Strains of out-of-tune guitars are in the air, darting, fluttering and swirling about your speakers' stereo-field...
...the pulse of pounding, clanging Perscussive Clamour is jostling our equilibriums to a state of joyful confusion...
...the acrid breath of a growling choir of Honky Gabacho's pulls at our chests and blows our hair back in tufts, while each of those overdubbed mouths, at once cooing, condemning and cajoling, nibbles at our lips and earlobes...
The RPM Challenge is upon us once again, and this time, Honky and "the boys" will not be caught flat-footed as they were last year, when they quickly abandoned The Challenge due to the semantic difficulties of writing and recording whilst packing, organizing, and funding a 3000-mile trip back to the east coast.
However, as the Jugband have been entrenched in the completion [and eventual release of]
¡NO ROTATION!: The Birth of Hermit-Rock, along with
¡The Jugband Cannibala TAKE A BRIDE! [and, so we're told, basic intrumental tracks for
yet another project...], Honky Gabacho will be "going solo" for this Challenge.
Honky will be tackling the as-yet-unrecorded compositions that will comprise
THE CAUCASIAN ALBUM. As of this writing, he has over a dozen songs that are ready to record; scraps of others that will be tossed-around during the process; and, as recording/overdubbing is in fact one of Honky's favorite ways to compose, at least one
wild-card, dark-horse candidate that could materialize at any time during the process.
"That's what 'Lonesome Electric Robert Pete Williams' was on the first RPM disc," he told me just the other day. "Also, 'Abba-Abbeah,' 'Dr. Monkeylove,' and 'I Was a Teenage Exorcism' were all concieved that way. I'm a relatively hands-on guy, and I think I'm most creative when I can see things actually materializing. Being raised on rock 'n' roll and recorded-music in general, or simply, music of electronic means and expression, I get very inspired by timbre.
"Also, I like the ragged, raw energy of a performance, and I think that's what I'll be focusing on a bit more with this project... along with capturing different and better sounds. This will be a continuation of the experimentation I started with 'Pelvic Restriction,' just adding different colors to my palette, so to speak."
For those of you who do not know about Honky, The JBC or
¡HERMIT-ROCK! in general [or, in the spirit of the ¡HERMIT-ROCK! moniker, " To Those of You Who HAVEN'T Been Living Under a Rock..."], The Jugband Cannibala, after several incarnations and false starts [most memorably, the preparation of the Andy Klosenski short-movie
"Chew on Skin,"], got their legs under them for the first time while participating in the RPM Challenge back in February of 2007, which yeilded the album
Johnny Got His Axe ["Barakas" and the aforementioned "Lonesome Electric" are songs of note from this effort].
By late August of the same year, a mere six months later, their second album,
American Toreador, was completed... and just in time. Immediately after the completion of that album, Honky and his Gaggle of Sonic Pranksters relocated to the warm, sunny suburban culture-vacuum of Southern California's Rancho Cucamonga.
While living, working and rehearsing in "SoCal" [with the occasional visit to "L.A. proper"], the Jugband took up The Challenge once again in February of 2008, recording the album
¡The Jugband Cannibala TAKE A BRIDE! which, while long enough to satisfy the requirements of RPM, was considered by the band to be "incomplete," and therefore given the title
"¡...Court a Bride!" instead.
Since then, Honky Gabacho has been playing solo gigs in the Northern New England area, and his Jugband Cannibala have been putting the "finishing touches" on what was the semi-official calling card of The JBC during their SoCal sojourn of "shopping around" their peculiar evolutionary anachronism of
progressive-Caveman-boogie Rock: A strangely catchy little "singles collection" called
¡NO ROTATION!: The Birth of Hermit-Rock, which, as of this writing, is due for an "official"release in Spring, 2010.
They've also been putting
¡...TAKE A BRIDE! to bed finally, and have even begun an almost-jazzy, avant-funk project, called either "Pattern No-Pattern," "Drunkard's Strut," "Chaos Funk" or "¡Strange Attractor!" depending on which member you ask...
As for Honky... well... you'll find out about him soon enough...
...Like March 1st...
Keep Yer Ear to the Ground Till You Hear the Throb,
Sir Loudengreasey, Esq.
