Puttanesca is a Special Sauce
Great albums often take a torturous path, but few get derailed by attempted murder
by LamontPaul, Founder & Publisher
first published: October, 2006
first published: October, 2006
The vocals arc, arch and bend your will.
Seems like
Joe Baiza is turning into the busiest man in show business town. In one
week, his 80s beat-punk band, Sacharrine Trust opened for (by special
request of the very lovely) Tortoise at the Troubador; a few days later
Joe Baiza's Congress of... absolutely, pitilessly tore up Taix, the
venue where he's now also somehow involved in drawing great and diverse
bands for the monthly Joe Baiza night.
I ran into him in the
parking lot after the Taix show, and between nips from his flask of Old
Grandad which is onsale at Gelson's this week, he gave me a copy of the
recently released, long lost record from Puttanesca, the band he'd
joined/formed, (it's a long story), more than a decade ago, with
vocalist, Weba Garretson, bassist, Ralph Gorodetsky and drummer, Wayne
Griffin.
The recently reformed Puttanesca have been putting in some quite enthralling
performances in support of the record. That vocalist Weba is one of the
more intensely charismatic performers I've witnessed helps not a little.
Damn! She captivates a room by moving across it, even before she
opens her, well, let's face it, rather generous mouth.
I guess you might be forgiven for thinking if you're gonna call
yourself Puttanesca you wouldn't have any trouble tossing off a rather
spicy album in a day or something... Originally recorded with Mark
Wheaton at Catasonic in Echo Park, the record got itself shelved when
the magic and momentum of the raw recordings and the live performances
got somehow lost in the mix. Before it could be retrieved, Joe was a
victim of a racist attack while touring in Germany. Some might call it
attempted murder. As Weba says of the time, "Things began to
unravel..." Just seems to be the way when you shoehorn so much talent
into one band.
After ten years of contemplation and a myriad of other quite notable
projects for each of the band members, the Puttanesca record finally
arrives much closer to Joe Baiza's original concept. Uncompromising and
courageously stripped down; angular, trippy and raw. The beat of the
drum, the bass and guitar is sheer and insistently clear. The vocals
arc, arch and bend your will. Like a meeting between Dot Allison and
the Gang of Four in a particularly troublesome part of town, the record
is a bed of perfectly contemporary needles. It never lets me rest.
To find out more about Puttanesca and hear them, visit their website: http://www.webagarretson.com/Puttanesca/
LamontPaul
Founder & Publisher
Publisher, Lamontpaul founded outsideleft with Alarcon in 2004 and is hanging on, saying, "I don't know how to stop this, exactly."
Lamontpaul portrait by John Kilduff painted during an episode of John's TV Show, Let's Paint TV
about LamontPaul »»
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