Omission in October Blades Article

See that behind the camera? That's what we call a photographer. That's someone who has dedicated time and money towards their craft. When someone contributes their artistry, we here at the Free Press value their work greatly. This month John Van did a great job photographing Blades for the October article. It was a lot of work and time on his part but unfortunately his efforts went uncredited for some inexplicable reason in the print version. We apologize for the omission.

You can check out his photographic work here.*

Oh and if you see this guy snapping shots around town give him one of these \m/ for us, ok?





*OK, I totally swiped this shot from John's Flikr but I wanted to give a face to the person behind the camera.

Blades of Glory

Instrumental rock has to get over a tough hurdle. If you take away the human voice within a rock context, you’ll find a lot of people keep a safe distance because instrumental music is considered by many to be cold and unapproachable. Thankfully, any performance by Pasadena’s Blades takes this notion head-on. The band’s decidedly unpretentious approach is a kick in the pants to anyone expecting music for chin-scratching intellectuals and last month’s performance at the Mink surely must have laid that notion to rest. That night Blades and their music careened with volume and force: bassist David Ibarra convulsed like he was being electrocuted, Chris Mason swung his guitar like John Henry taking on that steam drill, and Kyle Jones beat his drums with such violence that you’d have almost expected blood to pour from his kit. As all this was going on, the other guitarist, John Dannar, seemed content to play the John Entwistle role with a huge shit-eating grin on his face the entire time. In fact, the only chin-scratching I witnessed was Allen Hendrix (guitarist of Sharks and Sailors) pondering the performance, lowering his head in deep thought, and summing it up by declaring the entire performance “very late-90s spicy with zombie flavor.”

Still not convinced? Consider Kyle who, during our recent photo shoot shouted, “Drop your pants on three!” Suddenly, there is the band standing inside a trailer in their underwear as everyone tries to contain their laughter. Some bands might be stiff or self-conscious during a photo shoot but not Blades – they ran through rock photo clichés and braved dubious construction sites with abandon and glee. That is the thing that strikes anyone about Blades, that despite the serious work behind their music they are hardly serious people. Lance Higdon, drummer from fellow proggy band Tambersauro, is charmed by all this; “Yeah, they are accomplished musicians but beyond that, what sets them apart and puts a skip in my step, is the humor, levity, and humility in their approach. They don’t put on airs.”

But don’t let all this silliness fool you, despite the energetic performances and the general goofiness, Blades puts out some seriously complex music. The Saturday before the Mink show I walked into Francisco studios and found, crouched on the floor over a digital 8-Track, local one-man mobile recording lab John Sears listening to levels as behind him the four musicians were working down some Vietnamese sandwiches and some last minute arrangements. The mood was much more restrained as the band was focusing on recording for its entry into John Sears’ Grey Ghost series*.

As he twiddled knobs, Sears explained, “I can totally see why people are put off by bands like Blades. Unless you are familiar with the music, the changes can seem jarring. But this is music in which you have to make an investment”. He’s right of course. The first time I put on their EP “Who’s The Cream Puff Now?” it was late and I was tired and I wasn’t ready to listen. My reaction was as if I was on an elevator but then, later that week, I popped it in the car stereo and, giving it my full attention, found a band with a sharp emphasis on composition and arrangements. The music itself is very sculpted and can hardly be described as haphazard; the music drops rises and shifts with purpose and the players know exactly where they fit into the picture they are painting. The rewards of investing some time with a band like Blades is there are always new textures or layers revealing themselves upon each successive listen. Even David confesses that he will listen to a recording and hear things he never realized were there.

Kyle elaborates, “David and I hold everything down so really the layers and textures you hear are coming from John and Chris’ guitars. There are times where we go off and improvise but the music you hear is pretty much composed…it’s really cut and paste composition.”

Chris jumps in, “Yeah, we are collage rock. But don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not like we say ‘Do this four times and this five!’ It’s all feel. We also never consider the songs finished so they’re always changing.”

That constant changing, be it the ebb and flow of sound or the evolution of a composition, is the most fascinating thing about Blades. For them, there is always a way to make their music better and challenge themselves as players. Their music moves like water and we in the audience simply need to be willing to put our feet in the river.


You can catch Blades opening up for Don Caballero on November 3rd at the Proletariat.

*The Grey Ghost CDR Series is a John Sears project in which he issues a limited 13 CDR edition of one band’s music for one week for $2 each at Domy. October’s planned releases include Halocine, Li’l Red Lighthouse, and Something Fierce.

Photography: John Van

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Correction to the September John Muzak Article

The article printed in September incorrectly lists John Muzak's Birthday Party at Super Happy Funland as being on 19 September; the correct date is Friday 14 September. My apologies to SHFL and John Muzak for the error.

John Muzak

John Muzak loves noise and loves performing it for people. That love radiates through performances that have brought him accolades from such non-noise bands as Drop Trio, Chango Jackson, and Guy Schwartz. Unfortunately, accolades don’t often get J.Muzak (or Houston Noise for that matter) much love in the local press. Performances in San Franscisco and Amsterdam be damned, here in Houston we see hacks getting paid to write witless columns dismissing the Houston Noise Scene as losers who can’t play their instruments. To these dismissals J.Muzak simply shrugs, “What’s funny about that is I used to write story songs with a Casio and a four track - mainstream stuff really. I even won second place in this songwriters contest for a country song I wrote called ‘I Want To Go To The French Riviera.’ That was back in 1992 but you have to understand I grew up with 60’s music – Jefferson Airplane, Beatles, Stones – and I played in a rock cover band with my brother when I was 17. I got into experimental music around ‘91 but I didn’t really ever see a noise show until 2000. But once I did…” Muzak doesn’t finish the sentence; he simply punctuates it with a big smile.

Chuck Roast of Vinal Edge experienced the birth of John Muzak first-hand, “He was musically a normal customer named Marty who didn’t know anything about noise. Then he got into the Legendary Pink Dots and would come into the store and give us these cassettes of music he’d made. At first they weren’t very good but then he brought in this tape where in it he was shouting, “Marty is dead! Marty is dead!” Suddenly he was no longer Marty but John Muzak and it was amazing stuff. He came in blind but damn if he wasn’t going to do it! That was the charm. He just put his heart into it. But that’s John, he isn’t trying to be cool – he’s just being himself.”

The turning point, as J.Muzak explains it, was a show at Sound Exchange. Hearing about the show on KTRU, Muzak walked into a show featuring Rotten Piece, Dethkraut and Black Leather Jesus. He was immediately hooked! Don Walsh then invited Muzak to a Commerce Street show. “Here was this music with this free feeling, it wasn’t structured, and you could do whatever. I wanted to do it but I didn’t know how but then I saw Domokos doing a Pink Cloud with just a microphone and a couple of pedals. It was noise! Crazy words! Sound on sound! I was inspired! So I went out, bought a mic and some pedals, and I began practicing at getting those sounds and learning to manipulate that sound.”

But J.Muzak doesn’t just manipulate sounds on stage - he gives a performance. When people first see J.Muzak the first thing that hooks people is his costumes. Let’s face facts; a guy performing in a wizard outfit will immediately disarm even the most hardened audience member. Chuck Roast loves this about J.Muzak, “What separates John from many experimental artists is his lack of pretension – a pure innocence. That’s not what you see with 9 out of 10 noise bands. Most are serious - they dress in black and have dark imagery - but John comes in with a wizard’s hat or dressed as a clown. You almost think he’s a kid having fun banging on a keyboard in a seemingly random way. And it’s absurd that this kid banging on a piano would leave home to do this in front of people. Noise artists are just so serious. They sit there not smiling, turning knobs, and looking serious. That’s not a show! Why am I looking at some guy with a fucking laptop? That’s boring. But John will give you a performance and he’s smiling.”

If you want to hear J.Muzak in a more straightforward manner you’d have to catch him performing as Acoustic? where he performs songs simply with an acoustic guitar but as John Muzak you will hear something quite different - a swirling pastiche of sound. Shaun Kelly of Rotten Piece suggests that J.Muzak’s music has a “Jazz vibe to it in that, like a jazz musician, he is constantly deconstructing the songs.” Yet that swirling chaos isn’t as random as it seems, “You don’t want too much sound – too much is just brutal noise. For me, I don’t want a consistent sound – I shift sound and noise, raise and lower the volume, blend the sounds, bend the sounds…it’s manipulation of sound but these are songs – written songs.”

I look at John and ask him what his wife thinks of all this. Then John sheepishly says, “She prefers the acoustic stuff. ” I ask him why that and not the John Muzak performances. He thinks about it for a second and laughs “Honestly, she thinks it’s a little crazy.”


Join John Muzak for his birthday party on September 14th at Super Happy Funland. Guests will include Last Bastions, Porch Creeps, The Annoysters and others.

Photography: Carol Sandin Kelly