Thursday, May 1, 2008

Trumans Water Lives!

Throughout the 1990s, I tried to convince people of the relevance of Trumans Water (no apostrophe), a band worshipped by John Peel, who seemed to pull together elements of Captain Beefheart, Ornette Coleman, and skanky punky free improvisation in a combination no one else could pull off. Wasn't too many people's cup of tea. The band didn't help by being purveyors of willful obscurity and cryptic situationist pranks, such as when TW released four different albums called "Godspeed ..." in 1994, but denied that three of the four albums existed.
Nevertheless, I got the chance to meet TW's Branstetter brothers in San Diego and Chapel Hill in various tours, and always thought they were the greatest lunatics in the music business. Despite one brother being stateside and one living in France, Trumans Water is back again for a European tour, and they scored a very nice comprehensive biography in this blog on May 1. Godspeed the Dissonance.

3 comments:

Ruth said...

Gotta laugh about the 4 albums, 3 of which don't exist. And hey, Today's word on my blog is: obscure. Thumbs up for obscurity! And for people like you who found 'em anyway.

John G said...

I only have the self-titled album and I found it unlistenable, although I would go see them in concert if they rolled over here. Aren't they banned or something?

Loring Wirbel said...

I don't think Kevin has been put on a do-not-fly list or anything - they just don't come over to the U.S. that often.