Location: Pordenone / Il Deposito Giordani / Italy
Date: Monday, 08.02.2016
The international instrumental trio The Aristocrats, made up of British guitar alien Guthrie Govan (Steven Wilson, ex-Asia, GPS), American bass oddball Bryan Beller (Dethklok, Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa) and German drumming megalomaniac Marco Minnemann (Steven Wilson, Joe Satriani, The Mute Gods), stopped by Pordenone on the current ‘Tres Caballeros’ tour and threw an unforgettable concert for anyone who loves top-shelf technical chops and endless improvisational tomfoolery. The brilliant trio, who are presenting their third studio effort, »Tres Caballeros« (2015), on this tour, are something special with their jaw-dropping instrumental and compositional skills, even for the usually pretty demanding prog-rock gourmets and assorted music doctors. Part of the reason The Aristocrats are so popular with fans of progressive rock, prog metal and jazz rock fusion is surely that they blend their music with a razor-sharp sense of humor, a perfect mix of English satirical wit and American bathroom slapstick, so there’s never a shortage of laughs at their shows.
In the style of their great idol Frank Zappa, Messrs. Govan, Beller and Minnemann love to talk at length between songs, ‘firing off’ witty anecdotes, mostly from their everyday lives and often with a few social-critical jabs thrown in, that set off waves of laughter in the crowd like it’s nothing. Minnemann even delighted the Italians by showing off a few Italian words he picked up from his ex-girlfriend. The Aristocrats opened their set with a direct fusion ‘shot right between the eyes’ called »Stupid 7«, and it was a pure pleasure to watch their virtuoso skills from start to finish. Guthrie, wrapping his thin fingers around the guitar neck like some long-legged spider, was the first to get the laughs going that night. In his distinctive ‘cockney’ accent, he introduced the song »Jack’s Back«, which brings back the mysterious Jack, whom he had already introduced on an earlier composition called »Furtive Jack«. The Aristocrats ground up everything in their path when it came to playing intricate rhythmic patterns and crazy guitar variations, mostly sticking faithfully to the studio versions while also throwing in some completely spontaneous improvising here and there.
Next came Bryan’s funny anecdote about the backstory of »Texas Crazypants«, in which he told the crowd about a negative but interesting experience he had at a roadside stop in Texas. A crazy, scheming waitress who was determined to get her hands on his money thoroughly swindled him over an imaginary injury to her vehicle. »Culture Clash« was introduced as a song symbolizing the feelings that always wash over the members of The Aristocrats when they find themselves in an unfamiliar, exotic environment and struggle to get used to local customs. »Pig’s Day Off« was the first time that night the rubber-pig lovers got their due, as all three musicians competed to see who could coax more squealing and squeaking sounds out of the individual toys, and keeping a straight face was of course tough. This sort of thing has long since become part of The Aristocrats’ regular concert ‘folklore’. The stunningly dynamic »Desert Tornado«, which Marco introduced with his dramatic story of fleeing an approaching tornado, was backed by a killer drum solo that left plenty of people in the room breathless. Anyone who had been wondering until then why Marco is currently the busiest and most active drummer in the world got their answer in an instant.
The Aristocrats are well aware that more than 90% of their audience is made up of male musicians and music geeks, while the women at their shows are few and far between, and even those are usually already taken and only come along for the sake of their partners. After Bryan explained how, while writing »Smuggler’s Corridor«, he heard a vocal melody in his head for the first time in The Aristocrats’ history, he invited the crowd to help sing this rare vocal moment in the band’s catalog. Suddenly he came up with the rather bizarre idea of having only the female part of the audience sing the vocal melody at agreed moments. The results were of course dismal, with just a kind of muffled ‘meowing’ coming from the crowd, from maybe six female throats, and on the first attempt a male intruder sneaked in too, whom Beller spotted on the spot and scolded in his own special way.
Guthrie’s closing anecdote, about the song »The Kentucky Meat Shower«, was also the most interesting one, since it tied into a rather bizarre and still unexplained historical event that happened near Kentucky in 1876 when chunks of raw meat rained from the sky over the town of Rankin. Of course Guthrie promptly offered his own rational explanation: while collectively mimicking the behavior of one bird that suddenly got sick, birds of prey threw up chunks of meat onto the unsuspecting townspeople standing below them. The Aristocrats wouldn’t be The Aristocrats if they hadn’t played »Get It Like That« as an encore, with rubber animals in the starring roles (two piglets, a plucked chick and a goose). Marco neatly loaded the cute animal gang onto his cymbals at the start of the song, but some of them quickly tumbled off while he was pounding away at the kit. Bryan got so wrapped up in his dialogue with the crowd that, as he burst out laughing, he stepped on the poor plucked chick lying on the floor. At the end Marco confidently took the grand prize for best improviser on a rubber animal, even getting tangled up in a short duel with Guthrie’s guitar that ended in a draw. Sadly, that was the last act of the night. Fueled by some of the craziest virtuoso fireworks, and boasting a really high-quality sound, the trio said goodbye to the thrilled crowd amid thunderous ovations.
With the proper virtuoso orgy they threw during their show in Pordenone, The Aristocrats confirmed their reputation as exceptional live entertainers, the kind that are sadly rarer and rarer these days. The trio has an incredible spontaneity running through it the whole time, uniting them both in showing off individual virtuoso feats and in forging fiercely contagious humor. If the legendary Frank Zappa, from whom The Aristocrats learned a great deal with their clowning mix of prog rock, jazz rock fusion and prog metal, plus joke-telling in between, were still alive, all three would surely form the core of his backing band. It’s not hard to imagine the results of that collaboration being downright magnificent. Then again, working with cult names like Steven Wilson, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai has also had a beneficial effect on the trio’s musical development, as they’ve quickly grown from outstanding instrumentalists into great songwriters too, ones you simply can’t praise enough.
author: Peter Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Stupid 7
2. Jack’s Back
3. Texas Crazypants
4. Pressure Relief
5. Culture Clash
6. Louisville Stomp
7. Pig’s Day Off
8. Desert Tornado (drum solo)
9. Smuggler’s Corridor
10. The Kentucky Meat Shower
—encore—
11. Get It Like That
