SIDE A:
Sunrise/Sunset on the Bay Ethiopian Cuisine SIDE B: Licking the Seagull's Wound Shut Pelican Waltz |
|
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
Chris Phinney and Hal McGee have been collaborating for well over three decades. The Usufruct cassette album was recorded during Phinney’s visit with Hal in Apollo Beach, Florida from October 13-15, 1989.
The four tracks on this C60 follow a similar spaced out theme, though vary in their moods and levels of intensity. ‘Sunrise/Sunset On The Bay’ starts off with an eerily droney, mechanized vibe, punctuated by alien pulsations, gurgles, insect chatter, and cavernous tones that produce minimal melodies. Chris and Hal create an alien landscape that conjures up images of a planet inhabited by a menagerie of who-knows-whats. We’re deep in a space that wavers along points on the scary vs. meditative axis. This theme continues on ‘Ethiopian Cuisine’, but amps up the intensity to a herky-jerky, effects infused battle in space. ‘Licking The Seagull’s Wound Shut’ feels like a woozy, drone-carnival journey through an alien forest. And ‘Pelican Waltz’ is a hip-shaking glom of effects fun. Space effects galore plus grooves!
INTERVIEW with Chris Phinney and Hal McGee by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz (JK): This was recorded at Hal’s place in Florida. Did Chris drive down there from Memphis?
Chris Phinney (CP): Yes. Tawnya came along with me. I can’t remember but I think Molly Ann was with me too.
Hal McGee (HM): It was great fun having Chris, Tawnya, and their daughter Molly Ann visit me in Apollo Beach. They were the first music-friend visitors I'd had since I moved to Florida in the Spring of 1988.
JK: Did you record any other albums during this visit?
CP: Just this one.
JK: I see Chris is credited with Korg Poly 800, and you’re both credited with ARP Axxe and Moog Rogue.
CP: I brought the ARP Axxe. Hal used mine. We both had a Moog Rogue, but I don’t think I brought mine. I think I used Hal’s. We just traded instruments as we felt like it.
HM: Chris is right. We played my Moog Rogue, but it was not the same Moog Rogue that I used in the Viscera and Dog As Master years in Indianapolis. I bought a used Rogue at a second-hand shop in Tampa. I didn't own any effects pedals or boxes at the time. Chris brought his and we plugged our synths into those. We recorded onto a 4-track cassette recorder, which you can see in the session photos of us that I have pasted at the bottom of this page. It is on top of the stereo amplifier (with built-in cassette deck) and the cassette deck, behind me in the pics. And that is pretty much all of the music gear that I owned at the time! The 4-track's output was connected to inputs on the stereo amplifier and we listened on the stereo speakers (which you can see in the photos) as we jammed out to the max, Jack.
JK: Did any discussion go into which instrument you would each play at any time while recording?
CP: Not really. We just plugged in and started jamming right away. And I think we gelled together right away. Even today when we jam, we still get right back into that same old groove.
HM: Chris is right. In our most recent in-person recording session back in March 2022 it was like no time had passed. We got into the old Phinney/McGee intuitive in-synch improvisational groove very quickly! When we record music together it is like a third mind operates. We just kind of know what the other guy is going to do and we go there.
JK: I’m curious how many hours of recording it took to produce this 60-minute album?
CP: I think we recorded two tracks one day, and one track each the next two days. Or maybe it was two a day. It was so long ago it’s hard to remember.
HM: The way we did it was this:
We plugged our synths into Tracks One and Two of the 4-track cassette recorder; took a few tokes (which was an essential part of the above-mentioned intuitive flow); I pressed record on the recorder; and we freely improvised until we felt like stopping. In-between sessions we would go to the beach, go to restaurants, and drive around and look at stuff in Tampa. Then we would come back, plug in, toke up, and record onto Tracks Three and Four of the 4-track tape. We free-improvised two new tracks on top of the first two we had recorded, which we could hear as the tape rolled. So we were improvising with ourselves in real-time and with ourselves from the earlier session. I guess we could say that we were collaborating with ourselves collaborating! Or playing with ourselves, but that doesn't sound quite right... So, Jerry, the answer to your question is that actual recording time for that 60-minute tape was two hours, in multiple sessions from October 13th through 15th. And since there are four tracks on the album that means that we had eight different recording sessions over the three days.
JK: You two are long time friends and collaborators. I don’t recall if I ever asked how you two first made contact? Did one reached out to the other from reading reviews or learned about each other’s labels?
CP: I don’t remember exactly but I know we saw each other in magazines and got in touch and started trading tapes. This tape was the first Phinney/McGee album.
HM: Actually, we first made contact back in maybe 1984 or 1985, when Chris sent me a copy of Malice fanzine. For some reason at that time Malice didn't seem like something I was interested in. Not sure why! Maybe he sent me one of the earlier issues with more hardcore and punk coverage in it. I was a jerk, okay?
JK: I see, so your first collaboration was in person. You hadn’t even collaborated by mail. You two must have had enough contact with one another that you would travel to Florida.
CP: I first met Hal when he was touring with Al Margolis as Bwana Dog and they stayed at my house in Memphis for a few days. We had been trading and communicating by mail but became good friends as of his visit here.
HM: We spoke on the telephone when Chris called my house during the big party at my house in the Summer of 1987. Doug Walker, Al Margolis, Carl Howard, and several other cool people were there. We were in my kitchen and Doug handed me the phone and said "Chris Phinney wants to speak with you on the phone". Chris said that he wished he could be there, and hoped that we could meet in the future. It was at that pow-wow at the Cause And Effect house that Al Margolis and I made plans for our Bwana Dog tour that Fall, which is when I first met Chris in-person. We struck up a good friendship during my visit to Memphis.
JK: I’m with you now. We visited this history recently when we did the HR141 Dog As Master Places Without Air tape. Hal and Al performed as Bwana Dog in Memphis on October 30, 1987, along with Hal’s Dog As Master, Viktimized Karcass, and Mike Honeycutt’s Mystery Hearsay. Your visit to Apollo Beach when you recorded Usufruct was almost exactly two years later.
CP: Yes.
HM: After I moved to Florida, we got back in contact and made plans to collaborate. We started working on a mail collaboration tapein July 1989, but didn't complete and release it until after Usufruct. That album was titled Heads and it was released in March 1990, our second collaboration tape. The photo of the two of us on the cover of Heads was taken during Chris' visit to Apollo Beach, during the time that we recorded Usufruct.
JK: You two recorded several albums together through the 1990s. From one to the next did it vary whether you recorded together at Hal’s, your place, or mail collaboration?
CP: We only did a few mail collaborations. Most of them were done live either at my house or Hal’s place.
HM: During those years that I lived in Apollo Beach and I was publishing the original print version of Electronic Cottage magazine, Chris and I collaborated several times. Chris and family came back to Apollo Beach in March 1990, and we recorded the Shell and Maneuvers cassettes. In June of 1990 I traveled to Memphis and we recorded tSkull and Ditch (with Mike Jackson) at Harsh Reality Music headquarters. Chris came back to Apollo Beach one more time in late 1990, and we recorded Quake. Then I visited Chris again in June 1991 and we recorded our Coincidence cassette and the Phinney /McGee collab with Henson and Moneymaker, titled Cobra. Since that era of 1989 to 1991, we have recorded numerous in-person collabs along with several mail collaborations. The in-person collabs seem to work out best, or are the most fun at the very least.
JK: One of the things I like about the Phinney/McGee albums is how deep space exploratory they are. This stands out more so in Hal’s case as being different from his other projects.
CP: I was doing space rock with Viktimized Karcass. But we just got together to record improvisational music. I’m happy with the way Usufruct turned out. It’s a damn good tape.
HM: It is true that prior to Usufruct I had not done a lot of free improvisation-based work. During the Bwana Dog tour of 1987 Al Margolis and I always freely improvised from scratch in the second half of our performances, with him on bass guitar and me on Moog Rogue. The Dog As Master cassette that came closest to Usufruct was Weed on Mike Jackson's XKurzhen Sound label in 1988. That was all 4-track synth stuff. But other than those things and some live recordings with Jabon that were improvised, most of what I had done prior to that had been 4-track tape collage with electronics.
JK: Who came up with the track titles?
CP: I think maybe I named most of the tracks and he named the tape. That one titled ‘Ethiopian Cuisine’, that’s based on the Ethiopian restaurant we ate at. You basically eat with your hands with the bread they give you. We had flank steak that they marinade for like seven days. They don’t cook, it, they just marinade to cook it.
HM: Yeah, going to that Ethiopian restaurant was one of the highlights of our time together. That steak tartare dish Chris is talking about was awesome! It's not something I would eat these days, I must say! It was called Kitfo and it was raw ground beef that had been marinated in spices. As Chris said we ate it by scooping it up with pieces of spongy injera, which was a traditional Ethiopian bread made from an ancient grain called teff. The kitfo was served on top of a huge circular piece of injera. We'd tear off a piece of the injera and grab up some kitfo.
JK: ‘Sunrise/Sunset on the Bay’, I’m guessing that was inspired by Apollo Beach?
CP: That was Tampa Bay. Hal lived in Apollo Beach on Tampa Bay. The track ‘Pelican Waltz’, pelicans are one of my favorite birds. I might have come up with that one.
HM: I think these titles are good examples of how our leisure time together and our recordings were inter-related. I am not saying that these abstract electronic pieces were meant to directly convey imagery of the titles. Albums such as Usufruct are about friendship, about sharing not only sounds, but also meals, cups of coffee, long chats, and chill-out sessions. In-between sessions we'd drive around, soaking up the sights and sounds and sun of the Tampa Bay Area, and then we'd come back to my place and record. These times together while not recording inspired the music. Art and Life came together and were one and the same, as they always should be (at least in my view of things).
JK: I Googled ‘usufruct’ and got this definition: “The right to enjoy the use and advantages of another's property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.” Any special meaning as regards this tape?
CP: I can’t remember. But that definition resonates with me as far as using each other’s equipment.
HM: I think that our use of the word "usufruct" for the title of the album was a broad interpretation of the word meant to convey the reciprocal give and take, back and forth nature of collaboration. There's nothing quite like the high, quite like the rush that we felt when our intuitive juices were flowing in a free improvisational jam. It was a high in and of itself, and like no other!
Chris Phinney and Hal McGee have been collaborating for well over three decades. The Usufruct cassette album was recorded during Phinney’s visit with Hal in Apollo Beach, Florida from October 13-15, 1989.
The four tracks on this C60 follow a similar spaced out theme, though vary in their moods and levels of intensity. ‘Sunrise/Sunset On The Bay’ starts off with an eerily droney, mechanized vibe, punctuated by alien pulsations, gurgles, insect chatter, and cavernous tones that produce minimal melodies. Chris and Hal create an alien landscape that conjures up images of a planet inhabited by a menagerie of who-knows-whats. We’re deep in a space that wavers along points on the scary vs. meditative axis. This theme continues on ‘Ethiopian Cuisine’, but amps up the intensity to a herky-jerky, effects infused battle in space. ‘Licking The Seagull’s Wound Shut’ feels like a woozy, drone-carnival journey through an alien forest. And ‘Pelican Waltz’ is a hip-shaking glom of effects fun. Space effects galore plus grooves!
INTERVIEW with Chris Phinney and Hal McGee by Jerry Kranitz
Jerry Kranitz (JK): This was recorded at Hal’s place in Florida. Did Chris drive down there from Memphis?
Chris Phinney (CP): Yes. Tawnya came along with me. I can’t remember but I think Molly Ann was with me too.
Hal McGee (HM): It was great fun having Chris, Tawnya, and their daughter Molly Ann visit me in Apollo Beach. They were the first music-friend visitors I'd had since I moved to Florida in the Spring of 1988.
JK: Did you record any other albums during this visit?
CP: Just this one.
JK: I see Chris is credited with Korg Poly 800, and you’re both credited with ARP Axxe and Moog Rogue.
CP: I brought the ARP Axxe. Hal used mine. We both had a Moog Rogue, but I don’t think I brought mine. I think I used Hal’s. We just traded instruments as we felt like it.
HM: Chris is right. We played my Moog Rogue, but it was not the same Moog Rogue that I used in the Viscera and Dog As Master years in Indianapolis. I bought a used Rogue at a second-hand shop in Tampa. I didn't own any effects pedals or boxes at the time. Chris brought his and we plugged our synths into those. We recorded onto a 4-track cassette recorder, which you can see in the session photos of us that I have pasted at the bottom of this page. It is on top of the stereo amplifier (with built-in cassette deck) and the cassette deck, behind me in the pics. And that is pretty much all of the music gear that I owned at the time! The 4-track's output was connected to inputs on the stereo amplifier and we listened on the stereo speakers (which you can see in the photos) as we jammed out to the max, Jack.
JK: Did any discussion go into which instrument you would each play at any time while recording?
CP: Not really. We just plugged in and started jamming right away. And I think we gelled together right away. Even today when we jam, we still get right back into that same old groove.
HM: Chris is right. In our most recent in-person recording session back in March 2022 it was like no time had passed. We got into the old Phinney/McGee intuitive in-synch improvisational groove very quickly! When we record music together it is like a third mind operates. We just kind of know what the other guy is going to do and we go there.
JK: I’m curious how many hours of recording it took to produce this 60-minute album?
CP: I think we recorded two tracks one day, and one track each the next two days. Or maybe it was two a day. It was so long ago it’s hard to remember.
HM: The way we did it was this:
We plugged our synths into Tracks One and Two of the 4-track cassette recorder; took a few tokes (which was an essential part of the above-mentioned intuitive flow); I pressed record on the recorder; and we freely improvised until we felt like stopping. In-between sessions we would go to the beach, go to restaurants, and drive around and look at stuff in Tampa. Then we would come back, plug in, toke up, and record onto Tracks Three and Four of the 4-track tape. We free-improvised two new tracks on top of the first two we had recorded, which we could hear as the tape rolled. So we were improvising with ourselves in real-time and with ourselves from the earlier session. I guess we could say that we were collaborating with ourselves collaborating! Or playing with ourselves, but that doesn't sound quite right... So, Jerry, the answer to your question is that actual recording time for that 60-minute tape was two hours, in multiple sessions from October 13th through 15th. And since there are four tracks on the album that means that we had eight different recording sessions over the three days.
JK: You two are long time friends and collaborators. I don’t recall if I ever asked how you two first made contact? Did one reached out to the other from reading reviews or learned about each other’s labels?
CP: I don’t remember exactly but I know we saw each other in magazines and got in touch and started trading tapes. This tape was the first Phinney/McGee album.
HM: Actually, we first made contact back in maybe 1984 or 1985, when Chris sent me a copy of Malice fanzine. For some reason at that time Malice didn't seem like something I was interested in. Not sure why! Maybe he sent me one of the earlier issues with more hardcore and punk coverage in it. I was a jerk, okay?
JK: I see, so your first collaboration was in person. You hadn’t even collaborated by mail. You two must have had enough contact with one another that you would travel to Florida.
CP: I first met Hal when he was touring with Al Margolis as Bwana Dog and they stayed at my house in Memphis for a few days. We had been trading and communicating by mail but became good friends as of his visit here.
HM: We spoke on the telephone when Chris called my house during the big party at my house in the Summer of 1987. Doug Walker, Al Margolis, Carl Howard, and several other cool people were there. We were in my kitchen and Doug handed me the phone and said "Chris Phinney wants to speak with you on the phone". Chris said that he wished he could be there, and hoped that we could meet in the future. It was at that pow-wow at the Cause And Effect house that Al Margolis and I made plans for our Bwana Dog tour that Fall, which is when I first met Chris in-person. We struck up a good friendship during my visit to Memphis.
JK: I’m with you now. We visited this history recently when we did the HR141 Dog As Master Places Without Air tape. Hal and Al performed as Bwana Dog in Memphis on October 30, 1987, along with Hal’s Dog As Master, Viktimized Karcass, and Mike Honeycutt’s Mystery Hearsay. Your visit to Apollo Beach when you recorded Usufruct was almost exactly two years later.
CP: Yes.
HM: After I moved to Florida, we got back in contact and made plans to collaborate. We started working on a mail collaboration tapein July 1989, but didn't complete and release it until after Usufruct. That album was titled Heads and it was released in March 1990, our second collaboration tape. The photo of the two of us on the cover of Heads was taken during Chris' visit to Apollo Beach, during the time that we recorded Usufruct.
JK: You two recorded several albums together through the 1990s. From one to the next did it vary whether you recorded together at Hal’s, your place, or mail collaboration?
CP: We only did a few mail collaborations. Most of them were done live either at my house or Hal’s place.
HM: During those years that I lived in Apollo Beach and I was publishing the original print version of Electronic Cottage magazine, Chris and I collaborated several times. Chris and family came back to Apollo Beach in March 1990, and we recorded the Shell and Maneuvers cassettes. In June of 1990 I traveled to Memphis and we recorded tSkull and Ditch (with Mike Jackson) at Harsh Reality Music headquarters. Chris came back to Apollo Beach one more time in late 1990, and we recorded Quake. Then I visited Chris again in June 1991 and we recorded our Coincidence cassette and the Phinney /McGee collab with Henson and Moneymaker, titled Cobra. Since that era of 1989 to 1991, we have recorded numerous in-person collabs along with several mail collaborations. The in-person collabs seem to work out best, or are the most fun at the very least.
JK: One of the things I like about the Phinney/McGee albums is how deep space exploratory they are. This stands out more so in Hal’s case as being different from his other projects.
CP: I was doing space rock with Viktimized Karcass. But we just got together to record improvisational music. I’m happy with the way Usufruct turned out. It’s a damn good tape.
HM: It is true that prior to Usufruct I had not done a lot of free improvisation-based work. During the Bwana Dog tour of 1987 Al Margolis and I always freely improvised from scratch in the second half of our performances, with him on bass guitar and me on Moog Rogue. The Dog As Master cassette that came closest to Usufruct was Weed on Mike Jackson's XKurzhen Sound label in 1988. That was all 4-track synth stuff. But other than those things and some live recordings with Jabon that were improvised, most of what I had done prior to that had been 4-track tape collage with electronics.
JK: Who came up with the track titles?
CP: I think maybe I named most of the tracks and he named the tape. That one titled ‘Ethiopian Cuisine’, that’s based on the Ethiopian restaurant we ate at. You basically eat with your hands with the bread they give you. We had flank steak that they marinade for like seven days. They don’t cook, it, they just marinade to cook it.
HM: Yeah, going to that Ethiopian restaurant was one of the highlights of our time together. That steak tartare dish Chris is talking about was awesome! It's not something I would eat these days, I must say! It was called Kitfo and it was raw ground beef that had been marinated in spices. As Chris said we ate it by scooping it up with pieces of spongy injera, which was a traditional Ethiopian bread made from an ancient grain called teff. The kitfo was served on top of a huge circular piece of injera. We'd tear off a piece of the injera and grab up some kitfo.
JK: ‘Sunrise/Sunset on the Bay’, I’m guessing that was inspired by Apollo Beach?
CP: That was Tampa Bay. Hal lived in Apollo Beach on Tampa Bay. The track ‘Pelican Waltz’, pelicans are one of my favorite birds. I might have come up with that one.
HM: I think these titles are good examples of how our leisure time together and our recordings were inter-related. I am not saying that these abstract electronic pieces were meant to directly convey imagery of the titles. Albums such as Usufruct are about friendship, about sharing not only sounds, but also meals, cups of coffee, long chats, and chill-out sessions. In-between sessions we'd drive around, soaking up the sights and sounds and sun of the Tampa Bay Area, and then we'd come back to my place and record. These times together while not recording inspired the music. Art and Life came together and were one and the same, as they always should be (at least in my view of things).
JK: I Googled ‘usufruct’ and got this definition: “The right to enjoy the use and advantages of another's property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.” Any special meaning as regards this tape?
CP: I can’t remember. But that definition resonates with me as far as using each other’s equipment.
HM: I think that our use of the word "usufruct" for the title of the album was a broad interpretation of the word meant to convey the reciprocal give and take, back and forth nature of collaboration. There's nothing quite like the high, quite like the rush that we felt when our intuitive juices were flowing in a free improvisational jam. It was a high in and of itself, and like no other!
