The Sugarcane Harris rabbithole: NO FUN, Frank Zappa, and how Funky Nothingness leads to The Pure Food and Drug Act

So this is interesting, something I have not really experienced before: my slide down a musical rabbithole is being lubed in unique ways by another person -- both in his capacity as a friend and as a musician/ sometimes interview subject. 

I wrote about Don "Sugarcane" Harris and David M. before, involving a song he wrote that mentioned Don (and his former vocal group "Don and Dewey") which he performed in person for Don when NO FUN opened for Tupelo Chain Sex at the Luv-a-Fair back in the 80s. I delved a bit further into Sugarcane and Stumuk's association with Zappa in in an interview with Zappa scholar and author Charles Ulrich. David, for his part, has not actively pressed anything towards me on this topic at all (unlike he is inclined to do, for instance, with Christmas movies and Mary-Poppins-related materials for my wife, perceiving us of having a possible deficit in these areas: "Do you even own The Bells of St. Mary's?"/ "You gave it to me last year."/ "That was a DVD, this is a blu-ray": it's not actually a conversation we have had, but still quite representative and wholly possible). Far from driving it, he has mostly let my interest flourish at its own pace. But he has considerately kept me appraised about new Zappa Trust releases, which he forwards from a mailing list he is on. He's been doing that despite my frequent replies of "Wow, sounds cool, but I'm trying to cut back" and (I think I have told him) the knowledge that I am having nightmares where I am failing to attend to family emergencies because I am distracted by shopping for records (or, say, other dreams where I am spending $250 per on really special records -- in my dreams, in my dreams alone -- which purchases I then must either hide or justify to Erika). 

But my, those Zappa releases have indeed sometimes seemed cool. A few of them have battered at the wall I have erected around me on which it is written, YOU HAVE ENOUGH ZAPPA. But there were a couple I might have purchased, had I run across them the day after payday, tho' I might have also had soul-saving neon go off in my head had I tried: YOU HAVE HAVE EIGHT MORE ZAPPA ALBUMS THAN YOU ARE LISTENING TO AS IT IS; THIS WAY LIES MADNESS. SAY NO TO ZAPPA COMPLETISM. Then I would stand there in the store quivering for a minute, thinking, "But do I need this Zappa?" Not having found the ones I coveted has prevented us from seeing how well I would pass this test.

But Erie I would have bought, fer sure, so to speak. That's a really fun period of Zappa it documents, with ties to Apostrophe'-and-One Size Fits All-and-Zoot Allures, songs from all of which are represented, but prior to the period where my interest in Zappa fluctuates (Studio Tan -- it does recover a bit for the Joe's Garage period but my window of prime Zappa fandom is kind of 1969-1976, but especially July 1972-March 1974 (not counting releases of material of Zappa bands that had already dissolved at that time; I'm talking about material recorded or performed live during those years, or slightly thereafter). 

...Which does mean that the Zappa '75: Zagreb & Ljubljana release did appeal a bit, too, to be honest. But, like, "The Torture Never Stops" wasn't a thing yet, at that point, apparently; that's one of those Zappa songs I can always hear again, present on Erie, but not on Zagreb. All the same, that Zagreb thing was another one that I felt ping off my wall, and also one which I did actually come across and contemplate at the Sunrise in Guildford. By contrast, the 1971 Flo & Eddie years release didn't even make a sound as it sailed by; that's at every Sunrise everywhere, apparently, but I don't think I've even held it in my hands. 

Then along comes Funky Nothingness (deets for the 3 CD package here). I read enthusiastically about it -- starting with David's forwarded email -- before stumbling across the vinyl at Neptoon: "What's this about "meandering, revelatory jams?" The band includes Hot Rats alum? Sugarcane Harris is on it?" Even the title has appeal, derisively, darkly funny; even though it was apparently not intended by Zappa as a comment on these exact sessions, and is being repurposed from wholly elsewhere, it seems quite apt and well-selected and witty, considering what you get here, kinda akin to Albert Ayler entitling a blues workout on a late-phase album "Drudgery." I've seen people be somewhat dismissive at the nature of the sessions, and one can see why Zappa did nothing much with them himself; they have a relaxed, off-the-cuff, jammin'-in-the-studio vibe to them, intimate and of course terrifically played, but not especially ambitious or crafted, enough so that it's worth not getting too excited, or getting excited for the wrong reasons. Contra to what is being said at the Zappa Store, this is not the lost sequel to Hot Rats. That would be raising expectations far too high, setting Funky Nothingness up to fall. "Lost" is less apt than, maybe, "dismissed" (as mere Funky Nothingness), and it is no more a "sequel" to Hot Rats than basically any other material that Zappa and Sugarcane might have done after those epic Hot Rats sessions (the finest fruit of which, for showcasing Sugarcane, if you don't know it, is "The Gumbo Variations," which is also pretty loose and jammy, but also much more ambitious and boundary-pushing than the Funky Nothingness recordings). 

I can't emphasize enough how enjoyable it is to hear Zappa in a laid back context. Think about it: you don't get to hear Zappa just jam out, fuck around, relax with his instrument and musical peers all that often. Musicians do DO stuff like this, in working up songs (and a few pieces on this end up becoming pieces you will know from later albums). But we don't get to see how the sausage is made so much with Zappa; by the time they're being presented to audiences, his songs have been amply thought out, plotted, arranged, composed. Funky Nothingness is not that. It's a peek behind the curtain; and what you see is someone who is, more than trying to control and direct and compose, just enjoying himself, musically, with people he trusts and enjoys playing with.  

That's my impression of it, anyhow; and it's a treat. And if none of what Sugarcane does quite achieves the heat of "The Gumbo Variations," his playing is so enjoyable that, shortly after picking Funky Nothingness up, I returned to something I had started poking around with a few months ago, then got distracted from: exploring Sugarcane's other recorded work. I knew he had albums as bandleader, not that I'd encountered any until recently; they can be found on the internet in some form or other. But gee: would I care about a jazzy, funky violin adaptation of "Eleanor Rigby?" In honesty, when I first noticed that was one of the songs on Fiddler on the Rock, my reaction was, "ecch," but now that I've actually heard it, I'm in love. As I am with this time period in popular music, really. I quite enjoy a broad swath of 1969-1974 jazzy, Afrocentric blues/ funk/ rock, before the polish of commodification and mid-70's bloat (and "smoothness") set in. It was a really fertile period for music. People were coming to terms with all the acid they had been dropping, recording albums that sort of spoke to each other in interesting ways, making cultural connections, speaking to a shared and at least somewhat united audience who had been galvanized by the chaos of the 1960s and felt a sort of righteous togetherness. Hell, even Howlin' Wolf got into making a psych-rock album, speaking to that united youth culture. I started posting some Sugarcane discoveries from this window on Facebook...

...and that was when David M. poked his head up to point out that Harris was on John Mayall's USA Union, which I had not realized, because I do not know my Mayall. It's like he was waiting for the right moment to share (or maybe he'd mentioned the album previously and I just didn't pick up on it? There was a sense of "when the student is ready the teacher will come" to it all). Excited by what I could hear online, I rushed to Zulu and bought it, falling quite completely in love with it on the very first spin, Mayall's lyrical delivery is a bit quirky (and his poetry is a bit prosaic and on-the-nose at times) but the music itself is really delightful and Sugarcane is a strong presence. As is apparently the case on a few other Mayall albums, not yet gotten to... 

It was then an easy step to looking for other albums Sugarcane had been on as a sideman, which got me checking out Harvey Mandel, who is on Fiddler on the Rock but, even more relevantly, recorded in a band with Sugarcane called the Pure Food and Drug Act (who also do an "Eleanor Rigby," but the recording that time is live). It's kind of an unfortunate cover, really -- not the sort of album that you'd expect to be a winner, really, especially given that the inner gatefold (which I won't share) has some indication whose butt we may be looking at: in combination with the title, it's just flat-out a bad idea. What kind of "food" are we talking about here, exactly? There is a supremely funky, wildly-fiddled, seemingly vegetarian rocker on the album about "A Little Soul Food," but the cover seems to be moving more towards Long Pig territory. White butt is not soul food that I've ever heard of!

The other Mandel projects that I note Sugarcane being on -- The Snake and Shangrenade -- are a bit different, more about Mandel than Sugarcane, particularly The Snake; Allmusic points to the presence of Sugarcane Harris, and he is listed on the cover, but I've listened to the album twice through so far, albeit both times with some distractions, and it is striking that I can't spot Sugarcane, or any fiddling, at all. There's definitely some killer blues rock, with two guitars interacting, so it's not that I'm not enjoying it -- but the draw was Sugarcane, and I'm not hearing him. (he is more audible on the tracks he contributes to on Shangrenade, however, which I spun a side of last night; it's quite remarkable, much more interesting than the Allmusic 2-star rating would indicate, and has kind of amusing cover art that reveals decisively that the title is a portmanteau of "Shangri-la" and "hand grendade," just as it appears). It was maybe my best day at Neptoon in some time, scoring all these albums, plus another Mandel that doesn't even have Sugarcane (but that I remember liking when I heard it, that being Baby Batter). They even had a Fiddler on the Rock!

But that's still just the tip (or not very far down the shaft, as it were); there are other artists listed on Sugarcane's Wiki that I do not know, like Freddie Roulette and Johnny Otis (father of Shuggie, I believe); and people who I do know, who I didn't realize ever recorded with Sugarcane, like John Lee Hooker (I gotta get this album, which is from that same psych-funk youth culture fertile window I mentioned above; it's reviewed here by Eugene Chadbourne, somewhat dismissively, but he still manages to make it sound interesting).  

Anyhow, realizing just how many cool projects Sugarcane has appeared on, getting to appreciate the richness of his output even more -- it's not just Zappa and Tupelo Chain Sex and Don and Dewey anymore -- eventually made me think of M. again, especially since he pointed me at Mayall. Did he know all of this music when he interacted with Don? Had he heard Sugarcane with Mayall, Mandel, Otis, Hooker, etc?

David's reply on Facebook: 

Sure I did. He's a legend. Him being such a good humored, unaffected guy was very pleasing, and his friendly interactions with his band mates made him seem like he was really happy to be one of the guys. When they played, he was clearly in his element and enjoying being part of a lively ensemble. But did I have the slightest notion when I wrote "Don and Dewey" in the bridge of "Oh To Be On Heroin" that I'd be telling Don about it in a couple of years? No.

So there you have it. I think I need to find Keep on Driving and at least one of the John Lee Hooker and Johnny Otis albums that Sugarcane is on. THEN I WILL HAVE ENOUGH, right? (Oh, and I gotta replace Tupelo Chain Sex's Ja-Jazz. Why the hell did I ever sell that?). 

Wait, he's on Little Richard albums, too? Sweet Jesus!