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Inexplicable Album Cameos
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 17-Nov-06 @ 02:08 PM| So you think it's a little weird when Gerard Way shows up on Every Time I Die's Gutter Phenomenon, totally unexpected when Method Man ends up on the Bamboozle main stage or just plain kickass when the Mars Volta dredge up salsa legend Larry Harlow to guest on Frances The Mute? Rock history is rife with unexpected cameo appearances-but at these 10 discs prove, sometimes "unexpected" is just plain inexplicable. |
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Ronnie Montrose Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi (Warner Bros.,1971)  Recorded just after Herbie Hancock left Miles Davis’ band, Mwandishi found the keyboardist fronting an expanded group to record sinuous, sidelong tracks that shift from freestyle blowouts to Afro-funk fusion. So where does ’70s guitar god Ronnie Montrose, leader of the band that bore his surname and early Sammy Hagar employer, fit into the mix? Well, listen carefully to Mwandishi’s 20-minute opener, “Ostinato (Suite For Angela),” and you can hear Montrose contributing some subtle but ultimately mood-building “chicka-chicka” guitar. Unfortunately, just how he ended up crashing Hancock’s session goes unmentioned in the liner notes.
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Ornette Coleman Lou Reed’s The Raven (Warner Bros.,2003)  That Lou Reed would want to see a brilliant jazz saxophonist like Ornette Coleman improving his absurd Edgar Allan Poe concept album is understandable. Why Coleman would appear on this ego-stroke alongside the likes of Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi and Antony (of the Johnsons) is the mystery. Still, Coleman’s appearance on “Guilty” features the same energetic commitment to melody as his own classic albums-he creates endless variations on a tune, dancing circles around Reed’s aimless, droning vocal track. One only hopes Reed was sufficiently grateful for the favor bestowed on him by a superior talent.
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Tom Waits Thelonious Monster’s Beautiful Mess (Capitol,1992)  After three albums on Epitaph, Combat and Relativity, respectively, L.A. funk-punks Thelonious Monster got snatched by Capitol in the post-Nirvana gold rush to release this, their major-label debut album. Beautiful Mess was a cameo-saturated session overall, featuring two members of Soul Asylum and guest keyboards from Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s band-oh, and “Adios Lounge,” a duet between the Monster’s Charles Bukowski-esque frontman, Bob Forrest, and full-time beatnik/sonic junk-sculptor Tom Waits. Unfortunately, entertaining as they may be, none of these helping hands really took the band’s music anywhere.
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Captain Beefheart The Tubes' Now (A&M 1977, ACADIA, 2004,1977)  The Tubes were as much a satirical cabaret act as they were a rock band-singer Fee Waybill played various characters onstage, from country singer Hugh Heifer to punk and new-wave frontmen Johnny Bugger and Quay Lewd-but the band did take some things seriously. On their third album, the Tubes indulge their Captain Beefheart fandom something fierce: Not only do they cover “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains,” but the Captain himself plays soprano sax on “Cathy’s Clone” and harmonica on “Golden Boy.” Incidentally, this is one of only a handful of guest appearances the Captain ever put in, including his collaborations with Frank Zappa.
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Jerry Garcia & Mickey Hart Negativland’s Escape From Noise (SST,1987)  Looking for guitar and drums? Don’t come to Negativland. Formed in 1979, these Bay Area art pranksters have mastered the art of chopping found sound and taped voices into a fine mist of weirdness and black humor. On this, Negativland’s commonly acknowledged masterpiece (though its 1989 follow-up, Helter Stupid, is equally necessary), the two Grateful Dead members contribute “mouth sounds and processed animals.” Just what that means, we don’t know, but Garcia and Hart were in good company: Jello Biafra contributes the sound of a toilet flushing, and the Residents offer “hoots and clanging.”
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Mick Jagger Tackhead's Strange Things (SBK,1990)  Tackhead were one of the weirder signings to wannabe major label SBK Records (home to Vanilla Ice and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) at the tail end of the ’80s. The house band for pioneering hip-hop label Sugar Hill, the industrial-funk crew brought in mediocre soul vocalist Bernard Fowler and tried to create some sort of political R&B. It didn’t work. But on Strange Things, as he’d done with Living Colour, Mick Jagger attempted to cred-stamp the band, playing harmonica on one track, but even that didn’t help. The disc was recently reissued-but that’s a warning, not a recommendation.
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Dizzy Gillespie Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium 1, Volume 1 (Motown,1982)  This greatest-hits comp also features four new songs, including the 10-plus-minute big-band track “Do I Do,” on which jazz icon Dizzy Gillespie plays trumpet. Probably the least hard-to-explain cameo in this list, it’s actually a surprisingly tentative contribution from the puffy-cheeked, legendarily blasting horn man (who, mind you, also once appeared on The Muppet Show), but despite being much jazzier than most of Wonder’s 1970s material (except, of course, the legendary Duke Ellington homage “Sir Duke”), it’s still a good fit with the rest of the set.
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Moondog Julie Andrews’ Tell It Again (Angel,1957)  How did the lilting voice of The Sound Of Music and Mary Poppins come into contact with the blind, Viking-garbed New York avant-garde composer? According to Moondog himself, the album’s producer simply asked him to compose some music for an album’s worth of nursery rhymes. He did, scoring it mostly for percussion. Andrews reportedly had some trouble getting her pipes around Moondog’s complex, post-minimalist rhythms, but eventually the project came together and Tell It Again hit stores. Good luck finding a copy today.
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Robert Fripp Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs (RCA,1980)  Just before Hall & Oates became the white-boy-soul kings of early-’80s pop radio, the one without the mustache recorded this somewhat bizarre solo album, with production and, naturally, guitar by King Crimson founder and presumed art-rock snob Robert Fripp. The disc was recorded in 1977 and stuck on a nervous record label’s shelf for three years, so there are some cuts that sound very reminiscent of David Bowie’s “Heroes” (which Fripp had also just finished working on), but Daryl Hall’s melodic pop sensibility mostly provides the dominant mood throughout.
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Michael Palin Motörhead’s Rock ’n’ Roll (GWR,1987)  The follow-up to the fanbase-disappointing, Bill Laswell-produced Orgasmatron, Rock ’N’ Roll is a stripped-down Motörhead classic. Except, that is, for the minute-long audio “blessing” delivered by Monty Python member Michael Palin asking the Lord to look out for Motörhead and provide enough money that they might be able to buy perhaps one more pair of trousers each. (We’re pretty sure that’s worked out for them.) Apparently, Palin owned the building in which the disc was laid to tape, and the band decided to ask him in as a special favor.
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