Location: Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Velden Am Wörthersee (Velden) / Austria
Date: Wednesday, 19.03.2014
With so-called all-star lineups, the first question is usually: what can musicians coming from such different genres even play together? The same question came up with The Aristocrats, even though the band is made up of renowned players who have no limits whatsoever. The trio, made up of guitarist Guthrie Govan, bassist Bryan Beller and drummer Marco Minnemann, describes itself, with two studio albums and one live album, as simply jazz rock. Well, the music itself is far from simple. Considering these three highly trained musicians have already proven themselves in bands like Asia, Steven Wilson, Dethklok and even Necrophagist, and have worked with a whole galaxy of exceptional players including Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Jordan Rudess and Tony Levin, you could hardly expect them to reach for musical minimalism.
When these professors stepped onto the stage of the charming Bluesiana club, which feels like an oversized living room, probably nobody imagined The Aristocrats would serve up more than two hours of a show that has no equal.
With just the first two songs, Furtive Jack and Sweaty Knockers, the crazy trio made it clear they weren’t joking around. The music they make is so demanding and intricately constructed that, next to The Aristocrats, practically every professional metal musician suddenly looks like a grade-school beginner. But the magic of the show wasn’t only in the performance of this exceptional music. Before every song, the band took the audience through a short story of how it came about and where its title comes from, and they used all those moments to unleash boundlessly funny humor that regularly set off roars of laughter in the crowd.
The sky-high musical polish of the individual players simply couldn’t shine more perfectly on stage. Everyone squeezed out their absolute maximum. At the start, guitarist Guthrie Govan stood out, serving up extremely interesting riffs and incredible soloing the whole time, as if he’d merged heavyweights like Steve Vai, Eric Johnson and Joe Satriani into one, and the list of such masters of six-string theory certainly doesn’t end there. Govan’s style isn’t your typical “shredder Nintendo” at all. Instead, he cultivates a unique style that’s a mix of many different genres, richly studded with sharp, almost progressively experimental jazz solutions, as well as, on the other side, bluesy-inspired passages. Guthrie Govan sounds completely unconventional, and it’s hard to find a guitarist anywhere close to him. He can play anything. One such player might be, say, Dave Kilminster, who is himself a self-contained musical entity, a self-contained musical world, hard to compare with any other musician on the planet. One of the most fantastic things about Govan was that he kept surprising us with all kinds of sounds that you could hardly imagine were even possible to translate into the language of guitar playing and coax out of the instrument. That’s where the sheer universality of the instrument showed itself, and everything you can produce with it if you have too much imagination. Govan already showed his brilliance at the Steven Wilson show, but this time he confirmed all of his versatility and musical adventurousness as a “mad guitar inventor” once again! Govan is one with the guitar. An entity.
Drummer Marco Minnemann also had plenty of chances to shine, proving this time that he can be counted among the best drummers in the world. Minnemann, known as the smilingest drummer around, showed he’s one of those people who has too much imagination. It’s worth pointing out that the drum kit was scaled down for Bluesiana’s small stage compared to the colossal one he presented on 24.05.2013 at the Ljubljana show, when he and Beller backed Joe Satriani. But even with the kit radically cut down, the endlessly inventive Minnemann pulled out countless tricks, off-kilter beats, rhythmic manipulations, polyrhythms, and the list goes on. Also worth highlighting is his especially clever use of two snare drums, which gave his transitions an even bigger scale and intensity. In the song Blues Fuckers, which they also dubbed Bluesiana Fuckers, Minnemann’s drum solo dropped jaws across the whole crowd. It seemed like Minnemann had 8 arms and 8 legs. Especially when the trio went berserk in an unbridled stampede of ultra-sonic-fast rock ‘n’ roll!
Bassist Bryan Beller didn’t really get his moment at first. It felt like he was playing in Govan’s shadow, but over time it became clear that Beller is a first-rate bassist too. He wasn’t just a foundation for the crazy rhythms Minnemann was throwing down, he showed a whole bag of lively, colorful lines that fit perfectly with Govan’s soloing. At times it felt like each member was playing his own separate line within the same song, yet it always effectively gravitated into a coherent whole of the band’s artistry.
The whole magic of The Aristocrats’ show wasn’t only in the perfectionism of the playing, but in the band’s humor too. Besides all the funny announcements, in one song Marco pointed out that The Aristocrats would become the first instrumental band to get a “Parental Advisory” sticker, thanks to the title of the song Blues Fuckers. Guthrie Govan got big laughs while drummer Minnemann started blissfully unwrapping a Mozartkugel. Govan was developing an atonal intro on guitar, full of exploratory notes, and when he saw his buddy wrestling with the Mozartkugel, he suddenly jumped into the “Little Night Music” motif, which cracked Minnemann up mid-bite so hard he nearly spat out the candy. The comedy seemed endless, including Guthrie’s story about how he smashed his head on a door frame in his apartment, as well as the moment Beller accidentally knocked over a glass of wine. It spilled across the stage and came close to wrecking the circuitry of his pedal board with its many effects. Luckily, Beller managed to save his effects. Beller looked over at Guthrie, who was calmly sipping a beer, and advised him never to try anything like that. Govan shot back elegantly that this could only happen to Beller, since he’s the only one who orders wine. Govan, who christened the beer in the bottle a “Weaselburger” (the label probably actually said “Weissbier”), since reading German text gives him no small amount of trouble. Minnemann, as a full-blooded German, came to the rescue and taught him that he was drinking wheat beer. The Aristocrats made the crowd laugh between songs too. During one of them they played along to the sounds of toy pigs and chickens they’d bought on one of their tour excursions in Istanbul, Turkey. During the last song, Erotic Cakes, they played around with funny sounds from some phone app, while Minnemann deftly added rhythm with his feet.
The Aristocrats closed the show with the song Erotic Cakes, which is actually taken from Guthrie Govan’s solo album of the same name. Beller explained that all the members have their own solo studio releases. In his typically comic manner, he said Minnemann has around 20,000 solo albums, he himself has three, and Govan has just one, so they took pity on Guthrie and picked a song from his only album. That song stood out a bit from the rest of the set, since it picked up elements of progressive rock and, judging by the opening guitar phrase, even metal
Over a good two hours, The Aristocrats presented themselves as a trio of brilliant perfectionists and musical extremists. In one and the same musical body. No brakes. With relaxed playing, an extraordinary mix of three genius musical talents, and the precision of fine mechanics and extraordinary manual dexterity!
author: Primož Novak
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Furtive Jack
2. Sweaty Knockers
3. Ohhhh Noooo
4. Louisville Stomp
5. Get it Like That
6. Culture Clash
7. Flatlands
8. Blues Fuckers (plus drum solo)
9. Gaping Head Wound
10. Desert Tornado
11. Living the Dream
—encore—
12. Erotic Cakes
