Buffalo Roam

Actor, director, rocker, handbag maker — Vincent Gallo says he's not experimenting.

by A.D. Amorosi

rock/improv

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When Vincent Gallo takes the stage at Johnny Brenda's with his improvisational quartet RRIICCEE on Sunday, it won't be his first foray into music. Gallo, famous for shockingly quiet and sonorous solo recordings — to say nothing of his self-penned and directed films Buffalo '66 and The Brown Bunny — formed meaningful collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the crunchy no wave outfit Gray, recorded as a member of the noisy trio Bohack and played with Lucas Haas as Bunny. Now, Gallo is joined by Eric Erlandson (Hole), Nikolas Haas (Lucas' bro) and Rebecca Casabian in what promises to be something provocative and beautiful. That's what Gallo promised me.

City Paper: You grew up in Buffalo. What sort of vibe did that city offer musically?

Vincent Gallo: In many ways it was stuck in a story — an old story. But for a brief moment, there was lots of experimental jazz, progressive, classical and psychedelic music all around. If you played and recorded any of those brands of music, Buffalo offered you a great fan base. Van Der Graaf Generator was big there. Michael Tilson Thomas was the conductor of the Philharmonic. Mingus had a big base there. So Buffalo had an underground, small but formidable. I was lucky enough to notice that and be involved with the hardcore connoisseurs who — as long as I remained curious — were glad to have me and I could go where I wanted to go.

CP: And art and film, was there a similar underground?

VG: As far as film, I don't remember a cinema culture there, no. But arts? Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo attended university and they started an arts league there. There was Albright-Knox Gallery — a museum for contemporary and modern work — so it wasn't as if art was way out of the picture. Plus there were people from the New York no-wave scene there — some Bush Tetras — so that if one wanted to reflect the mental world the way one could reflect it in New York City then you could do so in Buffalo. It was much more interesting than bigger-city neighbors like Toronto. Even though Toronto had better clothes — shoes especially. But, it was as substantial as Philly.

CP: Is there a necessary goal to the experiments performed by RRIICCEE?

VG:I wouldn't say it's an experiment. That's not a reflection of my view. What I think is that it's a gesture of conscious effort — to do something better and more profound than my own understanding of the world and the vocabulary of music. The best times I ever played music in my life was when everybody was extremely conscious and open — that they could recognize in that openness something they never heard or never had before in that way — then they built and moved forward from that, something in the moment. I'm sure the Beatles even felt that, that they were jamming and something came out that they had never done — a structure, a voicing — that led them forward. If they had done that all the time, begun with a vocabulary that wasn't part of our tradition, they would've continued to grow.

CP: Is there any of art of yours that offers that conscious viewpoint?

VG: I'm starting a line of handbags named "Viv Albertine" after the guitarist in the Slits. The reason I named it after Viv is because when I was 18 years old I frequented a club called Pier 3. And I had the good fortune of standing in front of the stage and seeing [the Slits] play there, in front of where Viv was. And she made such an impression on me — her vibe, her beauty, her goofiness — that she represented a moment in my life when I became fascinated with another person. She stuck in my mind, became one of my favorite girls of all time. I decided because I like the name and I could associate it with her, I would name my handbag line after her. She, it, transcended me. It was better than me. Which is always the goal of art, right?

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

RRIICCEE play Sun., Dec. 9, 9 p.m., $20, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 866-468-7619, johnnybrendas.com.