Fully Celebrated Orchestra
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Innova 567
1. Succubusology
2. The Kelpi
3. Ol' Sow Rooted 'em Up
4. Jaya
5. A Tree is Me
6. Aware of Vacuity
7. Reconciliation of
Heaven and Earth
Taylor Ho Bynum - Cornet Timo Shanko - Bass Django Carranza - Drums Jim Hobbs – Sax
All compositions by Jim Hobbs, Pursuit of Happiness Music Corp., BMI
All arrangements by The Fully Celebrated Orchestra
Recorded live, August 2001, at the Green Street Grill, Cambridge, MA
Recorded by Amos Scattergood
Mastered by David Locke
Remastered for innova Recordings by Preston Wright
Design/Art: Jason Fairchild
Photography: Kirsten Detec
I walk in the door right before 10 to avoid the doorman, looking past the people at the bar and the owner standing right there…find my corner against the wall upstairs and feel relieved at
having not been seen. I realize that I've forgotten to put on the good clothes I brought with me to help me blend in. I walk briskly past the bar again, get to the bathroom, and begin the
awkward business of changing in a cramped stall with a wet floor. I freeze up as someone pushed open the door to the bathroom, and relax as I see that it's Taylor. "What's up, man?"
"Just changing into my grown-up clothes." He laughs, goes about his own business, and we share another good laugh as he is leaving. I finish my task and get back to my seat against the wall, feeling good, rubbing my hands together and breathing deep, preparing myself for the music.
Django's setting up his drums, and the bass sits against the wall. In a few more minutes Jim and Taylor are beginning to assemble their horns. I turn and examine the people in the room-many of them are not here for the music, and they will continue to talk and laugh even after it has started. Even as I am trying to generate compassion for these people, a knife of sound cuts through the scene, without warning, exploding my half-finished thoughts;
I am glad for them to go. The people in the back of the room don't seem to notice that anything's changed; in fact, it is a whole different room they are sitting in now.
The music is so real, that in some way it seems appropriate that it should be played here, with these people in the audience…the band is good enough so that the presence of these people only fuels the urgency of the music, rather than dissolve it. They are even good enough so that once in a while they let the music dive into the realms of consciousness shared by these people, seem to play from both places at once, sometimes laughing about it and sometimes screaming or crying, and then soar up and out again.
A few moments on this night I am able to completely surrender to the music, let it surround and consume me. Though it sometimes rips me apart, I feel that it is genuinely good for the soul. Sometimes I look up and see their physical bodies pulsing and bobbing as if in some unseen current, just as real as the floor and their instruments. It is amazing that people can make music powerful enough to become one's complete universe, and at the same time take up only a corner of a small club in a small city.
They finish at around 1, and I walk outside to go home. There is a feeling of having witnessed a storm, a center of energy, that grows out of a calm sky, becomes a force, and then vanishes again into the still air.
Jacob Baverman