 3,000 singers and major British footballers, and then most impressively, increased it to a record 5,000 Gospel singers for a parade she lead to Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.
She has worked relentlessly for her charity, and has enlisted many high-profile celebrities in her efforts, such as Cliff Richard, Michael Jackson, Shaquille O’Neil and John Major.

Patti has remained creatively active as well - highlights in recent years include the stage production of ‘Patti Boulaye’s Sun Dance’, a colorful pageant of African custom and dance, for which she wrote several songs; and in 2004 she released the stunning gospel CD ‘In His Kingdom’, a heartful affirmation of her Christian faith using African arrangements and instrumentation.

In recent years she has become a successful painter and jewellery designer, and remains a tireless worker for her charity. In September 2007 she produced “Football Reaching Out For Africa”(FROFA), a charity event with a mass choir of 3000 gospel singers and a host of football stars and musicians. Now in her fifth decade, Patti Boulaye continues her career with the same energy of her early youth; and the world is a better place for it.

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