On The Rocks

The Worcester Phoenix
October 19 - 26, 2000

[On The Rocks]

Strangely familiar

The Johnny Dollar Experiment rebuild old songs with new tools

by Brian Goslow
Rock and roll is widely believed to be a game best played by the young. That was probably the thought going through the head of one Java Hut patron earlier this year when the Johnny Dollar Experiment, its lineup filled with local club veterans, took the stage. "There was a young lady in the back on a cell phone. She must have been 17," says drummer Johnny "Dollar" Murzyki, re- calling how his group got the idea for the cover for their upcoming CD. "The person she was talking to must have asked her what the music was because she held the phone up in the air and then said, `It's middle-age white funk.' "
That wasn't the intention when the group, originally known as the Johnny Dollar Band, found instant success playing '60s hits at the Plantation Club Drafthouse, Hogshead Tavern, and Black Orchid.
The band was born two years ago when Murzyki, who hadn't performed in nearly a decade, ran into former band-mate and keyboardist Mauro DePasquale. They enlisted a bass player and guitarist and began securing gigs. When their original guitarist bailed out, they gave a call to Joey D'Angelo, who had performed jazz tunes with DePasquale and Myrzyki as Affirmation in the late 1970s and early '80s, and rediscovered the joy of playing together.
"He liked the tunes we were playing," recalls Murzyki. "It was us hooking back up again, and it all started coming back to us." DePasquale recruited Victor Hellenic, a bassist he'd performed with in the Latin-jazz band Mugambo. It was a perfect fit. When the group began working on an extended version of Van Morrison's "Gloria," Johnny Dollar went from being a cover band to being an experiment.
"It was so much fun, we wondered why it couldn't all be that way," DePasquale says. The answer was, it could be. They made the decision to switch the band's emphasis to jazz-flavored renditions of their '60s repertoire and went looking for some new performance outlets. Enter the Java Hut, host to Jay Tyer's weekly jazz jam on Saturday. The Johnny Dollar Experiment now perform there on the first Friday of each month.

IT'S JUST AN HOUR before show time, and the volunteers at the Green Rooster Coffeehouse are converting the high-ceilinged sanctuary into a speakeasy. The back of the stage is a black wall with a doorway in the middle topped by a huge green rooster weathervane that used to sit atop the United Congregational Church, in which the coffeehouse is housed. Member by member, the JDE comes together.
Murzyki sets up a recently-purchased set of Roland syn-drums, the simplicity (and portability) of which guarantees there'll be no more late nights dragging a heavy trunk filled with snare drums and bass drums and heavy drum stands -- the traditional bane (and often the career ender) of any drummer who can't afford a roadie. After playing acoustic drums for 30 years, Murzyki's still adjusting to his new kit, which appears to have more features than any one drummer could possibly use. "You can get 200 cymbal sounds," he explains. I have a pre-programmed module on the left side and I have my choice of 1265 percussion sounds."
DePasquale, longtime station manager at WCCA TV 13, has probably been in more homes than any other Worcester musician in the guise of his alter-ego, Ricky Jam. His voice is part Al Jarreau and part Elvis Costello, during his Almost Blue period. His keyboards put out the sound of a virtuoso flutist or a world-class clarinet player; you have to look up to recognize where the sound's coming form. With the click of a switch, his set-up's transformed into the grandest concert piano. The sound may be synthetic; the playing, however, is all DePasquale. And it's magic.
D'Angelo arrives next, wheeling in his guitar amp and a suitcase of effects. Despite having performed for more than three decades, he displays none of the usual animosity and disdain towards the repetitive sound-check ritual. When he joined the group, D'Angelo was no stranger to their set-list. He played most of the material back when he was an integral part of Worcester's legendary Joneses, who hit the top of the local radio charts (alongside the Beatles and the Stones) in the late 1960s with "Baby," released nationally on MGM Records. Always the showman, before taking the stage, D'Angelo puts on a sharp orange-peach dress shirt. The line-up is completed with the arrival of bassist Hellenic, who also performs with the Rhythm Party.
Along with their new take on old classics, the JDE's signature hook is dropping sometimes unlikely songs inside songs. During Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love," they throw in the bass and guitar riffs from "I Feel Free." After the familiar opening guitar chords to the Doors' "Love Me Two Times" draw you back in time, the vocal arrangement reinvents the tune, leaving you feeling as if you've been levitated onto a cloud. By the time you've gotten accustomed to that, they've begun "Light My Fire." It's a trick that's served the Grateful Dead (and subsequently Phish) for years.
DePasquale sings with a touch of Frank Sinatra and the moves of Sammy Davis Jr. on a doo-wop scat version of the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night," which also features tremendous four-part harmonies. Hellenic's funky bass playing kicks in a partially successful version of the Supremes-meet-the-Vanilla Fudge's "You Keep Me Hangin' On." Of course, part of the experiment is to see the impact that various sounds have on their arrangements. At times, JDE sustain their notes with a modern trance-like hold, creating an effect reminiscent of a rave. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that a lot of JDE's creative output is related to the club-dj soundscape -- just as you attach your brain to one melody, another comes sneaking in through your subconscious.
Elsewhere, JDE borrow the hip-hop artists' trick of bringing distinctive, but no-so-obvious, portions of songs to the forefront as a reoccurring riff or backing harmony. Hellenic's repetitious performance of the bass riff from Sonny and Cher's "And the Beat Goes On" keeps crawling underneath the band's version of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'." On "Purple Haze," the trademark guitar chords are replaced by a doo-wop chorus. That Hendrix anthem may have been written with a headful of psychedelics, but the JDE version could easily accompany a nasty morning hangover.

TO MAKE GREAT MUSIC, performers must be willing to take chances. Not everything is going to work. That's true of the Johnny Dollar Experiment as well. Not everyone is going to be a fan of jazzed-up versions of 30-year-old songs.
"It's a musical challenge to come up with the arrangements," says DePasquale. "But, if it was just us doing covers and changing in the men's room again to play a gig, I don't think I'd be doing it."
Toward the end of the evening, JDE puts the room under the spell of their reworking of Patsy Cline's "Crazy," which transports listeners to a place with starry skies, open fields, and a universe where anything is possible. Its unexpectedness leaves you breathless. After the show, one of the volunteers notes she had never heard the song performed from a male perspective before. That may have not been the intention, but any experiment is bound to have side effects.
Later this fall, the Johnny Dollar Experiment will release its self-titled debut CD. It'll be worth picking up if only to hear what a jazzed-up version of the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" sounds like. The CD cover will feature an insane-looking female scientist brewing up middle-aged white funk from glass containers (labeled MAWF) that imprison the group's members. Until then, its back to the laboratory.
"Part of the experiment," DePasquale says, "is finding an open-minded audience."
The search for volunteers continues on Thursday, October 26 at Gilrein's.

Brian Goslow can be reached at bgoslow[a]phx.com.