Review by: Captain Fidanza
When I was at school, anyone playing a percussion instrument was immediately considered to be something of a dullard. Unable to master the intricate feat of hand-eye-memory coordination necessary to play a violin or a piano, percussionists were recruited to the orchestra simply to hit wooden things with smaller wooden things, or if particularly fortunate, metal things with smaller metal things.
Children given percussion instruments were given those instruments, it seemed to my nine-year-old brain, because they were almost impossible to damage, being as they were, solid lumps of wood or metal, whereas violins and keyboards looked to have lots of small, delicate pieces which could easily be snapped off and placed in the pocket, thus hiding the crime forever.
I remember being given a triangle once and experiencing a powerful sensation I had yet to experience – I realize now that sensation was shame; I had been identified by the teacher as someone who was either unable to manage the complexity of a stringed instrument or unwilling to comprehend the delicacy required to handle them. In the ensuing lesson, I subverted the teacher’s low expectations of me by gracelessly smashing the fuck out of the triangle and ruining the experience for everyone.
Fortunately for everyone, John Colpitts of Man Forever did not attend my school, because if he had, he would have been given a woodblock and told to sit in the corner whilst some arsehole who had private piano lessons was fawned over by the teacher. I imagine Colpitts probably went to one of those incredible schools they have in New York where the natural abilities of weird kids are nurtured carefully into bloom by dedicated professionals instead of being pounded out of them by morons.
This here album is slightly reminiscent of how I used to behave with musical instruments, albeit with considerably more grace and skill. There’s an undeniably strong presence of “spacking-out” on the drums, but it’s almost as though he’s managed to control his natural desire just to hit them until they’re ruined and focus himself long enough to create an actual rhythm. However, in order to preserve the spirit of St. Edmunds Middle School music lessons circa 1987, he’s brought along an inept dullard like me and asked him to press his arms down across all the keys of one of the expensive organs that had to be kept under lock and key in a cupboard.
Despite my idiocy, this is great.