Jerry Hunt

excerpt of: "Unlikely Persona: Jerry Hunt (1943-1993)" by Michael Schell --------------------------- "On Saturday, November 27, 1993, Jerry Hunt sat down at the workbench of his central Texas ranch. He put on a homemade gas mask connected to a cylinder filled with carbon monoxide. It had come down to this after a lifetime of hyperactivity: working endless hours in his studio, sleeping little, constantly talking and moving around, drinking coffee like it was water. Tobacco had been Jerry's greatest vice -- when he wasn't smoking it he was chewing it, his favorite being Granger Select brand ("It's a tuff chew but somebody's got to do it" he once said). A long series of bronchial infections had turned progressively worse. His body now decaying from emphysema and lung cancer, Jerry had spent his final months planning his own death. His research led him to carbon monoxide as the perfect suicide tool. He'd studied how to obtain the gas, how to store it, and what kind of delivery system to use. He'd taken safety precautions to keep the gas from leaking and endangering other people, while ensuring that he'd receive a large enough dose to kill and not just maim himself. Every conceivable technical detail had been considered and documented. His was perhaps the most meticulously thought-out suicide in history.Jerry opened the gas valve and took his last breath. Thus ended an astonishing chapter in the history of American music. ----- I'll never forget the first time I saw Jerry perform. It was in 1984 at a music festival in Ohio. The curtain opened to reveal upstage a modest clump of homemade and off-the-shelf electronic instruments. Jerry appeared from behind the setup, pushed a few buttons and began the piece. The music coming from the loudspeakers was a tapestry of sampled instruments -- mainly bowed strings -- constantly churning out a dense micropolyphonic web based on clusters of slow and fast trills. This was accompanied by a host of high-frequency percussive sounds emphasizing rattles, sleigh bells, wind chimes and the like. Loud and unrelenting, it reminded me of a Texas insect chorus on a hot summer night.While this was going on, Jerry paced the stage holding a variety of homemade hand props: staffs, rattles, different kinds of wands and bells. The rattles were shaken, the staffs stamped loudly on the stage. Some of the wands were quite phallic, and Jerry would make strange motions with them as though they had magical powers. Other wands looked like religious talismans created from junk: an umbrella handle that turned into a cross at the far end, or a stylized metal rod bent into the shape of an astrological symbol. Jerry took out some strange nightlights that he plugged into electrical outlets all over the stage. Later he brought out an old brown suitcase, sat on it like a child's hobby horse, and slapped it like a bass drum using a thick wooden stick.The performance was redolent of shamanism, as though demons were being exorcised from the auditorium. But it came from a most unlikely persona: the lanky, bald, bespectacled Jerry Hunt, wearing his trademark unironed white dress shirt, long narrow tie, off-white jacket with unbuttoned cuffs and loose fitting trousers. It was a look I call "central Texas meat inspector" -- certainly not what you'd expect from a shaman. It was amusing to watch the spectacle of this mysterious ritual being performed by an utterly mundane-looking man.Every few minutes Jerry retreated upstage to his equipment rack. He'd gather new hand props, press a few more buttons, and then venture out with a new collection of gadgets and a new repertory of weird motions and gestures. The sounds would change subtly at this point too, so that each part of Jerry's performance had its own timbral, as well as visual, identity. Apart from the periodic button-presses, Jerry didn't touch his musical instruments. They seemed to be generating the musical details in real time -- an impressive accomplishment back before MIDI control had become ubiquitous. Occasionally, a stage movement seemed to trigger a musical event, but it was hard to tell for sure. The piece had an obscure-sounding title, Ground: Haramand Plane, and lasted exactly 36 minutes as Jerry had promised beforehand. I was astonished." --------------------------- <[NOTE: THIS IS A FAN SITE. JERRY HAS BEEN GONE SINCE 1993, AND THIS PAGE IS IN TRIBUTE TO HIM. AGAIN, THIS IS A FAN SITE!!!>]
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