The Chadbourne/Gonzalez Collusion's "Irresponsible RocknRoll Shenanigans"

In the year before Covid, it was my pleasure to take in several shows at Oak Cliff's Top Ten Records, who were booking an eclectic mix that included jazz, hip-hop, and experimental music. One of those shows was a solo performance by Eugene Chadbourne, whom I only knew as a name in my New Music Distribution Service catalog until the late '90s, when I heard a CD (Pachuco Cadaver) of Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black (the Mothers of Invention's "Indian of the group) performing demented-sounding covers of Captain Beefheart material. On the night I caught him, Chadbourne was in the middle of a series of Texas dates where he was backed by fellow shenaniganders, bassist Aaron Gonzalez and drummer Stefan Gonzalez, brothers and mainstays of Dallas' creative music scene for a couple of decades now. Unfortunately, the three didn't perform together the night I saw them, but they did on the nights in Houston and Denton that estimable engineer Michael Briggs documented for this shiny silver disc.

Chadbourne's Beefheart covers are always idiosyncratic, with Doc Chad warbling Don's lyrics over backwoods banjo accompaniment that's definitely an acquired taste. Here, the Gonzalez brothers simply follow him rather than trying to replicate the Magic Band's polyrhythmic fury. The real show begins when Chadbourne picks up his fuzzed out electric guitar for a run at Roscoe Mitchell's "Nonaah," the most famous version of which (on the 1977 Nessa double album of the same name) was one of the most epic examples of defiantly confrontational repetition ever waxed. Briggs, a man who loves his cats and brews a righteous cup of coffee, has captured Chadbourne's tortured tones with an extreme closeup clarity that usually gets lost in the mix when recording oversaturated guitars. Aaron and Stefan, who've played together since their teens and once composed a song entitled "Free Jazz Is Thrash, Asshole," are in their element here. The beauty and terror they conjure put me in mind of the version of Ayler's "Ghosts" that X__X played at Rubber Gloves a few years back. Stefan's toms remind me of Ronald Shannon Jackson's.

A version of Syd Barrett's "Lucifer Sam" approaches Brit psychedelic whimsy as the Japanese noise-rockers High Rise or Mainliner might have. Chadbourne spins out scorching leads while the Gonzalez brothers back him with atavistic savagery. (Reminds me of the time I stood next to Aaron onstage at 6th Street Live while Clay Stinnett and Brent Miller sat with their drumkits facing each other and shattered sticks for an hour, at the end of which Aaron showed me his hands, which looked like hamburger. These guys are serious.) Some goofy stage banter and an episode of free floating improv give way to Frank Zappa's dissonant Freak Out! classic "Who Are the Brain Police?" with Chadbourne's wah and Sharrockian chaos-slide strongly in evidence throughout a lengthy "out" section. The three musos wrap things up with a ferocious version of "Summertime Blues" that trounces Blue Cheer's for sheer heaviness coupled with aleatoric audacity. Proof positive that "weird" music can rock fiercely.