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Holy cow. I just listened to the whole Chadbourne Bach CD. What the hell man.
It's like a Bach/Free parfait. Kind of like a raw liver cream pie.
Which idea is harder to understand: that E.C. has been practicing the Bach violin music so diligently that he can improvise fluidly on top of it, or that anyone would release this album of half-assed garage attempts to play Bach without somewhere signifying that it's a big joke? The only thing he says in the liner notes about how he completely messed over this music: "The improvising that goes on is, of course, traditional to this music in the era it was created in." The "of course" maybe implies that he's winking a little at us.
Who is supposed to listen to this album? Maybe only me and twenty other people. I mean, anyone into weird music could dig it, but do they really hear into the confused joy and manic meat-cleaver horror show of what he is doing to the music as Bach wrote it? (That's it. It's like listening to the inside of a psychotic violinist.) On the other hand, people into Bach would I imagine generally feel like they are the victims here. I found myself vacillating between wanting to join in the mayhem and wanting to call the police.
Then there's this review: exclaim!, where they say "By the end of the four tracks that make up Sonata #1 you want to cry out, "OK we know you can do it, now just play 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown.'”" How can they say that they know he can do it when they don't even know what it is?
I like how frustrated Chadbourne is in the liner notes. He says, "Mastering classical pieces on the banjo has been part of the show-stopping abilities of a crowd of banjo players, none of whom came out of the old-time or Appalachian tradition of banjo that I have." Also, "One can honestly report that the Jethro Tull version of a 'Bouree' on the group's debut album is just about as good as any of the 'jazz Bach' recordings that have come out, and that's a depressing fact." Dude, ripping on Jethro Tull? That's going a hair too far.
Did you see him play any of this stuff live?
Brian
ps his website is really good.
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