Henry Kaiser : Weekly Solo #40 : Crazy Backwards Alphabet

 Somebody [ Chris Oliver]  posted this clip (in 2021) on John French’s Facebook page  John French - The Drumbo Club

 

Chris Oliver 

Henry Kaiser : Weekly Solo #40 : Crazy Backwards Alphabet

CRAZY BACKWARDS ALPHABET was an active band in 1986-1988. There were several different incarnations of the ensemble. The performing members included: BOB ADAMS was in the NAME band with Henry. He is Henry’s favorite composer of guitar parts in this sort of music. JOHN FRENCH is DRUMBO in the Beefheart band and subsequent Magic Bands. He is Henry’s favorite drummer on Earth. HENRY KAISER is the host of this weekly show. MICHAEL MAKSYMENKO was the amazing drummer and bandleader of KRALDJURSANSTALTEN. He resides in Sweden. ANDY WEST, a founding member of the DIXIE DREGGS, is also a long-time collaborator with Henry; the recent FIVE TIMES SURPRISE on Cuneiform being especially notable. A COUPLE OF SURPRISE GUESTS ALSO APPEAR IN TODAY’S SHOW. There were two main CBA albums: https://www.discogs.com/Crazy-Backwar... https://www.discogs.com/Crazy-Backwar... A single: https://www.discogs.com/Crazy-Backwar... And an excellent John French solo album, where 7 of the 14 tracks are basically CBA, and also featuring some Bob Adams - John French co-writing. https://www.discogs.com/John-French-W...

John ‘Drumbo’ French says:

“ This was in the guise of a "Instructional Video" on Bass Playing and was at Andy West's invitation that we were all here at this studio, which was in North Hollywood. 

That first piece was created by Bob Adams and called "Dropped D" -- after the guitar tuning I guess. They were shooting video when we arrived and asked us to set up our stuff in the parking lot ( mostly, my drums) so they could move them in as soon as the Glam Rock guitarist was finished. 

I went in at one point to view what was happening and this guitarist, wearing a LOT of makeup -- was playing a rapid-fire solo to a typical 12/8 slow standard blues progression. The first thing I thought is "this guy is playing in the wrong key." About ten seconds later, the recording engineer stopped them and asked, "What key are you playing in?" -- to the soloist who answered " B!" He then asked the others what key they were playing in, and their answer was "A!" I thought, "This is going to B a while..." I did notice that the drummer was Vinnie Appice. 

We had arrived on schedule at ten in the morning ( actually 9:00) allowing an hour for setup). Our stuff was set up in the parking lot by 10, but we didn't go into the studio until after 6 p.m.! The crew was in a pretty bad mood, obviously, as they had been worked to death. The girl who was in charge ( Director ) was shouting "Quiet on the set!" etc. and it seemed like all of them were quite frazzled. I did manage to express the fact that none of this was our fault, which seemed to lessen the intensity. 

After 8 hours in the parking lot, keeping guard over our equipment, it took a bit for use to un-frazzle ourselves as well. I remember taking lunch in "watches" at the local Denny's so we could watch the stuff. It was a warm day, so that was good, but almost too warm. Anyway, people came out to help us move our stuff in ( mostly the drums). Andy also had another group he worked with there. 

I think their music was based upon some kind of Buddhist meditation practice. It seemed like they played first, and it was more electronic ( MIDI background tracks) played to by a keyboardist and bass. There may have been a guitarist also? I just remember they had a ton of gear, and there were a LOT of cables. So, we waited as they did their part. It was quite the endurance run. Because CBA had all practiced our parts separately to recordings, we were familiar with the music, and instinct sort of took over. 

This was back when I was playing jazz and standards a lot, and I practiced every day, so I was probably in really good shape with peak energy."

The Drumbo Club

I am truly not sure what I make of this and the noodle soup at the beginning is excrutiating to these ears but as it’s John (French) I gave it the benefit and listened on besides he comments and he is always fascinating . . . . . if music be the food of love play on .. . .etc etc

Jaco Pastorius (From John French at the Drumbo Club - Facebook) | Remember the Past

We had been reflecting on Jaco Pastorius’ story before and this account is a harrowing read but John French thought it worth posting and re-visiting . . . and so do I

The bouncer didn't recognise the homeless man at the door. He had no idea he was about to kill one of the greatest musicians who ever lived. 

September 12, 1987. 2 AM. A drunk man kicked at the glass door of the Midnight Bottle Club in South Florida.

Tangled hair. Filthy clothes. Demanding entry to a members-only establishment.

The club manager, Luc Havan, stepped outside. At 25, he was a martial arts expert with years of training. The homeless man before him weighed maybe 140 pounds.

What happened in the next few minutes would silence a sound the world had never heard before.

But the man kicking that door wasn't just anyone.

His name was Jaco Pastorius. And ten years earlier, he had changed music forever.

Fort Lauderdale, 1951. Young Jaco grew up with salt air and jazz rhythms. His father was a traveling drummer. His mother was Finnish. Music was the family language.

Jaco started on drums, following his dad's path. Then at 13, a football injury crushed his wrist. Surgery saved his hand but ended his drumming dreams.

He picked up the bass guitar instead. 

What looked like an ending became the most important beginning of his life.

By his late teens, Jaco was consumed by jazz. Then around 1970, he did something that would echo through music history.

He took a screwdriver and removed every fret from his Fender Jazz Bass.

Those metal strips that mark each note? Gone. The smooth fingerboard allowed him to slide between notes like a vocalist. To create vibrato that made the bass weep. To produce sounds no one had imagined possible. He called it his Bass of Doom.

The Florida scene embraced him. He absorbed R&B, funk, soul, Caribbean rhythms. He married Tracy in 1970. They had two children. By 23, he was teaching at the University of Miami.

But he wasn't meant to teach. He was meant to set the world on fire.

In 1974, destiny arrived in the form of Bobby Colomby from Blood, Sweat & Tears. He met Tracy on a beach. She mentioned her husband was the greatest bass player alive.

Colomby was skeptical. But he was also scouting talent. Curiosity won. He went to see Jaco play. 

One song changed everything.

Colomby offered him a record deal immediately.

The 1976 self-titled album exploded onto the scene. Jazz and funk collided with bass playing that defied physics. "Portrait of Tracy" featured Jaco playing completely alone, creating harmonics that sounded like three instruments at once.

Two Grammy nominations followed.

 

That same year, Jaco walked up to Joe Zawinul from the legendary fusion band Weather Report and said:

"I'm the greatest bass player in the world."

Zawinul laughed him off.

But Jaco was relentless. He sent demos. He wrote letters. Finally, Zawinul listened.

His world tilted. 

Jaco joined Weather Report in 1976. What followed was revolutionary.

The 1977 album "Heavy Weather" became a landmark in jazz fusion. The opening track "Birdland" showcased Jaco's bass singing melodic lines that sounded extraterrestrial. Over a million copies sold.

Before Jaco, bass players were the foundation. They kept rhythm. They stayed in the background.

Jaco made the bass a lead instrument. 

He played solos in registers that sounded like guitar. He used harmonics to extend the instrument's range impossibly high. He played chords. He transformed four strings into an entire orchestra.

On stage, he was pure electricity. Barefoot and shirtless like a beach kid, leaping across stages, spreading powder on the floor so he could dance. Audiences didn't just hear Jaco. They felt him in their bones.

He collaborated with Joni Mitchell, giving her songs a floating dreaminess no one else could create. He played with Pat Metheny. He formed the "Trio of Doom" with guitar legend John McLaughlin.

In 1979, he remarried. Twin boys arrived in 1982.

Everything was perfect.

Until the shadows arrived. 

The warning signs had always been there. Jaco's boundless energy. His fearless confidence. Everyone thought it was artistic temperament.

It was bipolar disorder.

The manic phases—those explosions of creativity and energy—had fueled his genius. But the cycles were accelerating out of control.

Drugs and alcohol amplified everything. Fans offered the world's greatest bass player free drinks, free cocaine. He accepted it all.

In 1982, during a Japan tour, his behavior terrified his bandmates. He shaved his head. Painted his face. Threw one of his precious bass guitars into Hiroshima Bay.

His wife had him hospitalized when he returned.

The diagnosis: bipolar disorder with rapid cycling. Manic episodes crashing into depression, faster and faster, like waves destroying a shore.

Doctors prescribed lithium. He hated how it dulled his mind and creativity.

He stopped taking it. 

The descent was swift and merciless.

By the mid-1980s, the man who had filled stadiums was sleeping in New York parks. He crashed with friends until they couldn't endure it anymore. He burned every bridge. Pushed away everyone who tried to help.

His modified bass guitars—his Bass of Doom instruments—were stolen while he slept in Washington Square Park. Never recovered.

In 1986, Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ward held him for eight weeks. The diagnosis was confirmed: severe bipolar disorder, worsening.

He briefly tried to stabilize. Returned to Fort Lauderdale near family. For a moment, there were glimpses of the old Jaco. Drinking tea instead of alcohol. Speaking calmly.

It didn't last. 

September 11, 1987. Jaco jumped onto the stage during a Santana concert in Sunrise, Florida. Security removed him. They didn't recognize one of music's greatest innovators.

Hours later, drunk and spiraling, he arrived at the Midnight Bottle Club. The staff refused him entry.

He started kicking the door.

Luc Havan came outside.

What happened next would be disputed in court. Havan claimed he pushed Jaco once. That he fell and hit his head.

The medical evidence told a darker story.

Multiple facial fractures. A ruptured eye. Teeth driven through lips. The imprint of Havan's ring embedded in his face. Massive internal bleeding.

Doctors said those injuries required repeated trauma. Multiple blows from someone trained to fight. 

When police arrived, a woman knelt beside Jaco's body, wiping blood from his mouth so he wouldn't drown in it. His long hair spread around his head like a halo, soaked red.

She looked up at the officers: "Jaco's hurt."

He was rushed to Broward General Medical Center and fell into a coma. For days, hope flickered. Then a brain hemorrhage caused brain death.

On September 21, 1987, his family faced an impossible choice. They removed life support.

His heart beat for three more hours. Tracy, his first wife and mother of his oldest children, held his hand as he died.

Jaco Pastorius was 35 years old. 

Luc Havan pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He received twenty-two months and served a fraction of that time.

Jaco was buried at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Cemetery in North Lauderdale. His funeral was held at the same church where he'd served as an altar boy. 

Today, his legacy lives in every bass player who refuses to accept limits. His children all became musicians. Instruments and parks bear his name.

But the man himself—the beach kid from Fort Lauderdale who revolutionized music, who played with joy that made audiences cry, who introduced himself as the greatest bass player in the world and then proved it—was destroyed by an illness he couldn't accept and a society that failed to save him. 

His modified bass guitars were never all recovered. But the sound he created echoes through every note that followed.

The greatest among us sometimes burn with impossible brightness.

And sometimes they burn out while the world watches, unable to stop the flames.

 

The Drumbo Club

Remember the Past 

  

Is it all about the BASS?! | Guitar and bass prog metal duet! La Vaca Mariposa

 We have previously explored bass players (new gals esp) and featured guitarists who excels with shred techniques and you will know I am not such a fan of virtuosity for virtuosity's sake but heck these guys are having fun too!

Guitar and bass prog metal duet! La Vaca Mariposa

this from the Drumbo Club on Flickennabokk

(trans: John French on Facebook)

John seems to have found this at someone we have featured before the most excellent

Felix Martin

 and FM Guitars

Captain Beefheart - BAT CHAIN PULLER France 1980

From The Drumbo Club:

Captain Beefheart from the French Chorus TV show 1980. BAT CHAIN PULLER

Captain

Rock Encyclopaedia is with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band in Lancaster, CA, United States

Today I’m not introducing a band — I’m introducing a man. A complex man, considered strange by some, an eccentric musician, an extravagant artist, an incomprehensible painter, a tyrant, a passionate and soulless man, a friend.

Don Van Vliet, the painter, or Captain Beefheart, the musician, spent his adolescence with Frank Zappa in Lancaster, California. The two would spend countless hours listening to rare blues and jazz records, while Beefheart tried to imitate the singing style of **Howlin’ Wolf**, thus developing his unique voice. Zappa had an obsession with musical composition and unconventional structures, which in turn influenced Beefheart in later years. Both were fascinated by surrealist visual art, experimental cinema, and avant-garde literature. Yet, despite their shared passions, each began his career separately — Zappa as the leader of *The Mothers of Invention*, promoting avant-garde rock with satirical and jazz influences, while Captain Beefheart formed The Magic Band, exploring a strange, experimental form of blues-rock.

In 1969, Zappa helped Beefheart secure a contract for the album “Trout Mask Replica”, which he produced through his own label, Straight Records. The recording of this album has a story just as fascinating as its music. Captain Beefheart moved his band into a rented house in Woodland Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. There, the members of The Magic Band lived in complete isolation for eight months, without income or contact with the outside world. The house was barely furnished, and they often had no money for food. Beefheart imposed a severe regime of daily rehearsals lasting 14 to 16 hours, forcing the musicians to learn extremely complex pieces written in a totally unconventional style. He didn’t provide written notes — instead, he played passages on the piano or hummed them and demanded exact reproduction. He imposed odd rhythms, abrupt tempo changes, and highly dissonant melodies. If a member made mistakes or failed to learn a passage, Beefheart insulted or even punished him by withholding food. He verbally humiliated them, saying they were “not good enough” or that they needed to “eliminate conventional thinking.” He changed their names, and every band member had to adopt a new identity (Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Drumbo), as a way to erase their former selves. Guitarist Jeff Cotton (Antennae Jimmy Semens) was beaten several times by other band members under Beefheart’s orders. On one occasion, Cotton ended up in the hospital, yet he did not immediately leave the band.

When Zappa, who was the producer, came to record the album, he found a band exhausted and disoriented. He produced the record but did not interfere creatively, allowing Beefheart to fully realize his vision. After the album’s completion, the musicians were so drained that many decided to leave. Beefheart never paid them for their work, and some struggled for years to recover psychologically.

“Trout Mask Replica” is considered one of the most experimental and influential albums in music history. Guitarist Bill Harkleroad (Zoot Horn Rollo) later wrote a book about the traumatic experiences of that period.

Although Zappa and Beefheart were close friends and collaborators, their relationship eventually deteriorated due to Beefheart’s strong ego — he believed Zappa was trying to control him artistically — as well as financial disputes (Beefheart thought Zappa profited from him without offering enough support) and stylistic differences: Zappa’s approach was ironic and calculated, while Beefheart’s was instinctive and chaotic. In the 1970s, Beefheart often criticized Zappa in interviews, calling him too controlled and lacking authenticity. Despite these tensions, the two reconciled in the late 1970s. Zappa invited Beefheart to collaborate on the album “Bongo Fury” (1975), where Beefheart contributed vocals and harmonica. That tour marked their final live collaboration.

Don Van Vliet — Captain Beefheart— was an eccentric artist in both music and life. After a tumultuous career in the music industry, he officially retired in 1982, leaving music entirely to dedicate himself to abstract painting. This was not merely a career change, but a deliberate choice — born from disillusionment with the music industry and his desire for complete creative control.

In painting, Van Vliet developed a distinctive style that reflected the same raw, abstract, and visceral energy as his music. He used vibrant colors, disjointed forms, and aggressive brushstrokes, much like his experimental approach to sound on Trout Mask Replica. Many of his paintings evoke a surreal bestiary, populated by strange creatures and dreamlike landscapes. He once said in an interview that he “doesn’t paint reality, but the spirit of it.” Initially met with skepticism, his work was soon appreciated by the art world and exhibited in prestigious galleries around the globe. Art critics noted that his paintings possessed the same intensity and freedom as his music, and some even compared him to major figures of abstract expressionism. By the 1990s, collectors began paying significant sums for his works, which became highly sought after in the contemporary art market.

In his later years, Don Van Vliet suffered from multiple sclerosis, which forced him to withdraw completely from artistic activity. He died on December 17, 2010, at the age of 69.

Now, let’s return to the music. Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band was one of the most original and influential groups in the history of experimental rock, with a profound impact on progressive rock, avant-garde, blues-rock, and art rock. The band formed in the early 1960s in Lancaster, California. The main lineup included Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) – vocals, saxophone, harmonica, Alex St. Clair Snouffer – guitar (the first lead guitarist), Ry Cooder – guitar (on the debut album, but left shortly after), Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) – guitar, Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) – bass, Drumbo (John French) – drums, percussion, The Mascara Snake (Victor Hayden) – bass clarinet and Antennae Jimmy Semens (Jeff Cotton) – guitar, backing vocals. The lineup changed many times, but John French, Bill Harkleroad and Mark Boston were among Beefheart’s most important collaborators.

Their music defied classification — irregular rhythmic structures, polytonality, Beefheart’s deep and theatrical voice shifting from growl to falsetto, and a mix of blues, jazz, rock, and avant-garde influences. The lyrics were surreal riddles, filled with bizarre imagery. Their best albums include Safe as Milk (1967) – the debut album, with strong blues and psychedelic rock influences (“Electricity”, “Zig Zag Wanderer”), Trout Mask Replica (1969) – the band’s absolute masterpiece and one of the most innovative albums in rock history (“Moonlight on Vermont”, “Frownland”, “Ella Guru”, “Pachuco Cadaver”) or Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978) – Beefheart’s triumphant comeback after a period of decline, featuring “Tropical Hot Dog Night” and “Bat Chain Puller.” Other albums are Strictly Personal (1968), Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970), Mirror Man (1971), The Spotlight Kid (1972), Clear Spot (1972), Unconditionally Guaranteed (1974), Bluejeans & Moonbeams (1974), Doc at the Radar Station (1980), and Ice Cream for Crow (1982).

Today we’re listening to “Bat Chain Puller.”

#rockencyclopaedia #rockencyclopedia #progressiverock #captainbeefheart #themagicband

FEEL LIKE I’VE GOT A FLOPPY BOOT STOMP COMING ON!