Chapter 33
Pixieland - Where All
The Dead Jazz People Go
"
The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source
of human genius."

Honore de
Balzac

Upstairs, post-gig at
The Cafe Damberd, Ghent, July 1985. It's mid-way through that year's
Gentse Feesten, and the Ether in Ghent is particularly warped, the
collective mood somewhat circumspect. Just last night, in the middle
of a massive storm, an electrician has died, electrocuted while
trying to cope with a deluge of water down the side of one of the
stages.
An interview is taking
place, with Birgit Virnich of the West German Radio Station WDR.
The album "Shove
it!" has been released and a tour of France, Belgium, Holland,
Germany, Austria and Switzerland beckons. Over in one corner of
the cavernous attic Louis is trying to master the mouthpiece and
fingering of a newly acquired trumpet. Gene is similarly pushing
himself outside his comfort zone, as always. He is busy learning
how to extricate unearthly noises from a baritone saxophone, his
own recent acquisition.
Xero is a tad introspective,
deep in thought following his own brush with death - his own electrocution
earlier in the evening by the faulty pandemoniphone.

©barbara christina wuellenweber
"It's no good"
he says, sitting back in his chair, shaking his head and ruefully
surveying the dials and wires of his Creation. "It'll have
to be pensioned off. Either that or re-named The Death Pandemoniphone."
Birgit's friendly manner
helps the three of them to feel at ease, and during the course of
a couple of hours of chatting and taping, she records several interesting
conversations for posterity.
BV: "Could
you see what you're doing as a fashion that people might take to
and that you could reach something like 'cult' status?"
Xero: " Well....it
could be but - I don't know - I mean, it's a bit tricky really. We're having
it here in Ghent 'cause we've played here a lot - people expecting
things now where they didn't before. They expect it to be different
and wonderful and completely separate from the last time every time
they see it and of course it isn't really. I mean, we do 'compositions'
which stay more or less the same - the important parts - the improvising
- the tunes are whatever they are: funny or vicious or sad or happy. But a lot of people expect it to be like the first time they
ever had an orgasm every time...."
Interview-orgasm by solomonrobson
BV: "You pick a lot
of things up from scrapyards?"
Xero: "Yeah, I make
instruments out of junk, hence the name of the music really."
BV: "Do you like
that name?"
Gene: "Yeah!"
Xero: "Yeah....well....a
lot of people have always called it 'punk jazz' here. With this
group. In Europe. I don't know who started it (it wasn't us) - but
somebody started it in a review and they all call it that now, and
put it on posters and things. But we do play some 'funk' as well
from time to time - so that's, like, 'jazz funk'. So it's, like,
'jazz funk' and 'punk jazz' and we use a lot of (sighs) found objects
so JUNK seems quite appropriate.......if you ask
me."
Interviewjunkscrapyards by solomonrobson

©barbara christina wuellenweber
"....That sort of
attitude I think is one of the things that makes us try to do new
things as much as we can. It's always in our minds to try to do
things differently - or to try to do the whole thing radically differently
- but that's the thing that we can do, cause we've made it up. The music that we play as a group, we
can make all the rules up for it. We can do, if we want to, a country
and western night. Cause noone can say ' ah you're a heavy metal
band and you have to do this and do that for 25 years '. I mean,
we won't do anything like that. We can play any tune we want. Either
make em up or 'find' one that someone else has made up
and it 'becomes' ours.
We can borrow from any
style we fancy at any time. So...'cult' - I don't know. I suppose
you could, but it's probably not narrowly defined enough to be brilliant
for a 'cult' thing."
InterviewAttitudeCult by solomonrobson
Xero Slingsby gave us an invaluable insight into
the true trajectory of genius and something fleetingly, instantaneously
intangible that some people refer to as "Jazz". When asked
all-too-precious questions about Genres or Techniques or Musicianship,
he would always shrug his shoulders and play down any suggestions
that he might be a bit Special by saying that all he did was blow
down things and wiggle his fingers around. And all Gene and Louis
did was hit things and pluck things, respectively. When he made
a mistake, he reckoned the best method of dealing with it was to
repeat it a few times so that everyone would think he had intended
it all along. He was proud of finally working out what all of the
keys on his saxophone did, bar one.
"That one there -
I'm not quite sure what that one does."

©barbara christina wuellenweber
Xero often railed against
locking music up in "serious" institutions such as Music
Colleges and Jazz Societies and against agonising over the Meaning
of it all. To Slingsby, music was a thing of the people and for
the people and was, most of all, to be Enjoyed. All of that soulless "trad"
jazz and dixieland, and all of that arty, wanky, self-important
"Modern Jazz" stuff, to Xero that was the music of the hell realms,
on continuous loop. His favourite retort to those that waffled on about Jazz was "Jazz is Dead! I killed it"
Wherever Xero is now,
you can be sure he'll be playing "Pixieland, where all the
dead jazz people go" and there will be much jumping about,
whooping and hollering, lots of sweating and smiles all round.
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