by Christopher Walsh
Republic of Letters
The clarinet squeaks into form, alto and tenor sax squall agreeably, the tuba blows low, the big bass waits it out, solid and sound … the trombone’s spit-valves are clearly fully operational. Like any orchestra’s last minute thrumming, the honking hum of the Chandler Travis Philharmonic is as promising as a spring day; and a spring day is just what this small smoky bar could use on a cold November’s Tuesday night. True, the mandolin and accordion player Dinty Child at this moment seems to be tangled in cords, trumpeter Keiichi Hashimoto’s bunnyhead cap is askew, and Mr. Travis himself, busy distributing anthem lyrics to leery customers, has apparently misplaced his shoes. But when the bikini-ed Rikki Bates, much taller than most tall people, curvier than most curvy people, hinges his legs like a heron’s and in a single stride surmounts stage-step and drum set and sits himself down, his shaven white knees as high as his cymbals, you could hear a pint being ordered. Someone orders a pint–and just then, on Chandler’s “three,” Bates rat-a-tat-tats the rim, and the vocal ya-ya-yas of the overture begin, to be taken up triumphantly by the horns. The feisty “(I ain’t no) Nature Boy” quickly follows, then a funky romp through “Razorclams and Watercress,” at which point Mr. Travis pauses to boast about having played two songs in a row, and the momentum flags; this is blamed gently on the patrons, a few of’ whom are again having at the bartender, and cured by the monotonously rousing “Here We Go Audience (Here We Go).”
On to the faux-pop “Nose for Danger” then, utterly straight faced, Pat Boone’s “Wang Dang Taffy Apple Tango Mambo Cha-Cha-Cha,” and the swinging “Drive That Car Mabel.” The horns and woodwinds, an ever-changing cast of pros culled and cajoled from the vicinity (and made to wear goofy hats) by Mr. Travis, shuffle frantically through the sheet music, their only guide the magic-markered set list taped to a guitar case, the score that dictates the curious rhythm of a Philharmonic show. The a cappella “Thanksgiving in Stoughton” quiets into the blues-dirge “Cab is Dead,” then a version of Duke Ellington’s “Transblucency” gives way to the hybrid cover “Hello Doily McGee.” Thus is the mood made strange enough for the show-stopping “Meat Chant,” a Gregorian/muezzin treatment of “I threw some meat into the pond,” a poem that confirms Mr. Travis’ ain’t-no-nature-boy status.
This piece does indeed stop, but it does not end the show. The real climax comes with a heartfelt rendition of the Glenn Styler lounger, “You Killed My Love.” A stout drinker’s woman friend did it, apparently. Mr. Travis has looped the microphone cord around her neck. “You killed my love,” Travis cries as she stirs her drink with her finger, “stabbed it repeatedly.” The tiny bowling balls and pins that festoon his pajamas bounce as he sobs. “How you savored the agony, as it fought to survive!” He belts it out like Pavarotti?
OK, not like Pavarotti. But he holds the last note deep and true, defeated but defiant, until the manager tells him to please come down off the bar. The band as a whole, for that matter, score-shuffling and silly caps notwithstanding, sounds good, tight, rehearsed but not pre-meditated. John Styklunas’ bass work is somehow simultaneously taut and loose; trombonist Bob Pilkington fills the room. A bunch of old and new friends who happen to be awfully good musicians have gotten together at a neighborhood bar for a session led by a wizard in a bath-robe. The customers don’t know quite what to make of this production, but there’s no cover charge on Tuesdays. That the musicians have no chance of making money on this or any other venture is liberating, says Travis.
Well, good for him. But if he doesn’t sound like Pavarotti, then whom does he sound like? Like Johnny Mathis doing Mardi Gras on one song, actually, and Bing Crosby leading a blues band on the next. He is Jonathan Richman for adults, or e.e. cummings without the lyrical gift, but with a guitar and backing octet. But this business of comparing unknowns to well-knowns only profits the latter, no matter how flattering it’s supposed to be to the former. Tell x she looks like celeb. Rotunda Ravish, and Rotunda Ravish saps x’s personal glow. That’s what makes Ravish’s star burn bright. The beneficiaries of this unfair transaction in Mr. Travis’ case happen to have ranged (the reviewer allowed grudgingly) from the comedian George Carlin to, as one reporter put it, “an audience-friendly Charles Manson.” Labels that have been stuck to his music include “alternative dixieland,” “avant-jazz,” and “funk-swing.” Labels, though, like celebrities, are big business contrivances. Packaging helps preserve and market but it effaces human peculiarity, and Chandler Travis is nothing if not peculiar.
But if no labeling, no celebrity look-alike game, the review-stakes must be raised. What is the point of this Philharmonic phenomenon? Is there some world-historical, musico-literary significance to be appreciated here? What does Chandler Travis mean?Or is he post-modern, post-historical, another instance of the great crisis that afflicts us, a crisis that leads to either utter ironic disengagement–channel flipping with Beavis and Butthead–on the one hand, or blind faith on the other?
But most of us live somewhere in the middle. Chandler Travis left a low-level position in the Ford administration when a being who called himself Lippy Blappinklappy appeared to him in a dream and quoted Edgar Lee Masters: “The earth keeps some vibration going there in your heart, Mr. Assistant-to-the-Vice-Deputy Travis, and that is you.” Travis went forth to seek his public. Whitman had done the same a century earlier, with as little success but more innocence; he lived in a time when the mass media that make celebrities and labeling unavoidable were just aborning. Chandler Travis was and is living in an age of overwhelming advertising and remote spectatorship, where a few people who happen to be able to, say, hit a ball or sing a jingle are given so much wealth and attention that they can’t help but take themselves and their gig, whatever it is, very seriously; and where those who aren’t so esteemed are ignored, reduced to karaoke; where people would rather watch a bad movie on television than hear good live music, rather drive to the mall than walk to the corner bar. Also, this was in the 1970s, and the Manson murders had happened very recently.
Travis started a record company, Casual World Control, and put out the word, and an odd word it was. Consider this promotional material for his second album, “Hi, I’m Lippy Blappinklappy!”:
Hi, I’m Lippy Blappinklappy! Thanks for buying, getting, or otherwise having my new cassette ‘Hi, I’m Lippy Blappinklappy!’ (or even thinking about it!). Boy, you sure must have a lot of money, or maybe you got it somewhere else. It doesn’t make any differences! But it’s true that now here I am (or will be) nearer your head! They don’t have them like that today! Let’s music! [sic, sic, sic]
What we have here is a subversive critique of consumer culture; an appropriation of advertising language to both employ and deconstruct its bombast. With his old band The Incredible Casuals Travis did a record called “There Goes Five Dollars” (“Dispensable!” said the blurb). In the self-promotion game, Whitman had to sing of himself; Travis makes the audience do the dirty work. He distributes the words to “Chandler Travis, King of the World” before each show and, towards the end, shouting “Louder!” and “Enunciate!” harangues the customers into singing:
Chandler Travis, Chandler Travis–king of the world
I wonder where Chandler is tonight
Probably in his private Jet in France
Or maybe backstage right now, having sex
With one of these waitresses
Chandler Travis, Chandler Travis–so humble and good
Chandler Travis, Chandler Travis–whatever rhymes with humble and good!
They all love him; waitresses and stewardess–especially waitresses
–But they can’t touch him–he is unknowable!
Old, but not too old;
Bald, but not all bald;
Oh, what a dreamboat! Oh, what a dreamboat!
Chandler Travis, Chandler Travis–king of the world
“Subversive critique”? Ack. The only thing Travis subverts is the idea that a musical group should have a single characteristic look and sound. The only thing he deconstructs is the microphone stand. Then he puts it back together.
Is there, then, any point here? Is there an absurdist agenda, a pointed pointlessness to it all? No, this is no punk act. Even as they, at times, derange the styles they play, these musicians always respect them.
The lyrics do remark a couple simple things. You yet live-“Our hearts will beat until they stop,” Travis sings in “You and Me Pushing Up Daisies”-and others do too, an arrangement not without benefits, as “Haircut” attests:
We’ve been friends
for, say, how long would you estimate?…
If I don’t tell you who will?
Where did you get that awful haircut.
It makes your head look like
Hawaii.
But life and friendship are implied in the music itself-especially live music in an intimate setting-in the beat that repeats the heart’s pumping, and sets more than two feet tapping together. The Chandler Travis experience is not pointless, but blessedly point-free. Points are over-valued, anyway; people always trying to score and make and sharpen them. A Tuesday night without one is no small thing.