The E-Z-Organ is a strange and curious musical beast, inspired says its creator by megatherium, the giant (elephant-sized) ground sloth, extinct since the Ice Age. The creator, a Ninth Ward gentleman in tails and ruffled shirt known as Strangebone, wed a Hammond M-3 organ and a 1982 three-wheeler E-Z-Go golf cart, purchased from Gulf Coast Cart & Mower in Gulfport, Mississippi.
“Everything is functional on the E-Z-Organ—mostly,” Strangebone explains. “The entire organ console swings right or left to steer it. It’s attached directly to the front fork of the cart. The speakers have variable speed [like a giant Leslie tone cabinet]. They’re huge speakers—about three feet in diameter. Horns like them are actually used in stadiums but these particular ones came from a carillon, those musical bells that you hear.
“The tone generator motor that turns the speakers is a fan motor from a 1972 Dodge van. It doesn’t stay in pitch too long so one just has to let it take you where it wants to go. I’ve got a big hand crank on a rheostat to change the speed—the speakers can go very slow and gentle or super-fast. When it’s going full speed, it’s frightening.”
The frightening, eerie sound and appearance of the E-Z-Organ, cruising down the somnolent streets of New Orleans is nothing if not provocative. “I received my favorite comment from an individual—I wouldn’t exactly call him a fan,” recalls Strangebone. “He said, ‘If you drive that thing by my house again, I’m going to take a sledge hammer and beat you to death!’ He was serious.”
Disturbing the public is not Strangebone’s explicit intention: “No, it just happens to come out that way. When I play, it’s generally improvisational—my forte is improvisation without any preconceptions of what I’m going to do. It’s what the LP [recorded at Piety Street Recording with engineer Mark Bingham] is. I sat down and I really had no idea what I was going to do. We rolled the tape and I just channeled and followed whatever path I found myself on. To me, that’s the only way I can get near pure expression. The way that the organ motor’s working is that it doesn’t stay in steady pitch so it’s an extra challenge to play.”
The deluxe album, pressed on audiophile-grade vinyl, comes with a fantastic quote from Sir Arthur Sullivan, who after hearing an early sound recording device in 1888, declared that he was “astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening’s experiments—astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.” The liner notes are by Strangebone himself: “Not only does [Strangebone’s] organ make sounds found nowhere else, it also moves down the street under its own power at a knuckle-whitening 12 miles per hour. AND does ‘donuts’ on the girls’ P.E. field during Friday night dances, with some of the lovelier young ladies becoming so captivated as to be spoiled for any other organ!” (Strangebone’s organ heroes are, in no particular order, fellow Ninth Ward-ite Quintron, George Wright, J.S. Bach and John Holmes).
Besides accompanying the Ninth Ward Marching Band in Carnival parades, performing solo in the procession of the “original” Krewe of Orpheus in Mandeville and heading to this year’s South By Southwest conference with MC Trachiotomy, the E-Z-Organ has (almost silently) traversed the hallowed dusty Infield of the Fair Grounds during the annual Jazz Festival. “I was actually in Jazz Fest 2001, as a folk art demonstrator,” Strangebone says. “They wouldn’t let me play a note. The woman in charge of the Louisiana Folklife Village was worried that I would intrude upon the Cajun musicians’ turf. She knew that I’d out-dazzle them, actually. No, I’m kidding. I did get away with taping down a chord with masking tape and I set it so that it was whisper-quiet. You could hear the organ if you were standing about three feet away from it.
“I drove the E-Z-Organ from my house in the Bywater to the Fair Grounds. Boy, the ride home, after dark, through the ’hood, through the Seventh Ward, was great! People were trippin’! I played the whole way home. I drove the wrong way down one-way streets and the cops just smiled.”
THE TRUTH
Yet another celebrated and elegant New Orleans organist, Albinas Prizgintas, presents the annual Bach Around the Clock celebration, 28 consecutive hours of musical performances, at Trinity Episcopal Church on Friday, March 19, commencing at 8 p.m. and free and open to anyone.
“It’s all Bach,” Prizgintas philosophizes. “Bach is in everything. When the world is coming to an end, as it is, this may well be the final Bach Around the Clock, a ludic foray into the unconscious.” “Ludic,” according to Prizgintas, is derived from “ludicrous” (no relation to the Atlanta rapper Ludacris). Is he kidding? “The truth is never relevant!” Prizgintas proclaims.
MENTAL CASES
Once upon a time, citizens amused themselves by visiting insane asylums. Now, in the safety of your own crib, you can experience the same, slightly sordid sensation by viewing the newly-released-on-DVD edition of The Cramps Live at Napa State Mental Hospital, wherein the 1978 version of the band performs in black-and-white for the inmates of a California, well, “nuthouse.” As a work of art, Live is absolutely perfect. The inmates wander around aimlessly. They climb on the stage. They dance, without rhythm or tempo. They scream into the microphone. They glare into space. The cameraman (there’s a single camera) spends plenty of time shooting close-ups of the floor and the bass drum’s cracked head. Usually surly guitarist Bryan Gregory is on the perpetual verge of laughter, biting his lip. Vocalist Lux Interior flails about like a retard—sorry, “mental patient.” Let’s face it, boys and girls—this film pretty much sums it up: musicians are just as “crazy” as the so-called lunatics.
ADDITIONS AND DELETIONS
Change is inevitable, as is the recurring theme of OffBeat contributors fleeing for the pages of Gambit Weekly. Joining that select company of ex-staff members (including Gambit Editor Michael Tisserand, art columnist D. Eric Bookhardt, former music columnist Scott Jordan and my lovely protégé Cristina Diettinger) will be Alex “St. Rock” Rawls, recently betrothed. Working for Gambit will free Professor Rawls from the unenviable task of teaching the rudiments of English to college students who are lucky they graduated from high school.
Replacing Alex on the “modern rock beat” will be Michael Patrick Welch, who also writes novels and performs music as the White Bitch. Another local musician, vocalist/guitarist Michael Hurtt of the Royal Pendletons, will now contribute a column examining the “underground roots” of rock ‘n’ roll. Despite both writers being musicians, they will receive no special treatment when it comes to the proper placement of commas and semi-colons.
