Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt by Mildred Klaus.
 
Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt makes music that is right for our time. Challenging. Difficult. Powerful. Brilliant. That kinda thing.

Plague covers the planet. Cities shut down. Rioters loot and burn. Welcome to the New Normal. Put on your mask and shop this way.

There’s gotta be a way out. Maybe Marquardt’s music offers one?

I was supposed to talk with Marquardt sometime in June. Or was it July? The days merge. One day is much the same as the next—under a lockdown that gave me one hour-a-day outside (for exercise) and one trip (only if really, really, really necessary) to the store for essentials. Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt could be one of those essentials. He’s not to everyone’s taste I know but his music is important and relevant. Especially today.

We should have spoken together in June or July but then his nephew was shot dead on the streets. An horrific tragedy. What can you say? I sent condolences. Waited. Waited. Didn’t know what else to do. Looked back on what I’d once written:

Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt is an American musician who lives in Germany. He has been making music since he was six-years-old. He started by writing songs or “texts” and “melodies” as he describes it before taking an interest in House Music in his teens. Sean began DJing, before moving from Chicago to Berlin, where he started singing and playing guitar with metal bands. It was in Europe that he began his interest in electronic music.

With a desire to balance both his love of electronic with metal, Sean produced drone, ambient and noise recordings, developing his own distinct form of “Accidental Guitar Music.”

“Accidental Guitar” is a holistic and grounded concept that includes three main aspects. The first of these is the creation of sounds and sound worlds by combining the guitar with distortion effects – a type of “routing” or “mapping” technique where the musician does not lose himself, however, but instead works in a deliberate manner with the tools available to him. The second dimension of “Accidental Guitar” is improvisation—an approach that Cooper Marquardt has chosen, systematically rejecting predetermined choreographies and all forms of rehearsal or planning. This applies not only to live performances, but also when making recordings in his studio. Finally, the third dimension to this concept is the specific situation that the musician encounters when playing: the atmosphere and setting, the persons, conditions and moods present in the space in question lead to a contextualisation of his music.

Sean has released over 500 recordings as solo artist, collaborative artist, or just playing on someone else’s tracks. He has performed across the world. Gigged. Toured. Played the festivals. When I approached him before to ask some Q&A he preferred to “create [an] article without using the question and answers normal modus of operation.”

Yeah, I know.

He wrote and said he wanted to do the same again and I should contact a guy called Nicholus. It’s a bit like speaking through an agent, or maybe a medium, or just selling myself to do PR—which ain’t what my job entails. If you push to be interviewed then you should be available to be interviewed—it’s a business—otherwise you’re just playing games and after all this was the second time Marquardt had opted out.

Who knows? Maybe it’s me? I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t even talk to me…and I promised to write myself every week too…
 

Photograph by Bert Loewenherz.
 
More after the jump…

 
Johnny “Guitar” Watson, who took his stage name from the campy Joan Crawford western was a highly influential soul, blues and funk guitarist whose career began in the early 1950s. Watson attacked his guitar strings so hard (“stressified on them,” as he put it) that he would often have to replace them during a performance. Listen to his 1954 number “Space Guitar” and tell me this isn’t the most crazy, sci-fi advanced guitar playing that was done in that entire decade. The man is absolutely beating the shit out of his guitar here. He’s also pioneering the use of feedback and reverb as well:
 

 
Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Frank Zappa were known to be aficionados of Watson’s innovative guitar technique and showmanship. In a 1979 interview, Zappa stated that Watson’s 1956 song “Three Hours Past Midnight” was his favorite song of all time and “inspired me to become a guitarist. Watson’s “Gangster of Love” was covered by Steve Miller and referenced, too, in Miller’s AM radio classics “The Joker” (“Some call me the gangster of love”) and “Space Cowboy” (“Some call me the gangster of love”; “Is your name “Stevie ‘Guitar’ Miller?”)

In the late 1960s, Watson’s slick soulster style pompadour hairdo gave way to a new look: fedoras, gold teeth, bell-bottom suits, platform shoes, huge sunglasses and flashy jewelry. Watson dressed like a pimp and acted like a pimp because—according to Sam Cooke biographer, Peter Guralnick—Watson was an actual pimp (because it “paid better” than music!)

More after the jump…

 
Every time I hear a new piece of music by virtuoso guitarist and singer/songwriter Steve Gunn, from the moment the first play ends, I immediately start the song over again. And then I play it again. And then again. That’s exactly what I did what I first heard his mystical and monumental John Fahey does La Monte Young drone jam “Tommy’s Congo.” I could not stop playing that song. The album that song comes from, Way Out Weather, same thing. It didn’t leave my CD player for months back in 2014. Steve Gunn’s shit is hypnotic. His music is… deep. (In fact I went on another marathon with that same track on repeat last week for about two solid hours at top volume. I’m sure my wife wasn’t thrilled, but she didn’t ask me to stop, either.)

Gunn is one of the best guitarists of his generation. Period. There is no one else doing what he’s doing. Don’t take my word for it, there are dozens of goddamned amazing clips of him playing on YouTube. It’s a rabbit hole I suspect you will enjoy going down, especially if you enjoy listening to someone play guitar like they were issued one at birth, and have been practicing since that day. Talk about prowess. And his tonality. The guy is the Yo Yo Ma of guitarists, he really is.

Steve Gunn has got a new album coming out this summer—Eyes On The Lines comes out on June 3rd via Matador—and I’m pleased to able to premiere the new video, “Ancient Jules” which co-stars another guitar hero, Michael Chapman here on Dangerous Minds. And yes, I played this one over and over again. I think you will too, it’s hard to resist.

I asked Steve Gunn a few questions over email.

Eyes On The Lines is a road album. Are they your road stories or road stories that you’re telling, like a novelist?


The new album is a combination of different kinds of stories and perspectives. Some are my own stories and some are not, a few are combinations of both. I tried to mix it up a bit more for this record.

I find that your music is so evocative of wide open spaces and expansive landscapes—like in the video—that it seems counterintuitive to read that you live in New York City.

The music I make obviously doesn’t have the urgency of a place like New York, but for me I suppose that’s where I find a balance. I’ve lived in a city most of my life, and a lot of these open spaces exist in my mind, rather than out of my kitchen window. I also travel a lot, and these songs are written far away from New York. I don’t think it’s counterintuitive to make the music I make and live in a city, because I don’t want to ride on a packed subway and come home and work on a crowded song. With that being said, I do think this new album is a bit more urgent than my previous records - both lyrically and musically. I’ve been slowly moving away from a more pastoral sound overall I think.

Are you on the road all the time?

Not all the time, but a lot. I’ve been home for while these past 6 months or so. Last year I was traveling more than half of the year. I’m looking at a long stretch of travel starting in a week. I’m really looking forward to getting back out there and playing theses new songs with the band.

Who is “Ancient Jules”?

He’s a long white bearded basement dwelling wizard guru who I once called for directions when I was lost on tour. He told us to cancel the gig, hang out for a while, and make our way to his place when we felt like it. We ended up there in the evening and hung out until the morning listening to records and playing broken guitars through solid state Peavey amps.

Tell me about the video. You get rescued by Michael Chapman?

In the video I’m on a road trip and l’m lost and broken down on the side of the road for a while. Michael happens to drive by and come to the rescue. I leave my motorcycle and we go back to his place and proceed to drink wine, talk, listen to records, and play some guitars. I thought making a video with Michael for this song would be an appropriate salute to him, and I was glad he agreed to do it. Michael has been a huge inspiration and friend to me for a while now, and I’ve been trying to get out to his house for a visit for years. I’ve heard so much about it - that it’s really this legendary place. He’s been in this old stone farm house on the UK/Scottish border since the mid sixties. Nick Drake showed up and slept on his couch one night. It’s a time capsule, and Michael has some of the most incredible stories. The guitar that I play in the video was once played by Jimi Hendrix at the legendary Les Cousins club in London in the late 1960’s. Michael accidentally napped through Jimi’s set in his car outside.

The album that he shows you… I’m guessing that it must be significant or else you probably wouldn’t have bothered to include a shot of it. What is it?

That night we were listening and talking a lot about different records, and Michael was playing me a few lps that his friend Don Nix produced. Michael spent a lot of time with Nix in the 70’s, and he’s got some good stories about how much of a character he was (and I guess still is). Nix came to England from Memphis and worked with Michael in the early 70’s. At this point in the video we were talking about the guitar player Jesse Ed Davis, and how he played guitar on so many great albums (his solo albums are also good).The LP he was shows me is Albert King’s Love Joy, which was produced by Nix and has Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Keltner, and Duck Dunn in the backing band. It’s not Albert King’s best record, but their playing on it is amazing.

So is the “message” of the song to allow life to take you on a detour every now and again and just see what happens?

Yes. I think about the night we had with Jules once and a while and smile.

More after the jump…

 
Just a dragon lizard chillaxin’ while gently strumming his leaf guitar.

According to Indonesian photographer Aditya Permana, he didn’t manipulate the lizard in order to capture this shot. It was a once-in-a-lifetime photograph and he captured the lizard doing its thing just at the right moment.

“I did not directly photograph the lizard at first, until the lizard felt calm and comfortable around me. I noticed it looked like it was playing a guitar – and it didn’t move at all,“ said Permana.

Now all this lizard needs is a tiny hat set out for donations and tips for his leaf strummin’ capabilities.

via Daily Mail

 
Of all the psych era’s strivers, I have the softest of soft spots for The Strawberry Alarm Clock. They embraced so many of the era’s musical and fashion tropes so thoroughly they couldn’t help but instantly become a badge for psychedelia (and psychedelic kitsch) itself. They made a huge impact crater with their 1967 debut LP and single, both called Incense and Peppermints (I didn’t even need to tell you that, did I? I’m guessing that song has been playing in your head from the moment you read the band’s name in the headline). They followed up with 1968’s more modestly successful but still worthy Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow, but that would be the end of the band’s classic lineup. In the years after Tomorrow, the band cycled through a number of membership changes, and every subsequent release saw diminishing returns, which, combined with internal struggles over musical direction as the psychedelic era petered out, splintered the band by 1971. Notably, their guitarist Ed King would join up with Lynyrd Skynyrd, and flautist/guitarist Steve Bartek would resurface a few years later as Danny Elfman’s second-banana in Oingo Boingo.
 

 
But in just a few short years of existence, that band got to do tons of cool stuff. The massive success of Incense propelled the band to countless TV appearances, and prominent performance segments in the film Psych-Out and the notorious Roger Ebert/Russ Meyer clusterfuck Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. They appeared on the debut episode of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and one of them even served as a bachelor on The Dating Game, and won.

But as much fun as all that must have been, I’d ponder giving it all up in exchange for the other amazing perk of being a SAC—these amazing custom-built Mosrite guitars, one of which has been enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution.
 

 

 

The SAC Mosrite on display with the Chinery Collection at the Smithsonian

In 2009, The Unique Guitar blog  ran this amusing and opinionated account of these guitars’ creation. The blogger seems not to have cared much for folk or psych.

[Luthier Semie] Moseley’s fortune came and went and came back and went again. Moseley guitars that sold for up to $300 in the 1960’s are now being sought after by collectors and bring in tens of thousands of dollars. There are over 30 companies making copies of Mosrite style guitars.

Which brings us to The Strawberry Alarm Clock.

In the late 1960’s, about ten years after The Folk Scare, we encountered another music problem that came to be known as The Psychedelic Era. This was characterized by guys usually dressed in clothing they bought from women’s clothing stores (that’s where Hendrix got his attire…you don’t believe me? Check it out!) who imagined they could play guitar which led to writing really awful poetry to complete their musical scat. Essentially these fellows just made extremely loud noise through powerful Frigidaire sized amplifiers and sang their meaningless bad lyrics.

The Strawberry Alarm Clock was one group that actually showed some skill and put together some tunes that people enjoyed. So the music powers that be got them a lot of air time on the radio and a lot of face time in concerts. I won’t go into all the Alarm Clock’s history. Suffice to say, “Incense and Peppermints” is still one of those classic songs no matter how hard you try, you can’t get out of your head because you’ve heard it since 1967 due to 47 years of radio play.

Somehow Moseley hooked up with the Alarm Clock and was commissioned to design as set of two guitars and a bass for the group. These guitars all had Mosrite style parts, pickups, vibrato and bridges, but also had the bizarre feature of being surrounded by a wooden frame.

After finishing the bodies, Moseley shipped them to famed California artist Von Dutch. He was known for unusual auto pin striping and painted body designs as well as painted designs on surfboards. Due to his involvement the guitar became known also as The Surfboard Guitars.

 

 
It strikes me as incredibly weird that there don’t seem to be any photos or videos of the band actually playing, or even just posing with these. If someone made me something this beautifully bonkers, I’d be showing it off ’til you wanted to kick me. So since there doesn’t seem to be any motion footage of these guitars, and since you’ve surely already heard “Incense and Peppermints” more than enough times in your life, here’s some rare footage of the band’s segment in Laugh In, wearing rain gear and wrecking a car with sledgehammers, because the Summer of Love was OVER, maaaaaaaan.
 

 
According to the Hail Mary Jane website, this handmade glass guitar bong (or is it a bowl?) is fully-functional as a musical instrument.

It sure looks like a bitch to clean. Wouldn’t you get resin all over the fret board? And a glass guitar? My husband once broke two regular glass bongs in a 24 hour period. How long would this puppy last in the hands of someone who is stoned enough to actually want one of these?

“A” for effort, “F” for practicality.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Wake ‘N Bake: Coffee cup weed pipe

Via KMFW

 
Sad news from Cincy is that Bootsy’s older brother Phelps Collins has lost his battle with cancer. This comes shortly after the equally bumming news of fellow Funkadelic guitarist Gary Shider’s passing.

The always-smiling rhythm guitarist started a band called the Pacemakers in 1968 and were soon scouted and picked up by James Brown to back him up. The brothers would record such classics as “Super Bad,” “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine,” “Soul Power,” and “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” before it became too much to deal with the Godfather. Then it was on to a wonderful decade with Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band, lacing masterpieces like “Flashlight” with his brightly sparking chikka-chikka. Phelps spent most of the past 20 years away from music, surfacing occasionally to play with groups like Deeee-lite and on soundtracks like Superbad.

He got some here at the famous L’Olympia with the JB’s in 1971, just before he and Bootsy said bye-bye to the Hardest Working Man…
 

 
After the jump: the bad-ass sounds of Phelps and Bootsy in ‘71 in between their tenures with the JBs and Parliament-Funkadelic!!
 

 
It’s with heavy hearts that we come upon news of the death at 56 years too-young of Funkadelic guitarist, writer and arranger Garry “Diaper Man” Shider.

As a teen in the late ‘60s, Shider first linked up with the visionary funkateer George Clinton at a barber shop in his native Plainfield, NJ where Clinton rehearsed his doo-wop group the Parliaments. He joined Clinton’s guitar section in 1971 and ended up writing and performing on some of Parliament Funkadelic’s classics, including “One Nation Under a Groove” and “Cosmic Slop.” Unlike many of his peers, Shider was able to smoothly navigate his bluesy, psychedelic style over the insistent thump of most of the Funkadelic repertoire.

He’s also the guitarist who’s stuck with Funkadelic’s exhausting touring schedule the longest.

Let us remember him in his 20-year-old glory here in a promo for his best-known composition (on which he sang lead), dressed in trademark diaper and Roman centurion-style cape with feathered shoulder shells.