Electric Mayhem

Guitarist Marc Ribot Reaches for Rock Anarchy.


	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Sep 16, 2008

OPENING DOORS: "I always wanted to do a version of 'Break on Through' that actually breaks on through," says Ribot (center).

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Marc Ribot plays the guitar. That's about the only straightforward description one can offer for Ribot's music, free of qualifiers, hyphenates, loaded quotation marks or implied irony. His mutant interests have stood him in good stead over a 30-year career, landing him as axman of choice for everyone from Tom Waits to John Zorn to Elvis Costello.

One thing that all of Ribot's music has in common, however, is its bristling energy, a force as potent as electrified fence. No matter what the project, from the avant-jazz of his Albert Ayler tribute band Spiritual Unity to the Afro-Cuban tunes of Los Cubanos Postizos, Ribot avoids pastiche with his scrap-metal shredding. With his latest project, Ceramic Dog, Ribot set out to strip away all the multiculti influences and get back to basics.

"I've done a lot of different types of projects," Ribot says, in between shouting directions at a cab driver navigating midtown Manhattan traffic. "But no matter what I did, if I did it long enough it always wound up being a rock band. So this time I thought, 'Why not start out like a rock band and see what happens?'"

Ribot enlisted bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith, both well-versed in rock, jazz and everything in between, and he insists that the trio constitute an honest-to-God "band," not just another project. "My definition of a band is musicians who rehearse even if they don't have a gig," he says.

Ceramic Dog's debut CD, Party Intellectuals (Pi), was recorded last October, after a year and a half of gigging. It's no more just a rock album than any of Ribot's projects are "just" anything, with a range of diverse influences forcing their way into each song. "It's been suggested to me that maybe I should have been a bit less eclectic," Ribot admits. "I'm listening to those suggestions, but let's put it this way: I'm a person who thinks that the shuffle function on my iPod is the best invention since the wheel. It gives me a special thrill when it cuts from my Caruso recordings into Sleater-Kinney."

Rock music as filtered through Ribot's consciousness bears the decided influence of the '80s Downtown NY scene, which he helped to found. From new wave to no wave, DNA (the seminal Arto Lindsay-led no wave band) is an essential part of the DNA (the basic genetic material) of Ceramic Dog. And, Ribot maintains, in that of much modern indie rock. "I think a whole generation of bands, whether they've even heard Arto's music directly, has been influenced by what Anthony Coleman once called 'the poetic of Arto Lindsay,'" Ribot says. "And I would include myself. So in one way, DNA disappeared; in another way, DNA became the world."

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

While it can often look from the outside that Ribot's career can be segmented into distinct periods, each with a new focus and direction, he says that everything he does rests along the same continuum.

"I'm pursuing a particular energy. I felt it when I first went to hear no wave bands like the Lounge Lizards and DNA; I felt it on a really good night when I worked with Brother Jack McDuff; I felt it in soul-jazz organ music I heard in Newark. There's a certain intensity to the music that I like, and I try to create it with my own bands."

When he recognizes that energy in a new sound, Ribot continues, that leads to research into its influences, whether that be the early punk of the Lower East Side or the Cuban music of Arsenio Rodriguez. "So it's eclecticism in a way, but it's really the search for missing links and common ancestors."

Regardless of the myriad directions the album eventually explores, it begins with a punk obliteration of The Doors' "Break on Through."

"I always wanted to do a version of 'Break on Through' that actually breaks on through," Ribot explains. "A lot of rockers talk about being wild and crazy, but at the end of the day they always switch chords right at the end of the fourth bar. If you're going to be an anarchist, why respect the bar line? Go all the way."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog plays Sat., Sept. 20, 9 p.m. (open bar celebrating the grand opening of Ibrahim Theater at 8 p.m.), $12, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, arsnovaworkshop.com.