Egg Yolk Jubilee paid the price for their artistic vision: $800. That’s how much it cost the avant garde Dixieland band to license the 10 cover songs on their newly released debut, The Champions of Breakfast. “We were thinking that most of the older stuff would be public domain, but we ended up having to pay for everything,” says trumpet player Eric Belletto. “The next one’s going to have more originals.”
In the hands of Egg Yolk Jubilee, the covers might as well be their own. With more than a touch of irreverence, the band barrels through well-worn classics like “When You’re Smiling,” “Reefer Man,” “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” and “Ain’t She Sweet” (rendered here as “Aunt Cheese Wheat”) like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on acid.
They also take on jazz composer Henry Threadgill’s “Bermuda Blues” and rock composer Ozzy Osbourne’s “Flying High Again” as well a handful of twisted originals.
Guitarist and vocalist Paul Grass started Egg Yolk three years ago with the idea of breathing new life into a few Dixieland favorites. Grass called on Belletto, Glenn Barberot and Michael Joseph — all fellow alumni of the Rummel High School band — to form a makeshift horn section. “We were band geeks at Rummel, brought together by our collective outcastedness,” explains Belletto.
From its Dixieland genesis, the band — which also includes drummer Ron Bocian, guitarist Geoff Douville and bassist Tim Pac — began to branch out with similarly demented takes on contemporary jazz. Miles Davis and Sun Ra covers worked their way into the repertoire, as well as songs by Louis Prima, Louis Jordan and others.
Belletto says fans should expect even more esoteric material from Egg Yolk in the future. “I think we’re kind of moving away from the Dixieland,” he says. “We have some new stuff we’re working on that’s pretty swingy, kind of jump blues, whatever you want to call it. We want to do a Frank Zappa song, but the ones that are really good are maybe a little above us at this point. Maybe we’ll just write a song with that flavor and dedicate it to him.”
Egg Yolk Jubilee celebrates the release of The Champions of Breakfast with a record release party at the Mermaid Lounge on June 5.
Rigid has established a reputation as one of the city’s most durable live acts since getting together in 1993, but the sinuous power trio has been uncharacteristically quiet in the last 12 months. That absence ended last month with the appearance of 9, the long-awaited follow up to the band’s 1996 debut.
9 was produced by New York transplant Danio Lauricella, who offered his services to the band after they aborted their first attempt at recording a follow up. “I was a little skeptical, thinking why would this guy have an interest in us,” Rigid’s Scott Guion says of lauricella, a music business veteran who had worked with artists including Blues Traveler, the Butthole Surfers and Govt. Mule. “But he was impressed that we were real and doing it ourselves. He wanted us to be his mad scientist’s experiment.”
The band spent almost a year at American Sector recording and mixing, but Guion says the results were worth the wait. “We finally got to spend some time in the studio and get the sound that we were hearing in our heads,” he explains. “Our previous experience in the studio was you have two day, you go in, play live and make your recording. This time we got to experiment with sounds, layering and trying some different stuff.”
With the help of Lauricella, Guion, drummer Rick Simmons and bassist Rolando Chicas sound heavier than ever, but the biggest surprise is the record’s airiness and Guion’s newfound sense of melody. “The shouting voice and the tight, grab-you-by-the-throat thing is a little limiting,” Guion says. “Opening up a little bit has definitely been a welcome change for this band. A lot of the songs are more spacious. People will see a bunch of different sides, whereas before they pretty much got the full-out metal assault. Now we’re venturing off in some different areas. It’s all about just trying to do something that we haven’t done before. We don’t feel like we have to beat people over the heads aymore to move them.” 9 is available at local record stores and from the band’s Web site, www.rigid-web.com
Zac Wilson says the Universal Chrome were united in their desire to get out of New Orleans, they just weren’t united in where to get out to. “It took US about a year to decide,” says the guitarist and vocalist, who co-founded the group in 1993. “After debating and fighting and screaming about it, we eventually got to the point where we said you only live once and we might as well dive into this while we’re still young.”
After narrowing down a list of cities that included Boston (too conservative), Chicago (too cold), Richmond, Va. (too rural) and Baltimore (too bleak), the band settled on New York City as the new home of the Universal Chrome.
“There was something there for all of us,” says Wilson. “Most of our influences have come from the East Coast, and it just has an urban feel that we felt like we’d taken more of our sound from-sort of dingy and dirty.”
More than dinginess and dirt, Wilson says it was the logistics of touring — especially touring with an alternative/indie rock band — that prompted the move. “We can cover more cities touring from New York, and the East Coast is where all the major markets are, commercially speaking,” Wilson says. “Not that we’re geared 100 percent toward that, but it is where the majority of the business is concentrated. We want to see if we can make some noise. We may not be able to, but we’re going to give it a shot.
“It’s hard to make it from New Orleans,” he adds. “And when I say make it I don’t mean to become big rock stars. I mean just to tour successfully and sell records consistently. Even if it’s to a small fan base, it seems to take more time here than it does elsewhere.”
The band, which also includes guitarist Ben Curtis, bass player Melissa Giorgio and drummer Keith Hajjar, plans on spending the next couple of months adjusting to life above the Mason-Dixon Line before starting to perform again in August.
They recently finished recording five new songs with producer John Fischbach that Wilson promises will see the light of day before the dawn of the new millenium. “The album will come out in the fall,” swears Wilson, “whether it comes out on a label or whether we have to put it out ourselves.”
In the meantime, fans can make do with a five-song EP, Meet the Universal Chrome, available through the band’s Web site (www.universalchrome.com).
From the land that brought us drum’n’ bass comes a new sensation: drum’n’trumpet. London-based duo Spaceheads blur the boundary between jazz and electronica with an ingenious mix of melodic improvisation and analog effects. Trumpet player Andy Diagram uses.a harmonizer and echo loops to create dreamily psychedelic launch pads for his and drummer Richard Harrison’s sonic excursions. Spaceheads veer even further from the electronica pack in that Diagram creates his trumpet loops live, using no prerecorded tracks or samples.
On the pair’s fourth release, Angel Station (Merge), Spaceheads spin a hypnotic mix of jungle grooves, ambient trips, and organic brass and percussion. Outside of your local discotheque, comparisons to Tortoise or Stereolab’s more arch moments wouldn’t be out of the questions, nor would comparisons to the noisier currents of British post punk.
Diagram and Harrison, in fact, shared the stage in mid-’80s Manchester bands Dislocation Dance and The Honkies. Diagram has also performed with everyone from Nico and James to A Certain Ratio and Pere Ubu behemoth David Thomas. Harrison performs with artists including the Murphy Love Experience, Graham Massey and God Is My Co- Pilot. Spaceheads are at the Mermaid Lounge on June 2 along with local noise rock avatars Cambre & Capello.
You can contact Mark Miester via e-mail at [email protected].
