Aug. 16, 1994
By Billy Altman
Submitted by Sai
On Guitar Firing Line, The New Buckley Is a Genuine Radical
Jammin' Jeff follows his unique path to success
Few singer/songwriters have shown up in recent years displaying as much raw talent-and mystique-as Jeff Buckley, who's appearing tonight at Wetlands.
Buckley emerged from New York's underground cafe scene in 1992, shaking up audiences with his electric guitar and soaring, high pitched vocals that seemed more at home in a hard-rock arena than an intimate cabaret. and his dreamlike, impressionistic tales about love and longing sail across so many stylistic waters, from rock and folk to classical and jazz, that his music has been nearly impossible to categorize.
Which, it turns out, is very much the way Buckley, now 27, wanted it.
"I tried to choose an avenue where I lived in the big music eye without a tangible label product, and I wanted to do it in places where people really go and converge," he says. "So the cabaret route made perfect sense to me. I wanted to be like Nina Simone. And as far as the directions my music goes in, well, that's America-Kabuki theater to 'Wonderama.' If I was a painter, I'd say my medium was garage bands, y'know?"
Well no, not exactly. Suffice to say that when a musician tells you his influences include "the usual-Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Tuesday Weld, Julie Christie, Kim Novak," you get the sense that such songs as the blues-from-Venus "Mojo Pin" and the raga-rocking "Last Goodbye" are grounded in a rather, shall we say, individual view of the universe-musical and otherwise.
Buckley, the son of the late '60s singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, grew up in Southern California and played guitar there with a number of rock and reggae bands in the 1980s. He says moving to the lower East Side in 1990 helped him focus on his own music.
"I was very unhappy in California," he says. "I felt I needed to strip away my identity and just be nobody and discover who I was and who I wasn't. Coming to New York was like having a completely open door to everything. Because of all the disparate lives that get mashed together here, you're always aware of your own difference. And since people in New York both accept anything and expect everything, you can really try anything and everything."
To that end, Buckley took up a residency at the club Sin-e in the East Village, where, besides spending many a night as "a human jukebox" ('Sex Pistols, Judy Garland-anything people threw at me, I tried'), his own unique songs and performance style began drawing attention. The local buzz was sufficient that Buckley was hotly pursued by a number of record companies and eventually signed with Columbia, who'll be releasing his debut album, "Grace" this fall.
Still, no matter how much acclaim he garners, don't expect Buckley to believe the hype. "I'm very mistrustful of everything outside the music itself," he says. "Even if there's a place reserved for me in the 'music business,' I don't think I'd really feel comfortable there. I'd rather people just hear the force of music in me and do what they will with it."
Wetlands is at 161 Hudson. Buckley is part of a "Best of Sin-e" show, which starts at 7:30. Tix are $12. Info: (212) 966-4225. (Billy Altman is a freelance writer.)
By Billy Altman
Submitted by Sai
On Guitar Firing Line, The New Buckley Is a Genuine Radical
Jammin' Jeff follows his unique path to success
Few singer/songwriters have shown up in recent years displaying as much raw talent-and mystique-as Jeff Buckley, who's appearing tonight at Wetlands.
Buckley emerged from New York's underground cafe scene in 1992, shaking up audiences with his electric guitar and soaring, high pitched vocals that seemed more at home in a hard-rock arena than an intimate cabaret. and his dreamlike, impressionistic tales about love and longing sail across so many stylistic waters, from rock and folk to classical and jazz, that his music has been nearly impossible to categorize.
Which, it turns out, is very much the way Buckley, now 27, wanted it.
"I tried to choose an avenue where I lived in the big music eye without a tangible label product, and I wanted to do it in places where people really go and converge," he says. "So the cabaret route made perfect sense to me. I wanted to be like Nina Simone. And as far as the directions my music goes in, well, that's America-Kabuki theater to 'Wonderama.' If I was a painter, I'd say my medium was garage bands, y'know?"
Well no, not exactly. Suffice to say that when a musician tells you his influences include "the usual-Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Tuesday Weld, Julie Christie, Kim Novak," you get the sense that such songs as the blues-from-Venus "Mojo Pin" and the raga-rocking "Last Goodbye" are grounded in a rather, shall we say, individual view of the universe-musical and otherwise.
Buckley, the son of the late '60s singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, grew up in Southern California and played guitar there with a number of rock and reggae bands in the 1980s. He says moving to the lower East Side in 1990 helped him focus on his own music.
"I was very unhappy in California," he says. "I felt I needed to strip away my identity and just be nobody and discover who I was and who I wasn't. Coming to New York was like having a completely open door to everything. Because of all the disparate lives that get mashed together here, you're always aware of your own difference. And since people in New York both accept anything and expect everything, you can really try anything and everything."
To that end, Buckley took up a residency at the club Sin-e in the East Village, where, besides spending many a night as "a human jukebox" ('Sex Pistols, Judy Garland-anything people threw at me, I tried'), his own unique songs and performance style began drawing attention. The local buzz was sufficient that Buckley was hotly pursued by a number of record companies and eventually signed with Columbia, who'll be releasing his debut album, "Grace" this fall.
Still, no matter how much acclaim he garners, don't expect Buckley to believe the hype. "I'm very mistrustful of everything outside the music itself," he says. "Even if there's a place reserved for me in the 'music business,' I don't think I'd really feel comfortable there. I'd rather people just hear the force of music in me and do what they will with it."
Wetlands is at 161 Hudson. Buckley is part of a "Best of Sin-e" show, which starts at 7:30. Tix are $12. Info: (212) 966-4225. (Billy Altman is a freelance writer.)
No comments:
Post a Comment