All Men Are Brothers (All Sisters Are Women): Punk Jazz arrives.
Too Loud?
I met Norman Famous and Ned Smith in '78. They were ahead of me in line to buy beer at a neighborhood convenience store. They were talking about music and since the line was long (there was a drunk guy at the counter who kept dropping things) I joined the conversation. It turned out that Norman and Ned, who were both about my age, were a rhythm section of sorts with Norman on bass and Ned playing drums. The problem was they had no idea how to play their instruments. They had recently, on a stoned whim, gone out and bought a set of drums and a bass rig that were now sitting in Norman's garage. The conversation continued as we completed our purchases and walked out to the parking lot. I liked them - they were friendly and funny and, best of all, fans of Beatles and Zappa. We exchanged numbers and agreed to get in touch soon.
We soon became friends, hanging out together, talking about music over drinks. They met Arlene and I met a couple of their friends - a keyboard player named Peter Johnson whose nickname was, oddly, "Guitar" and a guitarist named William Paul Kelly who went by his middle name. Peter and Paul could actually play their instruments. The four of them were planning to put a band together as soon as Ned and Norman learned how to play. I offered to help them become at least functional. I visited their makeshift rehearsal space in Norman's Oakland garage - it was a nice setup. We even tried a jam, but it didn't go well. Ned was hopeless on the drums and Norman wasn't much better though he could plonk out a pattern if I showed it to him. One evening while Ned, Norman, Arlene and I, quite stoned, were messing around in the garage making an unholy racket I had an epiphany. I stopped everything right then and there and said "We need to make a record".
I had talked to my new friends about the ongoing Won Out project. They were impressed that I was making an album on my own. I played them some of the songs and they were very enthusiastic and wanted to help. But that wasn't what I had in mind - I was thinking of something completely different. That something was Le Bonx
The inspiration for Le Bonx goes all the way back the first time I heard The Mothers' Uncle Meat. There's a cut on side one of the first disc that's a long guitar solo accompanied by seemingly random drums, bass and various percussion instruments. I was also a fan of Captain Beefheart's masterpiece Trout Mask Replica, an album of songs that sounded like random craziness but were actually intricately worked out. During the Great Song Explosion I came up with an instrumental called "Theme from The Man from Bonkeenie" where I played a solo and told everyone else to play whatever came into their heads. There could be a recording of it somewhere, but I doubt it because in the fall '76. I was seized with paranoia and burned nearly all of the cassettes of my own music I'd made up to that point. The few that survived were the ones I either couldn't find or were deemed, for some reason, no threat to me. Life gets weird sometimes. I wanted this project to be a cross between the two - organized (but not too organized) chaos.
The idea I presented to my friends was to make a recording of instrumentals - I'd give Norman a bass pattern to start with and we'd take it from there, following along or not. Maybe I'd extemporize some lyrics. I decided not to play guitar and let Arlene's electric piano lead the way, accompanied by Norman and Ned. Arlene asked "What should I play?" and I answered, "Whatever you want, just follow Norman at first and then take off".
Norman "produced" the session by haphazardly aiming some mics at the instruments.
" All Men Are Brothers (All Sisters Are Women)" is a few seconds of a level check for the drums. In the spirit of the project it was deemed a song. The title came from Ned. We decided that to take turns naming the cuts after they were recorded.
At the time of this recording punk rock was all the rage. Bands were forming all over the place as young people vented their anger, frustration and disdain for the current state of our society with a few chords and a lot of attitude. The Sex Pistols were the flag-bearers for the movement. Rock had become very pompous and bloated and the new generation was determined to tear it down. But it wasn't all 3 chords and yelling - also popular at this time was jazz fusion, a style exemplified by the excellent Weather Report, a instrumental outfit made up of some of the best studio musicians of the time. I imagined a combination of the two - "punk jazz". In fact the working title for the project was Sex Report. I came up with Le Bonx later as a tribute to my old band The Bonkeenies.
There were 3 sessions for the album but only the first session was used for the initial release The other two didn't have the same spark of discovery and fun. Le Bonx is the kind of thing that can only happen once. You can't catch lightning in a bottle. The tracks were sequenced in the same order they were recorded. Le Bonx was released (on cassette) in 1980 shortly after the final version of Won Out finally burst upon the world. The radio stations that happily played Won Out wouldn't touch it (except for a few of the more adventurous ones) and not many people bought it (we didn't make many copies) and it's now quite a collector's item. I don't even have one. When it was released on CD, remastered to remove tape noise and enhance the sonics (by Mike Cogan at Bay Records),songs from the other two sessions were included making it nearly twice as long. That may have been a mistake as a little punk jazz goes a long way! I will only be addressing the original track listing and the single that was planned, recorded but never released. That's a good story.
In case you've been wondering this is my favorite commercial in case you've been wondering
Buckets are nice
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