January 31 - Shadow of a Man

The last entry in a week of oddities is odd for more reasons than one. The musical palette is very unusual, even though the main instruments are traditional for rock: guitar, bass and drum. Of course, when the drummer is cymbalmaster Stewart Copeland from The Police, the bass player is Les Claypool from Primus, and the guitar player is Trey Anastasio from Phish, all ideas of "normal" have to be tossed out the window right away.

In my early years in the United States, a good part of my summers were spent at Nana's, my ex-mother-in-law's, house in Bay City, Michigan. I would sometimes stay up late at night with Emma, who was just a new-born my first full summer in the US, and after I came home from working as a cashier at Meijer, I would be on night time duty, so I would sit in a very run down chair in Nana's den, watching TV with Emma on my arm. We'd watch Saturday Night Live reruns from the mid to late nineties, and every now and then I would find some music program - or some concert that was on. That was how I discovered Phish - and I was hooked on their song Bouncing Around the Room, which to this day remains my favorite Phish song. It was also where I discovered Oysterhead. While I liked all three bands represented - The Police, Phish, and Primus, I did not know that Oysterhead existed until I saw them in concert on tv, sitting up late at night at nana's house - it must have been around 2001 or 2002, but the chronology might elude me here - it might be a somewhat faulty memory.

However, watching the concert was interesting in itself. Les Claypool wore a hat that looked like it had two flashlights mounted on it, and that was most of the lights with the exception of a blueish backdrop lighting setup, and on Trey Anastasio's guitar he had mounted something that not only looked like reindeer antlers - they were reindeer antlers. I turns out that that particular guitar is named the Matterhorn, and the antlers helped function like an old favorite instrument of mine: the theremin (if you wonder what it sounds like, listen to Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys, it is heavily featured there). I was blown away by their performance, but it took a little while to hunt down the CD (this was in the days before I was a heavy Amazon user). I finally found it at Barnes & Noble a couple of years later, and I think I played it half to death.

One of the songs that really stood out for me because it showcased the abilities of all three - and embraced the general weirdness of the album - was a song I believe I also have shared on Facebook: Shadow of a Man.