TROUT MASK REPLICA
another Facebook entry from John 'Drumbo' French published over the Easter Holiday (2022)
Musician, archivist, driving force Drummer per excellence behind the Magic Band
"After nine months or so of a cult-like situation, The Magic Band of Trout Mask Replica ( which, BTW, DIDN’T include Victor Hayden AKA “The Mascara Snake” he was added at the last minute) we were finished with the arrangements to all the compositions left to record. “Veteran’s Day Poppy” and “Moonlight on Vermont” had already been recorded at Sunset Sound studios in Hollywood early on as a sort of trial run, I suppose. Frank Z had decided he wanted to record the band at the Trout House in the framework of an “Anthropological Field Recording” using the same remote unit that he used on the road to record The Mothers. I didn’t like this idea at all.
First of all, it was going to be just a rough mix done on-site. We had struggled and strained and literally BLED for the moment, yet FZ though it was fine just to record the rest of the basic tracks in such a manner. I saw the setup on a card table. A Uher stereo tape recorder – albeit high-end for the time – and two Shure six channel mixers – no EQ – just volume control, plus a case of fairly good quality microphones. Frank had sent a truck up to the house the day before and his people had set us up with Acoustic amps ( solid-state, with a really brittle sound) and a basic mic setup of quality mics in the living room.
To make things even more distracting, FZ decided to bring a couple of GTOs along – I guess to add “color” to the recordings…. It was a circus. We hardly knew these girls, and it seemed totally unprofessional to inject them into our recording session. I was pissed. Is this what I and my fellow bandmates has worked so hard for? All the string-instrument players had developed a powerful finger-picking style and mostly had worked acoustically (unplugged), as one pesky neighbor lady kept calling the cops and complaining about the noise. You can hear Don talking to her on the “Grow Fins” set about how Herb Alpert couldn’t really play trumpet. You can also hear someone typing – as, in all those months, Don hadn’t bothered to get his lyrics organized. ( “Shit, I don’t know how I’m going to get that in there…”). I had barely had a few days to practice my drum parts ( to the constant complaints, again, of said neighbor) and had undergone a grueling interrogation by Don as “what the fuck have you been DOING the last year, man?” “Well,” I explained, “I’ve been transcribing eighteen of your compositions and teaching them to the guys!” My emotional state was – hmm to say the least – BURNED OUT and ANGRY! Most of the compositions, although short, were jam-packed with riffs. 10 or more parts per player per tune = 30 x18 or about 540 riffs/parts in total, not to mention arranging it so that everyone started and ended together. Re: Drums, I had an idea of what to do on everything, but every time I went to practice, the cops showed up. I had a great deal of envy for the guys who could practice – unamplified – all day. To this day, I think I sound clumsy and clubby on the pieces, but it was the best I could do in the limited times. However no one was more familiar with the music than I.
After the one day of “Anthropological Field Recordings (hereafter called AFR),” Don came in with Frank and said, “Look at these guys, man! They can’t play! They’ve been trapped in their own environment!” Obviously, we COULD play, and the results are on the Grow Fins CD Compilation. What Don was covering up is that he couldn’t sing to the music. He hadn’t practiced one song from beginning to end with the band. And, he didn’t even have his lyrics in order. He was terrified that Frank would find out he wasn’t prepared. While we were busy putting the music together, Don was out jamming with Frank at the Log Cabin and later at his house on Woodrow Wilson Drive.
In his later interview with Langdon Winner, he described how he wrote the album in 8 ½ hours, and then had to wait forever for us to learn the material, and that he basically trained us how to play. There was little truth in this, though he did occasionally come into the room and work with individual players on nuance mostly – that is, when he wasn’t convening yet another grueling, emotionally and physically draining “talk.” But 8 ½ HOURS? Total malarkey! Three to four hours a piece would be a modest estimate. But the writing wasn’t really the tough part, the tough part was committing all those riffs to memory. The night after the AFR session, Don came in and told us that Frank had given us ONE SESSION – Six Hours – to record the rest of the tracks. “We can do it!” I said, without hesitation, though I thought it was pretty fucking cheap of Frank. It was scheduled a few days away, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that AT LEAST I would be given a few days to tighten up the drum parts. I knew the pieces by heart, having lived with them for nine months, so I set up my drums in the little laundry shed, told everyone to leave me the hell alone, and practiced, and practiced and practiced for three days. The lady came over and I said, “Bear with me, we’ll be done in three days.” She left me alone. During this time, Jeff Burchell and Don were standing behind me as I practiced. “Do you think you could do that?” Don asked Jeff. Jeff replied, “Yeah, I think so.”
We went into Whitney Studios with FZ and Dick Kunc at the controls, and knocked off 18 instrumental tracks in on night, and most in one take. The next two weeks or so at the house were, for me, both a relief and wondering why Don had asked Jeff Burchell if “he could do that…”. The only break was the one show – a cancer benefit – we did at the Aquarius Theatre. It was the only time the TMR band would perform.
EASTER SUNDAY of 1969, Frank invited us up to his basement studio to hear the final mix edited mix. We walked in to see a stranger there, who was introduced to us as Lowell George. He left shortly afterward, and we listened to the album in its entirety for the first time. Frank’s editing was brilliant – the way he infused the short dialogues with the music, and the story told by the Amway man about the rats combined with Dachau Blues were genius. From the end of OUR session (Don took a week in the studio doing overdubs) I really had a sense of dread. What was next? I sense I would be gone soon after the little exchange between Jeff Burchell and Van Vliet. Why? Don told me later that I was always the guy who “fought back” and stood up for myself. I guess that was inconvenient for him.
One morning, he got out his horn, sat in front of us, and asked us to “play a strawberry.” I was fed-up with all these childish whims. I wanted to go get drunk, have sex, and scream at the sky in the middle of nowhere. No more drudgery and being broke and trapped in this damned house. I made a half-hearted attempt to “play a strawberry,” but apparently, I hit the wrong drum. With Victor and Jeff observing, Don stopped, glared at me, walked behind me, grabbed me by the collar and belt, and thrust me at the stairway. I fell in a heap on the first landing. “TAKE A WALK, MAN!” I left all my worldly possessions behind and took a walk, glad to be rid of that cult-like environment. I sat upon a hill, in tall grass, and watched as Don’s red Volvo drove around the neighborhood – apparently looking for me. I wound up in Wyoming for the Summer, branding cattle and mowing hay. Anyway, that’s MY Easter story, and I’m sticking to it."
John French (Facebook)
United-Mutations :: John Drumbo French discography
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