Prog Digest – An Xperience Column

Prog Digest – An Xperience Column – by Klyde Kadiddlehumper.

How can there be any sin in sincere?

Where is the good in goodbye?

If you’re a fan of musicals, you know this line.  If not, it’s in “The Music Man” performed by the Buffalo Bills.  Not the guys who didn’t make it to the Super Bowl, the Barbershop Quartet. Klyde’s actually been in a few of those and performed to some acclaim (mostly for the schtick, not the music) and does love them dearly.

But that’s not why I bring it up – there’s a whole other thing going on here.

This little ditty popped to the fore of the Kadiddlehumper mind while musing about interesting and odd, even groundbreaking, musical instruments.  A topic seldom thought about, I imagine, but an interesting one nonetheless

In 1986, the final Frank Zappa studio album, “Jazz from Hell,” was released.

It is still a treasured part of Klyde’s collection and a masterpiece.

Always ahead of some game or another, it was completely composed and produced (well, almost – the exception was “St. Etienne”) on the Synclavier Digital Music System.  Certainly not the first synth – Bob Moog had introduced some around about 1964.  The Synclavier was the high-end real deal with its own 16-bit computer.  At up to half a million dollars – well, it took commitment.

Add to it some MIDI interfaces and programming for the complex rhythms, and – there you have it – “Jazz from Hell.”

That’s not where it stops, not by any means.  There are some unique and custom instruments you will see from time to time.

Take the Chapman Stick.  A 10 or 12-string polyphonic tapping instrument – it’s most famously played by Tony Levin.  You hear it on King Crimson music.  You hear it on Peter Gabriel music (hey, have I mentioned yet that there is new Peter Gabriel music coming – individual songs being released with the new “o/i” album by end of year?). When he first got one, Levin had to ask inventor Emmett Chapman how to play and string the damned thing.  Amazing stuff.

Pat Metheny has a 42-string Linda Manzer four-neck Pikasso.  To hear that is wonderful. (Hey, did I mention he’s coming to the area again in September? Although CC and I may head to the Beacon, ‘cause we like NYC.)

All this kinda makes that 2-neck bass/guitar look normal – Fender or Gibson for you?

Kazoos – funny sounding, but not that funny.  Unless you mean The Great Gazoo – one of cartoons’ great characters.

Then, in a category all his own – P. D. Q. Bach.  Professor Pete found some amazing and seriously overlooked music and musical instruments.

There was the “Toot Suite for Calliope Four Hands (S. 212°)”.

The “Concerto for Horn and Hardart S. 27” – I think that was the luncheon special …

“The Short-Tempered Clavier, Preludes and Fugues in All the Major and Minor Keys Except for the Really Hard Ones, S. easy as 3.14159265”

“Royal Firewater Musick, for bottles and orchestra, S. ⅕”

“The Only Piece Ever Written for Violin and Tuba, S. 9, 10, Big Fat Hen”

“Eine Kleine Kiddiemusik for Three Toyists and Orchestra, S. One-Potato-Two-Potato-Three-Potato-Four”

“Gross Concerto No. 1 for divers flutes, two trumpets, and strings, S. −2” – featuring the ever-popular left-handed sewer flute.

You are now saying to yourself, “Oh, come on, Klyde, these cannot be real.”

How wrong you are.  These and other wonderful finds are part of the Schickele catalog of lost works of the least known Bach son, P.D.Q.  Hence, those catalog references S. whatever it might be.

Professor Pete always had a closing statement on his long-running radio program.  A statement so monumentally simple and straightforward that it fit its author brilliantly.

Duke Ellington is quoted as coining the phrase “If it sounds good, it is good.”  To which Leonard Bernstein simply said, “Amen.”

Until next time.

Klyde

 

 

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