VOODOO

Traveling With Electronics : VOODOO

I look back and see the future

.....Indoor Life 

San Francisco around 1979-80, was one of the locations where music was going through another stage of evolution in the melting pot of the punk scene, when for a brief moment, the door of genre opened wide enough to allow a number of rather unique ensembles some bin space in the record stores and places to perform. As long as you wore black & red, your songs were relatively short and there was a genuine intensity to what you did, pretty much anything was "punk" at that point in time.....and what a wild time it was.

rack rig - circa 1981 - (anvil double walled rack case - approx. 23" x 23" x 39" - 150 lbs)

Korg p2v (pre midi pitch to voltage converter) driving an SMS voice 400 analog synthesizer,

from a transducer pick-up in the mouthpiece of the horn - plus a dynamic mic in the bell of the

horn going into the following effects chain : MXR distortion +, Goodrich volume, ADA flanger,

Mutron phasor, Roland re 301 chorus echo (tape delay w/ SOS), Furman PQ6 equalizer.

This plus an Oberheim 4 voice synth, Octave cat synth, Casio 202, tapes & drum machines,

was what I played in the Art/Punk band INDOOR LIFE.  Joseph Sabella played drums, the

Oberheim synthesizer & drum machines, Bob Hoffnar played bass, feedback bass & guitar

and Jorge Socarras was the singer & possessed front man for this truly unique ensemble.

We opened for Captain Beefheart (during his Doc at the Radar Station period). We toured 

with TUXEDO MOON & SNAKE FINGER, shared concerts with DNA, and my favorite,

a truly eclectic triple bill concert @ The Ritz (NYC), with Ruben Blades and Philip Glass.

Now 30 years later Compost Records has released a Re-Mastered 2 CD set of recordings 

INDOOR LIFE (the complete catalog) available now  Indoor Life – Indoor Life «Compost Records

 Full length version of VOODOO - 5 New Re-Mixes - un-released material  NOH ESCAPE

 - Mike Thorne's full length production of SEARCHING - All Re-Mastered & Re-Packaged

 inside cover photo - (possibly, from an early 1980 show @ CLUBFOOT in San Francisco) 

 poster 

.....how is that for a thirty year blast from the past!

VOODOO was the signature piece for the band and encompassed everything we were about at that time - funky grooves - trance states - lyrical imagery - poly tonal poly rhythmic density.

The main bass line was on tape. I played the part on the Octave Cat analog synth (without a click track), for 30 minutes straight to cassette and that tape was used every time we played the song (even on the original studio recording). 

Joe had a big speaker behind his drums that only had the tape tracks in it and he just rocked it to tape every time - bass and drums.

Bob played high bass parts - counter melodic and counter rhythmic parts as well as feedback. 

I had the mic'ed sound of the bone going through distortion plus the synth sounds I was driving with the bone. The synth had a white noise oscillator, a tonal oscillator tuned an octave up and a second tonal oscillator tuned a 4th up. I could (foot) switch each oscillator on and off against the sound of the bone creating a large sonic palette. Everything went into the tape delay which provided the funky rhythm guitar like swing.

During performances of this song (that would average about fifteen minutes), Jorge would become quite possessed - the crowds just loved that shit!

check out the single length audio version of Voodoo & the video of Archeology below

until next month then....."just do what you do what you do you do"

safe travels.....dino