"We are
Nat Love, a caravan of madmen and musicians from the Menlo Park
Farm, Think Tank, fully-operating freshwater aquarium, and home
of the o'riginal all-night skating expedition in Zwingle, Iowa,
who beg your assistance in helping us help ourselves. We desire
to play for you and the patrons of your establishment, for we are
shameless in our desire to spread the music we produce- so, to
put it another way, we will play before, after, or between
anyone, whenever we can, and as often as you will let us."But perhaps I'm getting too far ahead of myself. Indeed,
perhaps I should introduce you first to the personnel, their
brief history, the nature of their music, and the target audience
they have in mind, in an attempt to elaborate all points you may
think to question.The BandRobert Bucko, Jr. Plays: bass, saxophone, and sings; occasionally
he is allowed to play acoustic and electric guitars and sometimes
even tools about on a Korg synthesizer.
Musical interests include: John Coltrane, Nick Drake, Robert
Wyatt, Leonard Cohen, Roky Erikson, John Cage, Syd Barret.
Bob, of the east coast Buckos, also called the Prince of Peace
and the fisher of men, the so-known bass monkey, will die for
your sins again and again through the execution of bass lines
that don't need to be inhaled to set your sails and clean your
clocks.Dan Cosley Plays: guitar, and sings; plays bass when he is forced
to.
Musical interests include: Stevie Ray Vaughn, Wes Montgomery,
Kenny Burrell, Willie Nelson, Miles Davis.
Cosleymodo's liquid guitar notes will ring your bells, baby, and
make you feel a big chunk of happy deep down in your insides.Steven Vaughn Kray Plays: drums, and disguises a soulful stew of
nonsense ranting rave-ups as singing.
Musical interests include: Parliament, Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin,
Buddy Miles, War (with or without Eric Burdon).
Better known in the funk trade as "Sticky Whites," Stevie will
trip the landmines in your head, keep you hell-bent and well-fed,
with tiny explosions in the corners of your eyes, descending with
speed unrealized, bursting the clouds hanging off of your skies.Jon Roberts Plays: Piano, electric piano, organ; occasionally
relays monologues and stories, and every so often touches his
fingers to the aforementioned Korg synthesizer.
Musical interests include: David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa,
John Cale, Neil Young.
Roberts will shatter your shutters and tear open your flues with
the soul intent of leaving your gray matter torn and tattered,
wrenching the shackles from your tabernacles, plundering your pop
and snapping your crackles.A brief history of gigs (1998)
1. Friday, January 16: The Doug-Out Restaurant and Lounge in
Lisbon Iowa.
2. Saturday, January 24: The Orange Room at Cornell University,
in Mount Vernon, Iowa. (Having been hired by the Student
Activities Board to open for cow-punk sensations Mad Trucker Gone
Mad.)
3. Saturday, March 14: The second annual "Jamnesty" benefit for
the Amnesty International Organization, in Dubuque.
4. Saturday, April 4: The Q Bar, with Pompeii V.
5. Friday, April 24: Riverside Ballroom in Dubuque.
6. Sunday, April 26: Unicorn Studios in Fort Dodge, Iowa. (This
was a benefit concert for the floundering independent musical
community in Fort Dodge. Nat Love performed along with regional
darlings Scarlet Runner, etc.)
7. Saturday, May 16: Grogg's Upper Deck in Dubuque.
8. Friday, May 22: Dubuque County Fairgrounds.
9. Monday, June 15: The Crazy Horse Saloon, Dubuque.
10. Saturday, June 20: The Q Bar.
Note: At Nat Love's self-produced shows (#5, #7, #8, #9), between
100 and 150 bodies have consistently been gathered to the
premises.In addition to the above, Nat Love took first prize at Loras
College's 1997 "Loraspalooza" Battle of the Bands, performed at
the 1st Jamnesty Benefit, and was hired by the Dubuque City Arts
Board to appear at the Taste of Dubuque Music Festival. In the
near future, Nat Love will also be appearing at the 1998 Taste of
Dubuque Festival, as well as the annual summer "Livestock"
festival.The nature of the music and the audience we hope to attract
(or: the method of our madness)It seems that people who have seen Nat Love's performances
always feel the need to compare their music to familiar and
recognizable sources- probably because they play only a handful
of cover songs (albeit certainly noteworthy selections, including
obscure classics like Funkadelic's Maggot Brain and Red Hot
Mama, Shrimp Boat's What Do You Think of Love, Baby?, Roky
Erikson's Starry Eyes, Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive,
etc.), preferring to separate truth from beauty on their own
terms as opposed to repeating well-worn phrases. Previous
comparisons have run the gamut from Ziggy Stardust-period David
Bowie, to the Allman Brothers, to Frank Zappa, to Phish,
continuing on and on and on. Nat Love, however, cannot be
pigeonholed; it would be offensive to the nature of the music to
attempt such a thing. The sound is based on variations in style
between the songs in the set, as well as between sections of each
individual selection, the idea of this method being to never lose
the audience's interest, as it would seem that concert-goers
nurse short-attention spans when it comes down to music they have
never run across before. The variations in the movement from one
style to the next are fortunately eclipsed by the fluidity of the
moevement itself and the deftness with which the changes are
executed, resulting in Nat Love never ceasing to sound like
anything but Nat Love. This consistency in the face of change is
most easily explained by the sharp interplay between the band
members' instruments and vocals, a kind of communal execution of
sound that accentuates each performers' contribution by not
spotlighting any one element more than any other.
Therefore- because of the previously-explained stylistic
acrobatics- Nat Love is meant to appeal to everyone. Enter: the
aging, nostalgic former-hippie and his younger, virile
counterpart, disciples of the Grateful Dead and Phish,
respectively, who live and die for sunshine-psychedelic folk-
rock; the Working Class Hero out on the town with the Common Man,
who like their rock rocking and their roll rolling, in all the
right places; the intellectuals who eat up sonic washes of sound
in both shadows and light; the out-looking-for-good-timers who
want a strong back-beat matched with tuneful precision and a
ne'er-ending gush of energy; the funketeers, who lay at the altar
of George Clinton and his U.S. Funk Mob, in their many legitimate
and illegitimate guises; the jazz and blues purists listening for
solid musicianship rather that self-indulgent pop songs; so on,
and so forth, endlessly. And yet, in direct contradiction to all
of the above, the songs- indeed against all odds, and most often
by accident- come out with a definite swing and a comfortable
sheen of pop accessibility that makes them not only hummable, but
nearly imposssible to wrench from your skull when the music's
over, leaving them to bounce about the walls of one's mind ad
infinitum.
So, to make a long, long story short- Nat Love walks the
fine-line(s) between love songs of inimitable beauty, funk rave-
ups, jazz experiments, surreal space jams, amphetamine-fed
concoctions, campy cabaret numbers, shit-kicking roadhouse blues,
multi-level epics, glam rock, and an endless grab-bag of other
treats and groove-tasties that we do not have the room here and
now to further intellectualize down to their most basic elements.
Inspiration is 99% desperation, folks, and nobody knows it
or shows it better than Nat Love.
