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NOVEMBER 15 - 22 / 2007

THE GEORGIASTRAIGHT 71

MUStC

Sorbara'sDragonetteoozessex and swagger
A
V

Winning major points for telling it like it is, a noticeably
pissed Martina Sorbara spares no
details when she calls in from a Travelodge in Winnipeg.
"We just got fucking fucked by our
hotel," says the London, Englandbased frontwoman for Dragonette.
"So I told them that, every single interview today, I'm going to tell people
what a horrible hotel they are. I said
lots of other mean things-I've probably never said that many mean things
to one person. I think it might probably have something to do with some
PMS I'm having, and also some back
pain. But whatever-the woman at the
desk got the short end of my stick."
To help take the edge off things, Sorbara cracks open a beer mid-interview.
In true rock 'n' roll style, she confesses
it's not from the hotel minibar, but that
she found it rolling around the floor of
the Dragonette tour van. If her mid-afternoon boozing and entertaining onthe-rag ranting drive anything home,
it's that Sorbara doesn't have a lot of
time for bullshit. And sure enough,
she couldn't be more forthright on
Galore,the synth-pop-saturated debut
disc from the band that includes her
husband, Don Kurtz, on bass, guitarist Will Stapleton, and drummer Joel
Stouffer. The deliciously hyper-processed kickoff track, "I Get Around",
for example, has her proudly suggesting that she gets more action than
Winona Ryder did during the grunge
years. And "Competition" lyrics like
"Your girlfriend's no competition/
Goodness I like this being your mistress" take on some weight when you
know that Sorbara and Kurtz started
shagging when there was another
woman in the picture.
Take a strong undercurrent of sex
and combine it with an aesthetic that
meshes the spirit of the neon-lit '80s
with everything from Sgt. Pepper psychedelia ("True Believer") to ragtime
jazz ("Get Lucky"), and you've got a
formula that has the United Kingdom
all atwitter. But for all the gushing accolades from the NME, Uncut, and the
Times, life isn't yet Rolls-Royces and
hanging out with the Spice Girls.
"London is just so much harder than
people think," Sorbara says. "There are
so many bands, and so many people
there slogging it out. It's really hard to
explain. But it was something that I felt
I really had to do. It's not like I'm living in London because I think it's the
best place on Earth. It was more that I
could have stayed in Toronto, blinked,
and then be 55."
Yes, as much as Dragonette seems
like the U.K:slatest flavour of the week,
both Sorbara and Kurtz come from
the Centre of the Universe. Sorbarawhose father, Greg, serves as the Ontario government's minister of finance-in
fact spent the post-Lilith '90s toiling
away as a solo artist, even landing on
one of those Women & Songs compilations that seemed to pop up every six
months. What makes her grateful for
Dragonette is that she's able to indulge
whatever obsession she might have at
any given moment, which explains, for
example, the authentic Bollywood undertow in the thrillingly exotic "Marvellous''. If she's going to channel her
Travelodge encounter, we can presumably expect a future work that sounds
like Rage Against the Machine teamed
up with OTEP.
"What I was doing before was very
monochromatic-it was basically piano and guitar," Sorbara admits. "Because of that, I had no avenue for what
was going on in my head. That's why
Dragonette is so colourful and all over
the place. All this stuff never had a way
out until now."

that likes harmony-and that's what
I'm coming out with. I'm not coming
out as a gay person, I'm coming out
as someone who wants harmony and
melody to stay."
> ALEXANDER
VARTY

Marilyn Lerner plays the St. John's
College Lounge at UBC on Friday
(November 16).

Myers
helps
locals
toast
theimprov
sound
ofNOW
A
V

..;:

◄
J

.:
..

For undisclosed reasons. Dragonette·s show at Larry'Flynt's Hustler Club was forced to close after one performance.

and helped by the late Frank Zappa's
place in the public mind. It's not that
the elder Zappa has been forgotten; far
from it. But it's possible that he's remembered for all the wrong things.
"The casual person, if you ask
them 'Hey, have you heard any
Frank Zappa music?' they don't
necessarily come up with songs that
reflect Frank's work as a composer,"
explains Dweezil, on the line from a
Richmond, Virginia, tour stop. "It's
always songs like 'Titties & Beer' or
'Don't Eat the Yellow Snow' or maybe 'Valley Girl'. So if you say that he's
a composer and those are the only
songs that they know, people just
don't understand."
Musicians-especially those who've
attempted to play the legendarily
challenging "The Black Page" or
the equally daunting "G-Spot Tornado" -know better. Frank Zappa
was an incisive social satirist and a
humorist with an unusually scatological bent, but he was also an extremely inventive composer and a
captivatingly idiosyncratic guitar
stylist. Those are the aspects of his
father that Dweezil is celebrating
with his Zappa Plays Zappa project, and even for him it's not an
easy undertaking.
"I had to study the music for two
years before I put the band together,"
reveals the guitarist. "The thing that
really makes Frank's playing different is his phrasing, and that comes
from being a drummer first. Often
he'll attach notes to rhythmic permutations that are abnormal for a
> MIKE USINGER guitar player-and
that's the part
that's most challenging for me, beDrag onette plays the Plaza next cause I don't have that background.
Thursday (November 22).
"As far as the guitar, it's changed
what I'm capable of tenfold," he
continues. "It's the best thing that I
could ever recommend for anyone
who wants to become better on any
\
instrument. Learn some of Frank's
A Like any dutiful son, Dweezil music, and then you can apply so
V Zappa wants to ensure that his many things that you learn from it."
father's work earns the respect it's
But there's a bigger mandate bedue-and in this he's both hindered hind Dweezil's tribute band than

Dweezil
Zappa
pays
tribute
tohisdad's
musical
genius

--::

THE GEORGIASTRAIGHT NOVEMBER 15 - 22 / 2007

simply reminding the world that his
dad was a genius. When the 38-yearold performer looks at the contemporary pop scene he sees a creative
wasteland, and his aim is to return
some lustre to the musician's role.
"One of Frank's most famous quotes
is 'Music is the best,'" Dweezil stresses.
''Above all else, he revered the process
of creating music, and so the underlying thing here is about having respect
for what you do. It's not about a formula or presenting something in a crass,
commercial way: it's about trying to
make music, and that's why I think
Frank's work has so much longevity. I
mean, some of these songs are 40 years
old, and they sound as contemporary
and cutting-edgenow as they did then.
I can only imagine how it must have
freaked people out hearing 'Brown
Shoes Don't Make It' in 1966. We play
that song, and it still sounds like nothing you've ever heard."

doing the music, so we'll just have to
see how it goes.
"If my work was text-based, it
might be different," she continues. "I
just find it very difficult, as a musician, to have to define my music in
terms of my gender. On the other
hand, it is implicit that if others before me hadn't put their asses on the
line, I'd be in the closet. The fact that
I'm out and I'm showing my work is
testament to the fact that things have
changed, and for that reason alone I
feel that it [the conference] is cool."
It's clear that Comin' Out Swingin' has got Lerner thinking: she
mentions her friendship with pianist Fred Hersch, one of the few
openly gay men in mainstream jazz,
and how he once told her that there
was a point in his career "when he
wouldn't play ballads because they
sounded too gay". Now, of course,
Hersch is renowned for his ballads,
> ALEXANDERVARTY and no one ascribes his elegant touch
to his sexual orientation.
Zappa Plays Zappa plays the
It took a while for Lerner to disOrpheum on Tuesday (November 20). cover her own forte, although in her
case it was curiosity that delayed her
progress. "Sometimes I can't get my
head around all the stuff I've done,''
she says. "When I look at my body
of work, I'm not unhappy with it, alA Marilyn Lerner knows exactly though there have been times where
V what ~he's going to do as part it has felt like 'Who am I? What am
of the Comin' Out Swingin' sympo- I? What's my voice?' But as I get
sium on sexuality and improvised older I'm realizing that it's been a
music. On Friday (November 16) worthwhile personal road."
afternoon, she'll present a retroSo far, that path has encompassed
spective look at her musical history, classical training, jazz studies, memwhile that,evening she'll play a solo bership in the Flying Bulgar Klezmer
concert in which she'll draw heav- Band, and no small amount of exily on Romanian Fantasy, her 2006 perimentation-all
of which come
tribute to the music of her Eastern together in the vibrant and expressive Romanian Fantasy. Are its soulEuropean ancestors.
Just why she's been invited to the ful 19th-century shtetl melodies the
Coastal Jazz and Blues Society- music she was born to play?
sponsored -conference and concert
"Well, they feel very emotionally
series is another matter altogether. connected to me, and that's some"As far as being gay and an impro- thing I really value," she says. "And
viser, it's a tricky question," she says, I'm feeling more integrated as an arton the lin~ from her Toronto home. ist than I ever did. Even if I'm play"I don't think there is such a thing ing free, there's always a part of me
as gay mu ;ic. But I am gay, and I am that likes melody and a part of me

Lerner's
Fantasy
continues
herjourney
ofdiscovery

The New Orchestra Workshop
Society-Vancouver's premier
contemporary jazz ensemble, and
a major breeding ground for new
talent-celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. To mark the occasion, NOW's artistic director, Coat
Cooke, is bringing in a particularly
appropriate special guest: singer,
pianist, composer, and educator
Amina Claudine Myers.
Myers is a good choice because
she's been involved with celebratory
sounds almost from birth, having
grown up in the African-American
gospel tradition of her native Arkansas. That in itself represents something to the members of NOW: although these Vancouver improvisers
have long cultivated important ties
with their European counterparts,
the music they play is still deeply
rooted in New Orleans-style collective polyphony, the bebop of Charlie
Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the
freer sounds of Ornette Coleman
and John Coltrane. As a keyboardist
with a classically trained touch and
an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz
history, Myers is a good conduit to
both streams of thought.
But there's more: although the 65year-old musician was a professional
by the time she was in her teens, it
wasn't until she moved to Chicago
in 1966 that she learned just how big
the world of art could be. And she did
that as part of the Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians,
which is very much to the Windy City
what NOW is to our rainy one.
"The AACM was very open for its
members," Myers explains from her
New York City home, where she's
enjoying a restful Saturday morning.
"In other words, I was able to play
with all the musicians in there. And
they were painting and writing poetry and doing anything they wanted
to do. So I went 'Oh, oh, oh! Okay,
I can do that, too.' I'd been playing
with [bop sax virtuosos] Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, and that was
more or less traditional music; you
had to play chords within the structure of so-called jazz or whatever.
But the AACM really opened me up
to just how creative I could be.''
Since her Chicago days, Myers
has explored her creativity through
diverse means, including collaborations with various AACM colleagues,
bassist-producer Bill Laswell, and
First Nations saxophonist Jim Pepper. Most recently, she's been writing
for her own vocal ensembles, most
of which combine operatic singers
with her own keyboard accompaniment. She notes that it's not always
easy for divas and divos to shed their
formal training, but it usually proves
worthwhile.
"Most of the choral people-in
fact, all of them-had
never improvised before,'' she says of the
16-member choir she leads. "But
they enjoyed it once they started
working on it. It was a challenge for
them-but it was also fun, because
they could do whatever they wanted
within the format."
Myers should have an easier time
conducting the six singers Cooke has
hired to augment the NOW's rhythm
section and horns: with Christine
Duncan, DB Boyko, Viviane Houle,
and Peter Hurst in the lineup, improvisational brilliance will be assured. In fact, the keyboardist is
the one who'll be tested: she's written for large ensemble and for choir,
but never for both at the same time.
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