http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-2981-that-devil-music.html
By Ben Corbett
July 15,2010
"It was one of his funny little remarks after we got off the stage,"
says former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, explaining how Jerry
Garcia gave the Grateful Dead's percussion section its name. "It was
like, 'You guys sound like devils. You're rhythm devils.' It was one
of those kinds of moments. And it kinda stuck. People started calling
the drums and space part of the show 'Rhythm Devils.'"
The Rhythm Devils segment of Grateful Dead shows began in the
mid-'70s, when percussionists Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart began
doing extended drum sessions that tied the first set of the
performance to the second set. While some audience members took the
opportunity to get beer, the bulk of the crowd remained glued in
their seats, transfixed at the sheer display of power issuing from the stage.
The whole phenomenon known as "The Rhythm Devils" gelled in the
public mind when Francis Ford Coppola approached the two musicians to
lay down a percussion-based soundtrack for the 1979 film Apocalypse
Now. After experiencing a Grateful Dead performance at the Winterland
ballroom in San Francisco, Coppola was captivated by the primeval and
transcendent qualities of the band's percussion section. The film
based on Joseph Conrad's classic, Heart of Darkness captures a
river journey penetrating the dankest depths of jungle symbolizing
the descent of the narrator into the primordial tangles and recesses
of the unconscious mind.
If all of this sounds Jungian, that's because it is. On the Grateful
Dead stage, the Rhythm Devils reproduced this journey every night
during the "drums/space" segment of the performance, but using
percussion instruments as the transportation vehicle rather than
literary symbolism. Anchoring the film with the Rhythm Devils'
percussion score became the perfect marriage of visuals and sound,
resulting in one of America's most celebrated cinematic masterpieces.
"It was a great honor to be part of that amazing movie," Hart says.
"It was a thrill. Francis thought that music itself was 50 percent of
the emotional payload that you need to get from a film. He was
different from everybody else; he thought that sound was really important.
This moved the experience in the theater up quite a few notches."
Hart explains that Coppola was so concerned about the sound element
that he even went so far as to install new state-of-the-art Meyer
sound systems (the same system used by the Grateful Dead) in theaters
where the movie was opening. For Hart and Kreutzmann, the experience
opened a wealth of new avenues to explore with percussion. The
existing repertory of available instruments proved to be too limiting
for the Rhythm Devils, forcing them to design and build original
percussion instruments just for the film.
"The Beast" one of the Rhythm Devils' most well-known instruments
played religiously during Grateful Dead performances was born
during those sessions, along with a mountain of other instruments.
Even today, from using tangled knots of centuries-old grapevine root
to innovating high-tech sound devices, Hart remains a passionate
instrument builder. And he attributes the tradition to Apocalypse Now.
"When Francis showed me the movie, there were no drums that existed
on this planet that could really coexist with the visual component of
that film, so we had to build them. [Grateful Dead roadie] Ramrod and
I made these big giant steel drums and put 'em up in the air, and
that's what we used for the air strike at the end the last six
minuteswith all those monstrous sounds.
So I learned how to be an instrument builder as well during the
Apocalypse Now sessions."
The outtakes from the film were released in 1983 as The Rhythm Devils
Play River Music, an album that's emblematic of the most
developmentally visionary epoch of the Grateful Dead's long, strange
trip. After Jerry Garcia's 1995 death, the Rhythm Devils disbanded,
with Kreutzmann playing sporadically with different musicians as he
pursued his other passion as a digital artist. Meanwhile, Hart
continued on with his world music ensemble, the Global Drum Project,
when he wasn't working with the Smithsonian Institute preserving
archaic recordings of world music and Americana. Eventually,
Kreutzmann and Hart would reunite in the new millennium to tour on
the Furthur Festival with The Other Ones, and later for The Dead,
which continued into 2009.
Those who caught The Dead on their last tour were treated to a new
twist in the Rhythm Devils performance when Mickey Hart introduced
one of his current projects, "Rhythms of the Universe," which
sonically transported fans to various celestial bodies or what Hart
calls "events" across the cosmos. Working with leading physicists,
computer scientists and NASA, Hart's idea is to transpose light waves
into sound waves, giving listeners a glance at exactly what the
universe sounds like.
"In a way it's like playing with the sound of God," says Hart.
"That's my perception of it all, 'the hand of God' whatever you
want to call it it was the creational force that blew us all into
existence. It's really a lot of fun, to say the least. We started
with the Big Bang and wound up on earth. We went to Saturn, to
Jupiter. We went to Mars. In 23 days we went to 23 different zones."
While Hart continues to refine this project, Kreutzmann has been
staying busy touring and recording with his new band, 7 Walkers,
which boasts among its ranks guitarist Papa Mali,
multiinstrumentalist Matt Hubbard and bassist Reed Mathis. But if you
go to the Rhythm Devils show, don't expect to hear anything from
Kreutzmann's or Hart's many side projects. As Hart says, "It's not
that kind of zone."
What to expect? Back in 2006, the Rhythm Devils toured for the first
time with a full instrumental band that included Phish bassist Mike
Gordon, guitarist Steve Kimmock, vocalist Jen Durkin (Deep Banana
Blackout), and Nigerian percussionist Sikiru Adepoju. A huge success,
that tour featured songs that ran the gamut from percussionbased
strains of classic Dead tracks to a handful of brand new songs
written by Jerry Garcia's longtime songwriting foil, Robert Hunter,
who has also penned a mixed bag of new material for the current tour.
"They're Bob Hunter at his finest," Hart says. "Just impressive
words. He can spin a great story. It's very powerful lyrically, and
it goes really well with our new music."
Joining the Rhythm Devils this time around are guitarist Davy Knowles
from Backdoor Slam and bassist Andy Hess. Meanwhile,
multi-instrumentalist Keller Williams will be fronting the band on
the summer half of the tour, with Tim Bluhm from The Mother Hips
taking up residence for the justannounced fall leg.
"It's new territory for us," Hart says.
"We're playing with different players, and we're also exploring some
new spaces. A little more electronic. It's like riding a real
comfortable horse. You've got the blues. You've got rock 'n' roll.
You've got this world music component to it. It's kind of an
interesting brew. A lot of spice. I don't know what you'd call it,
but it makes you dance and it makes you smile, and that's really what
we're after."
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment