If this 1970 LP by folk-jazz-rock ensemble The Insect Trust is considered an almost mystical object by the souls who are hip to it, it’s due as much to the people who are said to be on the LP as for the album itself. In hushed tones, it is said one of its horn players was Robert Palmer, later to become a renowned music critic and historian; that several of its tracks featured the great Elvin Jones, the long-time drummer for John Coltrane; and finally, and most intriguing to the people who are drawn to it, that America’s most reclusive and arguably most brilliant novelist, Thomas Pynchon, was somehow involved in the LP’s making.
Well, first the good news. Robert Palmer did indeed play alto saxophone, clarinet, and recorder (alongside Trevor Koehler, who played more horns than I can name here, and a couple of guys who played trumpet) for the band, and Elvin Jones does indeed play on two of Hoboken Saturday Night’s tracks, along with the great funk drummer Bernard Purdie, who also contributed.
Now for the bad news, at least for you Pynchon fans. I always imagined Pynchon showing up at the studio’s back door in the dead of night, in a stained bathrobe and camouflage boonie hat, to play some primitive guitar riffs and smoke lots of very high quality Mexican dope. Unfortunately, Pynchon’s only input to the LP consists of the lyrics to “The Eyes of a New York Woman,” and they weren’t even original lyrics but simply words lifted from his novel V. I know, bummer. How the band got the rights to use Pynchon’s words would probably make for an interesting story; did they actually know literature’s most mysterious figure, who makes J.D. Salinger look like a publicity hog, or did they deal solely with a third party?
And now for the rest of the good news. Hoboken Saturday Night is one very eclectic and enjoyable album. The Insect Trust, whose name came from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and which came to be in Our Year of the Lord 1967, are all over the place. Horns blow ersatz ragtime or simply wax lovely and wild (see “Our Sister the Sun”), vocalist Nancy Jeffries has a delightfully folksy voice (see “Our Sister the Sun, “Reincarnations”), and the rockers actually rock, despite the fact that the band was short on rock musicians and heavy on jazz musicians, folkies (multi-instrumentalist Luke Faust, formerly of the Holy Modal Rounders), and blues guys (guitarist Bill Barth). That the Insect Trust made such excellent music from such a hash of musical styles is nothing short of miraculous.
My favorites on the LP are the rocking title track, the picking and grinning folk number “Reincarnations” with its nice harmonica work by Faust, and the very strange “Glade Song,” whose lyrics are first sung by a child, then by some deranged vocalists, and which boasts one very wild horn cacophony, under which Elvin Jones does his thing. But I also love the funk rocker “Ducks,” which Purdie keeps percolating with some truly inspired drumming over which the horn players lay down some heavy shit. Meanwhile, Faust (or Barth, who knows?) plays some great freak-out guitar. As for the vocals, well, they’re… strange. I don’t think any real words are uttered, but what good have real words ever done anybody?
“Ragtime Millionaire” is self-explanatory, while “The Eyes of a New York Woman” is slow and sweet and features a sort of Lou Reed feel, that is until the horns come in and Palmer’s lovely recorder takes over. “The eyes of a New York woman,” sings Jeffries, “will never cry for me,” while Trevor Koehler’s “Somedays” is a Mexicali-tinged wild ride complete with some great ensemble playing by the horns and some equally frantic vocals by Koehler, I believe. Could almost be a proto-Jane’s’ Addiction tune, it could. Meanwhile, “Our Sister the Sun” features the fantastic drum work of Jones, Jeffries’ folksiest vocals, and some horns that run the gamut from folksy to free jazz skronk. Ordinarily I’d write this one off as the kind of Renaissance Faire musique I avoid like the black plague, but Jones’ playing is too cool and the horns are just too freewheelin’ like Bob Dylan, man.
“Reciprocity” sounds like something you might have heard come out of a Victor Talking Machine in 1933 and feels dated (“let’s say fuck the man and walk on the grass!” seems to be its message) despite Palmer’s thrilling recorder work, while “Trip on Me” is proto-feminist rock that I like because of its wild and wooly guitar work, if nothing else. It also sounds dated, what with Jeffries singing the likes of, “Don’t put your trip on me.” “Now Then Sweet Man” has an abracadabra vibe, features some cool flute by Koehler, to say nothing of some fine vocals by Jeffries. And it segues into an excellent take on the traditional “Mr. Garfield,” which is played on banjo and features the vocals (sorta buried) of Faust, but is too short for my liking.
Hoboken Saturday Night was the second and last of the Insect Trust’s contributions to American culture, and is required listening not just for its cult value but for the way it demonstrates just what a boiling stewpot of disparate influences New York City was in the latter half of the sixties. Folkies mixed with rockers who mixed with jazzbos who hung with blues and funk musicians, and the results can be heard on the lovable mongrel that is Hoboken Saturday Night. It was anything goes, and with that attitude came a joyful sense of liberation that is infectious. Check this one out. Who knows? Maybe Thomas Pynchon really did play guitar in his bathrobe on the mofo, but required the band to take a vow of secrecy. Wouldn’t that be cool?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
