Behind his spectacles, thick beard, Saints cap and Bonnaroo t-shirt with the sleeves cut out, 49-year-old Ray Bong doesn’t look like much of an electronic music wizard. But as the founding and torch-bearing member of ’80s-born abstract music collective the Bongoloids, Bong has, in his words, “earned [his] psychedelic guru patch.”
I met Bong outside of this past Jaz(zzz)zfest where he and a six-pack were holding court on his current favorite subject, the Bonnaroo festival. With a David Lee Roth like intensity Bong spit nearly-simultaneous dissertations on Bonnaroo’s utopianism, “the psychedelic pipeline,” the way “all rivers flow from Brian Eno,” industrial noise band Throbbing Gristle and the $40 Melissa Etheridge concert last week at H.O.B. that “kicked fucking ass!” Bong sort of loves everything, as gurus (and true music lovers) are wont to do.
Not far into our first conversation, Bong began offering surprising facts about himself like “Yeah in my little Command Center at home I’ve got five or six Coron ds8 Percussion Synths that I use to run loops, then I play the Superstar 1000 toy guitar through effects and I just jam man…” Since that day I’ve rarely heard Ray Bong stop talking, as gurus are wont to do.
Bong considers the Superstar 1000 “anyone can play!” model guitar his signature. Live, Bong sets up an overdriven beat on one of his two big-but-crappy Wal-Mart keyboards then writhes sweating buckets squeezing screams from the red Superstar—same with the Coron, a tiny metal box with small knobs that Bong ferociously taps and twists, creating fat analog basslines, blips and blurps. A lot of this equipment I’ve neither seen nor heard of; from his home in the swamps of Lafitte, Bong scours eBay for toy guitars and electronic drums, anything that “anyone can play!” His “Command Center” also consists of an Arp AXXE analog keyboard, a Roland Rhythm Composer drum-machine, and a tri-wave generator that spits out more colorful dots and squiggles—all this to accommodate what Bong calls “the creative outburst.”
Like any guru, Bong has themes he comes back to, such as the Creative Outburst: “In the Bongoloids we have a saying,” Bong quotes his cult-of-(currently)-one: “that’s ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ meaning that our art is a natural bi-product of our lives; we’re continually consuming, being fed, so we continually excrete. That’s the creative outburst–to which you can’t help but pay attention to.”
While Bong’s improvisational performances are always wildly simian, the sound of his multi-layered outbursts range from abrasive to haunting, frantic to sleepy, Miami bass to creepy Krautrock—as heard on the Bongoloids one proper album, 1982’s The Awful Art of the Bongoloids. Awful Art… is a must-have for fans of Mr. Quintron’s earlier more experimental records. Author Andrei Codrescu’s Exquisite Corpse magazine once described the album as “Zulu clashing with Space Invaders… Awfully ahead of its time.” But Bong himself describes Bongoloids music as “The sound of nitrous oxide”–a fully operating silver nitrous canister being another ubiquitous accessory of Bong’s Command Center, especially at the live show. “I’m personally a member of the 1000 Hit Club,” Bong brags of his LSD intake. “But if you hear the phrase Acid Rock you probably won’t know what that means if you’ve never taken acid—those records recreate the LSD experience. I’m trying to replicate the feeling of being on nitrous oxide,” he smiles, huffing another blast and attacking the Command Center.
THE OTHER PLANETS
I’m on the side of the fence where we all believe Frank Zappa could have done without vocals entirely. Still, I’ve been digging prog band the Other Planets. The live CD given to me by the Planets’ founder/percussionist Anthony Cuccia (Iguanas/Otra/Glyn Styler’s Clergy/James Singleton Trio), finds the band warming up with songs by obvious influences Zappa and Beefheart, before none-too-soon easing into complex but engaging original compositions showcasing Matt McClimon’s (QMR/Red Shift) gorgeous vibraphone playing in tandem with the tuba and trombone of Jeff Albert (Kosmic Krewe/Bonerama). Dr. Jimbo Walsh’s (Kosmic Krewe, Improvisational Arts Council) guitar is a little too babbly too often—more loud distraction than embellishment—but with their solid tasteful rhythm section (Quin Kirchner: drums, Josef Butts: bass), psychedelic digital video presentation and Cuccia’s textured sampler work, the Other Planets should delight fans of old-school prog-rock as well as new-wave sound-sculptors like Tortoise. The Planets align both Oct 17 and 26 at the Dragon’s Den.
EGG YOLK JUBILEE IS BACK!!!
After a couple years’ non-activity New Orleans’ sarcastic Dixieland brass whatever-the-hell-they-are, Egg Yolk Jubilee are indeed back with only a new rhythm section to show for their absence. That’s about all there is to that news; I just wanted to be the first to announce it. Search the weekly listings for their October show dates—here’s to hoping they play Michaelopolous’ annual Halloween party…
GO TO…
Somehow House of Blues manages to suck all the weight out of King Buzzo’s guitar, so it’s nice to see kings-of-metal the Melvins trying out One Eyed Jack’s on the 3rd—whereas churning indy stalwarts Blonde Redhead and the Liars (creepy noise-pop that owes a ton to early Sonic Youth) are jumping ship together to sing and dance for the Man at H.O.B. October 8. Then on the 14th one of the most eclectic, original electronic artists of our time Mouse on Mars will do something you totally didn’t expect (laptops? Dual bass guitars? Glitch? Rock?) at TwiRoPa.
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