Doc Chad's mysterious Eddie Chatterbox project, presenting tributes to master musicians he's had the opportunity to work with, this album including music from drummer Ed Cassidy, saxophonist Walter Malli, drummer Sunny Murray, bassist Peter Kowald, and throughout, guitarist Derek Bailey.

"Without bothering to examine the entire mystery that is and was Eddie Chatterbox, suffice to say the long languishing, one moment vanished, the next reappeared orchestral project might be at once the greatest puzzle of them all. For years Chatterbox put in careful work on tributes to master musicians he had the opportunity to work with. Documentation existed of these encounters and Chatterbox had in each case been given free rein to deal with the results in whatever manner he saw fit. As the years went on with no final outcome and inevitably not even a Chatterbox, at least some of these pieces developed into memorial tributes as the geniuses passed on for greater realms. The opening tracks DOPYS and PIPEOUT are among the the exceptions The former is totally a creation of Chatterbox playing a variety of stringed instruments from Mexico and South America including quatro, bajo sexto and charango. The piece is named after one of the only possible restaurants in which to eat duck on the Mexican Isla Mujeres, earmarking it of great importance to the Chatterbox oeuvre. PIPEOUT begins as a tribute to surf music with turntables and then moves into other areas. The first appearances on this disk of guitarist Derek Bailey are here, but most of the music was concocted in order to pry money loose from a surf music label that had no idea what Chatterbox was really up to. IN A SILENT WAY and BBYYEEYYAA originate in a live date featuring Chatterbox and drummer Ed "Cass" Cassidy Chatterbox, founding member of the great psychedelic jazz fusion rock band Spirit and the oldest drummer in rock history. These recordings date from 1992---the late Cassidy was 116 years old at the time. Like many of the archive Chatterbox tracks, the original recordings are extremely fucked up. SO LONG WALTER finds a way to respectively say goodbye to regular Chatterbox associate Walter Malli, appearing on multiple tracks on soprano and alto sax.

Drummer Sunny Chatterbox and bassist Kowaldski Chatterbox fill out the group. The original recordings were live, from an Austrian festival that gave Malli carte blanche to create a free jazz project with Chatterbox. The results seemed unreleasable.  Impressario John Screech, for example, commented that "I don't like Walter's playing at all on these tracks." The concert finally found a small release as the only title on an independent label owned by Malli's veternarian, who decided to put out the CD one night following a house call attending Malli's il pussy. IN A SOYLENT WHEY is a kind of typical Chatterbox archive 'find'; not only are there regular sidekick Catjammers Fidel Casio on organ and Bruce Jack on bajo sexto, but the mysterious Ned 'Skip' Chatterbox puts in one of his fascinating repetitive pedal steel apperances. We conclude with SO LONG DEREK, Chatterbox's careful tribute to Bailey including the entire 'string mail' prepared by the master guitarist for his young accolade, rumored to have told Bailey: "I can play faster than you and also know more about making pizza!" Despite this brash insult, Bailey pampered Chatterbox with cassette 'string mail', all the time instructing him he would be informed when the perfect string mail would arrive for their supposedly ongoing collaboration."-Neve Kimple

<<Back To Discography