All Ears

John Lurie's strange and beautiful jazz

by David Ritchie

The Lounge Lizards' music was always sort of in the hipster jazz idiom, accomplished but subversive (you knew implicitly that jazz traditionalists would be left squirming in their seats). They developed out of New York's "no-wave" scene, first playing the post-punk circuit with folks like Pere Ubu and the Cramps. Their debut album, in 1981, contained two Thelonius Monk covers among the originals, but any comparison to straight-ahead jazz was impossible thanks to the wildly dissonant and wonderful contribution by guitarist Arto Lindsay (who turned "Harlem Nocturne" into something more related to early punk). Lindsay is just one of a growing number of world-class musicians who've passed through the ranks of John Lurie's band, including two-thirds of Medeski, Martin & Wood, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, drummer Anton Fier of the Golden Palominos, and the amazing guitarist Marc Ribot. In the course of their 20-year history, the band have evolved from edgy "fake jazz" (Lurie's 1979 spur-of-the-moment description) to the studied amalgam of off-kilter interpreted sounds that make up their best album to date, Queen of All Ears.

What led John and Evan Lurie to Worcester in the late '60s was their father, David Lurie, a college professor whose leftist politics led to his blacklisting. The family was forced to leave John's birthplace of Minneapolis for New Orleans and then Worcester where he and Evan attended Doherty High School. John doesn't remember those years too favorably: "I felt kind of alone when I was there." He did, however, manage to cofound a band with several other students. They tried several names, but Crud was the one they used for the longest (after spray-painting it all over town). Two of Crud's members went on to form the Odds -- Preston Wayne remembers Lurie as a unique character, very cynical about everything. Steve Cohn, future Odds bassist (though not in Crud), recalls similar characteristics -- a different person, ahead of his time, aloof and possibly a genius. "He was kind of an asshole. But you couldn't help but think he was going places."

Lurie played harmonica then, influenced especially by Little Walter. Toward the end of high school, after the death of his father, the prospect of going to Vietnam loomed, and the alternative of college held no interest (he randomly drew in the bubbles of his college boards rather than actually taking them). One sleepless night in Worcester, at 5 a.m., as the story goes, he met a guy walking down the street with a wheelbarrow full of dirt who said he'd just seen a statue of an angel turn into an angel and fly away . . . somehow this insane pitch appealed to Lurie, so he followed the guy to his house where he was given a saxophone and a bicycle. That was Lurie's first saxophone, and he started practicing in the woods every night.

After his 1971 high-school graduation, Lurie hitchhiked across country and ended up in Berkeley, then Los Angeles, and eventually Wales where his mother had returned after his father's death. He stayed during the winter, working on the saxophone.

In the late '70s, Lurie moved to Manhattan where he assembled the first incarnation of the Lounge Lizards. "It was pretty much a big scene, in the Lower East Side of New York at that time, and everybody kinda met everybody at these parties." The first band were assembled quickly for a gig, but things took off quickly. Playing what might be called punk-jazz (due in large part to Lindsay's crunching guitar), they secured Teo Macero (legendary producer of Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk) for their first album. "I gotta say, me and Evan put it on a few years ago . . . and we were rolling on the floor laughing . . . Just kind of how youthful we were in both good and bad ways. We were trying so hard and going so fast and there was just no finesse at all, y'know, but it's kinda wonderful."

Soon after that first album came the film work; he scored several movies and played a variety of roles, the best of which traded on his hip, downtown cool persona. Lurie worked with filmmakers like Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, and David Lynch with varying results. But he's best-known for his starring roles in two oddball comedies by Jim Jarmusch: Stranger Than Paradise (which won Best First Film at Cannes), and Down by Law (which costarred Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni).

Lurie released several live albums and film scores during that period, and in 1987 went back in the studio to produce No Pain for Cakes on Island Records. The next album, Voice of Chunk, came two years later, and having never had a good relationship with a record company, Lurie tried to direct-market it through a television commercial and appearances on shows like Saturday Night Live, where he announced the 800-number. This strategy had a romantic appeal but ultimately didn't work too well. Voice of Chunk, however, was better than anything that came before, not really rock or jazz, almost cinematic in a way -- much of Lurie's music has a soundtrack feel to it, even when not specifically written for a film. The musicianship had improved, things were less chaotic, and the band had developed a more uplifting, almost spiritual nature; Lurie took to calling it "religious music played by wise guys."

His compositions have a variety of rhythmic influences, sometimes beautiful sometimes discordant melodies that build slowly, each instrument in turn layering into the piece. "There's hardly any songs any more that we count off 1,2,3,4,5, whatever, and then everybody comes in. A lot of this stuff, people are playing in different time signatures; and so the piano or the bass part becomes almost a hum in the middle of it. So unless you start the song with the part that's going to disappear eventually, people will never actually hear it."

Lurie's saxophone style is very distinctive. It's evident that, as much as the notes themselves, he's interested in the various qualities of sound that can be produced with false fingerings, playing notes a little flatter and then a little flatter still, oscillating back and forth between two versions of the same note. His compositions, like those of Tom Waits, reflect his fascination with the sounds around him, such as the Doppler effect. "I can be in the shower and the way the water is hitting the floor or whatever that sound is that sometimes you think you hear the phone in the shower or something, I hear melodies out of that. And I am frequently running out of the shower sopping wet to get over to the keyboard to figure out what it is, and there's this trail of water from my bathroom to the music room. I don't know, it's kinda mishearing things a lot, y'know, like on a train, you kinda hear the rhythm of the train . . . your brain gets confused by a combination of sounds together and then something comes out of that."

His fanatical interest in sound is a blessing and a curse. Live gigs can be trying because the PA or microphone is often not up to his exacting standards. He describes CDs as too pointy, so he works hard to make them sound warmer. The technical aspect is something he wishes he didn't have to deal with. "I'm very jealous of say Bob Marley or John Coltrane. It's like they just played and then they moved on . . . but I have to really concentrate . . . otherwise it doesn't have the impact spiritually or emotionally that it has to have. Cause it's not about the notes. It's really rarely about the notes. . . . I heard a Sidney Bechet record once, and you could live in this tone, the tone completely enveloped you and made you kinda warm."

Given his demand for involvement in the entire process, it's easy to understand his difficulty with the record industry. (Lurie had prophetically named one of his 1986 compositions, "What Do You Know about Music, You're Not a Lawyer.") So this year, he circumvented the whole process by creating his own label, Strange & Beautiful Music, which will allow him to put out his own stuff in a way that he can protect it personally. Queen of All Ears is the first release on his new label, and it's the best thing the Lounge Lizards have done, full of beautiful filmic melodies, African and Indian rhythms, strip-club swing, klezmer, and cartoon music. The band are now a nine-piece, with two woodwinds, trumpet, slide guitar, piano and organ, cello, bass, percussion, and drums. "I'm very happy with what I've got right now . . . this last year is probably the best the band's ever been."

Also new on Strange & Beautiful is the soundtrack to Fishing with John, a jumbled collection of instrumentals (several for string quartet) and two impromptu songs by Tom Waits. The music accompanies a six-part video series that debuts November 20th on Bravo's IFC Fridays. Each episode features Lurie and a guest (Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, or Dennis Hopper) on a fishing expedition. Waits looks unsettled and queasy throughout his Jamaican excursion -- it's funny and fascinating in the same way Stranger Than Paradise was, not because of the action but because of the lack thereof. Unlike other fishing shows that are edited to give the appearance of constant fish-catching, here we see everything but. (Waits: "I gotta ask you something John. You ever caught a fish before?") Waits finally does catch a red snapper and puts it down his pants. The video is accompanied by droll narrative ("The long walk home makes Tom a little grouchy") and concludes with Waits trudging behind Lurie wondering aloud how he got talked into this: "You dragged me along on this safari and I don't

know why." Worth catching if you've got Bravo.

Coming soon on Strange & Beautiful will be reissues of several of the film scores, including African Swim (which Lurie thinks is his best), as well as a re-issue of Voice of Chunk. One has to wonder what, if anything, will finally bring John Lurie's music into public consciousness -- he's still known more for his acting in most circles, and like most jazz pioneers, he's better known in Europe (and Japan) than here in the States. Of course, Worcester didn't really appreciate Lurie while he was here either, and vice versa. But hey, it was high school. Maybe it's time to invite him back to play Mechanics Hall.

The Lounge Lizards perform at 8:30 p.m. on September 26 at Pearl Street, in Northampton. Tickets are $20. Call (413) 584-0610. The band also appear at on September 27 at the Paradise, in Boston. Call (617) 562-8800.