Ladies, gentlemen and snails: It is my pleasure to announce the grand opening — and closing — tonight and tonight only at the Fountain Room, of the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.
Drawing inspiration from the obscure theories and Dadaist activities of a New York-based co-op of Futurists of the same name, the reincarnated Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is curated by five Bay-area-based musicians: guitarist/vocalist Nils Frykdahl, bassist and instrument maker Dan Rathbun, violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, percussionist Moe! Staiano and drummer Frank Grau. The group’s mythology — some fact, some fabrication — is as richly complex as its artful yet appealing music. Their sound is equal parts punk, prog rock and opera, one moment headsplittingly loud, the next, a gentle lullaby.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum presents visitors with “a highly orchestrated yet visceral set of musical exhibits” that defy further description. Wearing Victorian undergarments and scary makeup, and coaxing epic sets from an array of homemade instruments, the frightening and beautiful musical machinations of the museum’s curators must be seen to be believed. Below, four of the five offer a brief look at the inner workings of the museum.
NUVO: The concept of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum as a band is situated within a complex history, some of which seems to be made up, some of which seems to be drawn from actual historical events and artistic movements.
NILS FRYKDAHL: It’s a continuation of a long-standing interest we’ve had in an early 20th century American movement that didn’t receive a whole lot of attention. We initially got interested in John Kane — the character some of whose writings appear in [the album] — some years ago, but didn’t really know about the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum folks until a little later. And so we thought we’d use a very text-heavy album package to touch on some of that information.
NUVO: So how does what you’re doing now refer to or elaborate on the ideas of this movement?
FRYKDAHL: We’ve taken it as an inspiration for a tone, a tone of seriousness that undermines itself. It’s mostly an aesthetic inspiration to us, rather than a political message. What we’re doing is much more specific to the genre of being a band — a traveling band, a performing band. What they did was much harder to situate in any artform. They deliberately defied categorization, calling something an exhibit which turned out to be a building on fire.
NUVO: In learning about what SGM had done, were you inspired to write a particular kind of music? How did you come across information about them?
FRYKDAHL: We had actually come across some material on [mathematician/artist] John Kane, and had been trying to find some material about him. He worked with the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, they exhibited his artwork and published his writings. He was kind of an eccentric, and a difficult character, and didn’t always have a place to live, or matching socks.
NUVO: It seems as though the original museum functioned very much as a collective, and had that sort of early 20th century collectivist spirit. Is that something that your band tries to aspire to?
FRYKDAHL: To a certain extent, every band has to function that way, but because we’re doing everything ourselves, in terms of our organization, we have to function as a collective. Being a touring band inevitably puts you into a situation where you’re dependent on the kindness of strangers — you find community every day in a different town, and it’s wonderful.
NUVO: Speaking of doing things yourselves, I understand that many of the instruments you play are actually ones you’ve invented and built. Can you describe some of those instruments and what they’re made from?
MOE! STAIANO: Dan [Rathbun], our bass player, creates most of the instruments. He knows a lot about electronics and even sews, too. A lot of the instruments go back to when he was in [legendary cabaret art-rock troupe] Idiot Flesh, and making a lot of the instruments in that band.
There’s an instrument called the percussion guitar — it’s kind of like a slide guitar that you actually drum on with drumsticks, rather than strumming it and using a slide thing, you use drumsticks and play it that way.
There’s this thing that he calls “the log” which is a big piece of wood with piano strings on it, with a moveable pickup, which grabs different tones when you hit the strings. When you move the pickup, you get these different harmonics on it.
And then there’s all this other weird stuff that you can’t imagine until you hear it and see it. I created an instrument that was formerly a guitar, which I cut up with a band saw until it was like a smaller guitar. I hammered some springs and nails on it, and you can actually pluck or bow the strings on it to create different sounds. It’s called the “spring nail guitar.” We’re always looking for ideas for creating new instruments — it’s always fun finding new ways to play new instruments.
NUVO: Moe, you’ve been called an “industrial waste percussionist.” What does that mean?
STAIANO: It’s basically drumming on found objects, different things you find around the house. Things you find in construction sites.
FRYKDAHL: At your job!
STAIANO: At my job. A lot of this stuff was stolen from Pizza Hut when I worked there. It was kind of nice to be able to take out the garbage and find some stuff along with it that would end up in my car, and in our next performance.
NUVO: When you put together songs, does the fact that you’re playing instruments you’ve invented change the way that you compose music? Do you feel like the instruments themselves are a work of art?
FRYKDAHL: Yes. One of the initial concepts that brought this band together was that it would, to an extent, rely on trying to come up with sound and texture-based music — rock music is always texture-based music. We wanted to really focus on that aspect of it.
[violinist and vocalist Carla Kihlstedt arrives]
FRYKDAHL: [Carla] is one of the best musicians I’ve ever worked with. She plays violin and sings and plays the toy piano and the autoharp. Carla has a new song and a new instrument — often a new instrument will then produce a new song. Describe the bulbul will you, Carla?
CARLA KIHLSTEDT: The bulbul is a Pakistani instrument about equal parts guitar and typewriter and cigar box. I think it’s one of those new hybrid instruments that was born out of the detritus of Western civilization, the waste products of traditional instruments.
NUVO: Carla, I understand that you’re also a classical musician. Does that change your approach to making this kind of music, which has a decidedly different sound and style?
KIHLSTEDT: It’s hard for me to say, because I’ve always played classical music. I’m sure that it informs what I do — I played classical music from the time that I was 5, on. Anything that you do for your lifetime becomes a lens that you look through. I don’t really know what it looks like because I’m always looking through it. But if I compare what I bring to the rock music genre, it definitely has a stamp that obviously has some reference to classical music.
I owe a certain affinity for detail to working on classical music. Rock is more of a broad brush medium — big strokes and big gestures, but I really enjoy working on little teeny details.
STAIANO: As a collective of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, all the members have different projects with other types of backgrounds. I do a form of 20th century classical avant-garde compositions with large orchestras. Nils, Dan and Carla have projects like Charming Hostess with Eastern European folk stuff, and Frank does his band Species Being which is this prog rock stuff. And then we all come together as one whole, meshed together as what this project is.
KIHLSTEDT: More and more people have a background in lots of different kinds of music. I think those labels are getting more permeable and less meaningful in a way.
NUVO: When you get together to write songs, how does that process work?
KIHLSTEDT: Very slowly.
FRYKDAHL: It’s a very slow process where usually somebody has a particular idea that might be less than a song, some lyrics and a melody, and then we all hammer away at it for years. “Ambugaton” and “The Stain” are two songs [that were] both compositions where everybody’s part was written by one of the people, on paper. And we’ll read through it and try to bring life to it, like classical musicians.
KIHLSTEDT: More often, though, it’s a more messy collaboration.
FRYKDAHL: I used to do a lot more through composition, and I pulled away from it because I wanted to emphasize texture and noise and idiomatic playing, where what Carla does on the violin or Moe! does on his instruments, I as a writer couldn’t think of. Why I’m working with this group and not some other group is that everyone is really into their sound, and getting the most unusual sounds out of their instruments.
KIHLSTEDT: I think we all try to find the extremes.
NUVO: Reviews of your performances often describe SGM using words like “illogical,” “extreme,” “anarchy” and “Armageddon,” but to me your songs seem very elegant and precisely played. How would you describe what it is that you do onstage? Is it supposed to be frightening and chaotic?
FRYKDAHL: It’s supposed to be beautiful music for children. But there’s an element of fear, which can make beauty more delightful.
STAIANO: Elements of confusion —
FRYKDAHL: Which can make delight more of a relief.
STAIANO: And elements of danger —
KIHLSTEDT: Which can come from Moe!
FRYKDAHL: Which all goes into making a good night out for the kids. I don’t want to make avant-garde music for its own sake — deliberately exclusionary or elitist or confrontational. I want the kids to go home humming.
STAIANO: For older folks, someone said it was like the best orgasm they’d ever had.
FRYKDAHL: We provide orgasms for the ears.
KIHLSTEDT: Music is a really safe and fun place to explore all sorts of emotional extremes, both for me as a performer, and for audience members. Music is a medium where you do actually feel after the song that you’ve gone on some sort of little journey. It’s a place where people can explore the extremes of emotions that are maybe more dangerous in other mediums.
Visit the museum online at www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com.
A recording of the exhibits is available through the group’s label Chaosophy Records, at www.chaosophyrecords.com. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum will be performing at The Fountain Room, 1105 E. Prospect St., on Wednesday, Aug. 29 at 7:14 p.m. Tickets at the door are $5.
swood@nuvo.net
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