September 10–17, 1998

music

Slap Happy

		Slapp Shot: Poet/ cartoonist/ Avant-rock guitarist Peter Blegvad returns with a solo album and the first output in 20 years from Slapp Happy

Peter Blegvad is having a (Henry) cow.

by a.d. amorosi

It's the first gorgeous day of September and Peter Blegvad is indoors, dividing time between a Manhattan recording studio and rehearsals for his role in next week's four-day "Congress of the Avant-Rock Titans" at the Knitting Factory.

"I don't feel particularly titanic," says Blegvad. He'll be bringing his bands Breadvan, Unearthed (both with twist-tuned guitar god Fred Frith), and his own trio to the Knitting Factory. He'll be bringing just the trio to Philadelphia Saturday night. Deeming Blegvad a "rock titan" might sound absurd—no more absurd than most of the 47-year-old's catalog—but it's apt.

Since the early '70s, songwriter/singer/guitarist Blegvad has either started or participated in avant-rock's most oblique, silly, complex and surprisingly catchy moments; the moody cabaret of Slapp Happy, the scattered socialist muzak of Henry Cow, the pulpy improvs of The Lodge and Golden Palominos and guest shots on discs from John Zorn and Victoria Williams. If all this wasn't enough, he's created nearly a dozen solo efforts.

For all Blegvad's lyrical twists and musical turns the outcome is deeply personal and wildly prismatic. Whether it's the wry sentiment found on his new solo effort, Hangman's Hill (Cuneiform), or the psychedelic romanticism written for German chanteuse Dagmar Krause on Slapp Happy's first disc in 20 years, Ca Va (V2), Blegvad never fails to amaze. Plus (phew), he's a regarded teacher, pamphletist, poet and cartoonist in a league with Joseph Cornell and Duchamp.

"I wanted to be a poet but I couldn't stand seeing the language there all alone. I felt words drew strength either in congress with drawing—which is why I'm a cartoonist—or music. I started playing guitar even though I wasn't particularly nimble or good." The joint inspirations for writing and illustrating came from being brought up by fantastical parents who were famous children's' book author/illustrators (translations of Hans Christian Anderson, Mudpies & Other Recipes, Bedknobs & Broomsticks) with famous friends like Maurice Sendak and Edward Gorey.

		"When I listen to my stuff I can't believe I had the nerve to do it. At least I haven't got worse."

"Gorey was a real inspiration," says Blegvad, "having liberated himself from all commercial consideration, a very obstinate man." Blegvad could be talking about his own radical time spent in art school in late '60s/early '70s Britain where the teachers were lively and the living was easy. "It was an erotic hotbed," he laughs. "Sport yourself however you please." There he made the acquaintance of multi-instrumentalist Anthony Moore ("Neal Cassady to my Kerouac," says Blegvad of his collaborator) who was already making Varese-like entities for the Euromarket.

"One day Anthony thought it might be nice to make records people would actually buy. Hell, anybody can write pop songs if you get 'em high enough, so we set our course."

They introduced him to freestyle German instrumentalists Faust (who backed them on mad '70s classics Sort Of and Casablanca Moon) and what started out as a subversive art experiment to make fun of pop turned into the magical free arena of Slapp Happy. The band became the communal communist instrumental collective Henry Cow (they put out '75's Desperate Straights and In Praise Of Learning). Blegvad was fired from the "strictly tedious doctrine" of the Cow, taking the exquisite rhythm section of Chris Cutler and John Greaves with him to create the glut of Blegvad's solo discs, up to and including this month's new Hangman's Hill.

"For 25 years vagaries and chaos kept us together as friends and occasional collaborators," says Blegvad of his relationships to both Happy and Henry members. For a man tagged as absurdist and oblique (who makes giddy pop tunes about Magritte or Byron or Kafka?) his contributions to both Ca Va and Hangman's Hill are shockingly accessible, beautifully melodic, humorously romantic and bountifully Blegvadian.

"Ever since Naked Shakespeare [1983] my writing and recording, though divvied up between the accessible and the oblique, has informed each other. I like to surrender control of the writing process to chance and dream reception. At the same time I love folk music and John Lennon and Raymond Carver stories that cut to the quick. They make the universal perfect and clear. So I have two distinct strands of songmaking."

On Ca Va Blegvad's pixilated romantic world view is filtered through a richly orchestrated but breezy cabaret sound and the dramatic whisper of Krause. On the lap-steel laced intricate pop of Hangman's Hill, Blegvad's voice is uncomfortably snug and chillingly cutting. "[Krause] brings things out I could never do," says Blegvad. "I hate my voice. I have to sing-speak. I belabor my message while she brings remarkable character to my words. She can croon and hold vibrato. When I listen to my stuff I can't believe I had the nerve to do it. At least I haven't got worse."

Dividing his time between New York and London, this creative writing teacher and illustrator/writer (for London mags and rags like The Independent, MOJO, Sight and Sound and Spectator) says he sees himself more as a literary performance artist than a "rock guy."

"I never learned to read or really write music. No one else can understand my charts. Getting better at guitar and piano almost screws me up a bit. It's precisely my ignorance that drives me on. I think it's my willful perversity and lack of gung ho attitude to succeed that makes me different."

Blegvad says all this with great humorous inflection as if he's creating a weird radio play in his head.

"I could be more successful. People have said I sound like Randy Newman or Ry Cooder. But as soon as they say it I move away from it. I think what a creative artist does is create an imaginary realm only to spend the rest of his life defending it. And that's utter vanity. And that's where I'm at. Stuff better left for a psychiatrist. Hideous isn't it?"

If Blegvad, avant-rock's most melodic illustrator, were to be immortalized in song—as he has done for Kafka or Byron—what would he like said about him?

"Call me Sleepy Pete, sitting on a log with a stalk of alfalfa in my mouth having forgotten my daughter's wedding."

The Peter Blegvad Trio appears at Upstairs at Nick's on Saturday, Sept. 12, 16 S. Second St. 928-0665.