GAS TANK ORCHESTRA

"When the Neccessity is the mother of invention"


Interview with Gregory Wildes

By Sergio Vilar

Please Robert, count me how Gas Tank Orchestra it was developed from the beginning... 
I grew up in Maine, went to school in Connecticut, then headed west.  I lived in San Francisco for a couple months, went back to Connecticut, then New York City, then Boston, Massachusetts, back out west to Arcosanti, Arizona, then up to Olympia, Washington.  After returning home to Maine for the Holidays, I finally headed south for the first time on a road trip to New Orleans in 1994.  New Orleans was by far to strangest, most intense culture shock in all my travels in the United States.  I wound up staying for eight years.  I opened an underground club with Panacea Theriac called Pussycat Caverns.  I originally built the Gas Tank Orchestra to be the house band for a single show, the headliner for that night was the Torture King of Jim Rose's Circus Sideshow.  I had seen some other bands use gas tanks for percussion, but I wasn't too impressed.  They all just beat the hell out them.  Why not, right?  An old gas tank is pretty worthless, so worthless in fact that there were tanks lying out in the street all over the neighborhood.  Garbage trucks wouldn't pick them up and dumps charged a disposal fee, so people just tossed them on the street and they really started piling up.  I happened to realize that gas tanks would make great instrument bodies.  With an unlimited souce at hand, I set out to make every instrument I could think of using gas tanks.  I collected up the cream of the crop, hosed them out, and set to work.  Within a few days I had a drum, kalimba, harp, zither, bass, and one we just sang and yelled into.  I recruited some friends to play and the show was a hoot.  Afterwards I just stuck the tanks up on the roof to get them out of the way.  Occasionally we would go up on the roof and jam.  Great fun, but no plans to do more until one day we were offered a gig at another local club, upstairs at Cafe Istanbul.  That show was a blast, and from then on, with many many personel changes and further refinements, the Gas Tank Orchestra continued on, playing live for another eight years.

Inside that musical scene in particular would be included?
We made our own scene, though I also must admit I was absolutely inspired by the musical culture of New Orleans.  New Orleans is a musician's mecca, a melting pot, gumbo, swamp, etc...  It's known as the birthplace of Jazz, and we sometimes said we were jazz, other times avant garde, free improv, experimental, voodoo, whatever.  We didn't tune, didn't usually write songs, we just figured it out as we played.  If  anything our music was DIY (do it yourself).  Back when I was in Boston I had founded the Ski-A-Delics.  A band of all electric skis, downhill and crosscountry skis, stripped of their bindings, with a single steel string from end to end, and a Fender Rhodes piano pickup. I studied a lot of world music in school, African, Javanese, and Indian.  I majored in experimental music and studied with Ron Kuivila and Alvin Lucier.  I've always been into building intruments.  When I was sixteen my mother asked me to chop up our piano for firewood.  After chopping off the keyboard and sides, with the axe held high, and about to finally smash the stringboard, I paused for a moment to think what it would sound like.  I put down the axe and started playing the strings.  I had an epiphany, this would be my instrument!  After a couple months I had even wound my own pickups for the stringboard and played at the high school talent show.  Our band, the Generics, did a cover of Gary Numan's "I'm Praying to the Aliens".  Around this time I also built my first synthesizer from a Radio Shack sound generator chip.  Next I bought a pawnshop guitar and a reel to reel for doing tapeloops.  I've been making music ever since. I've never really been part of any particular scene, I've just gotten away with slipping in here and there all over the place.  The last time Gas Tank Orchestra performed was at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, sharing the stage with Bobby McFarren, Chick Corea, Robert Cray, and Keb Mo.  Ummm, that's definitely not our scene, but the festival director has a pretty good sense of humor!

Which is the reason of the use of elements so atypical by way of musical instruments?
Neccessity is the mother of invention.  I never had much money so I couldn't just go out and buy expensive gear.  I began to realize I could build most instruments myself.  The fundamental principles of sound production don't require brand names.  It's just physics, and if you understand some basic stuff, you can make all the instruments you want.  I think my approach is not at all unusual except perhaps in my contemporary culture.  For thousands and thousands of years people have been making instruments from available materials.  Only fairly recently has the average individual sought to attain musical status by acquiring "proper" instruments.  Music is made by musicians putting their heart and talent into whatever they happen to play.  In the movie "Latcho Drom" there's an awesome scene where this guy plays the most amazing music just pulling on a string.

Do you consider that the musical style of Gas Tank Orchestra is of for yes restrictive for the diffusion possibilities in the current musical market?
Times change, pop music comes and goes.  What Gas Tank Orchestra did will stand out from anything like that forever.  In the long run, I think GTO will do okay, but will never be popular.  My most successful release to date is the Gas Tank Orchesta Sample Library.  Before leaving New Orleans I recorded all the insrtuments and produced a sample CD for Big Fish Audio.  Now everyone can make their own GTO music and mix GTO samples in with their Hip Hop, Techno, or whatever.  I'm still getting checks from that and probably doing better than many other independent bands off CD sales.

Then, what do you say of the present musical scene?
The current musical scene is mind-boggling. There is an explosion of stuff available, old and new, like never before.  It's hard to sort it out and figure out how to process it all. It's impossible.  You just have to follow your instincts and seek out what you truly wish to hear.

What type of musical productions do you find interesting and innovative today in day?
I'm keeping an eye/ear on the laptop and electronic scene.  I'm always curious to see what's possible now.  Mostly it's still a work in progress, lots of folks getting into the technology without having much of a clue what to do with it other than make something complex.  I'm actually just getting into tracker software.  That's what everyone originally used to make techno.  I took a break from computers in 1987 and didn't really get back in again for almost ten years.  During that time folks using trackers on amigas did a ton of work that I'm only just now catching up on.  I actually wrote my own tracker (very crude) back in 1987 on a Commodore VIC20, just 3.5k of memory and a 1Mhz system clock, and even had it sync to my Roland TR707 drum machine.  Those were the days, I did that while watching the Iran-Contra hearings.  I'm also lurking around the microsound scene,  very serious abstract noise stuff.  Other than that I also have to admit to having a soft spot for glitch-pop ala Telefon from Tel Aviv.

Returning to your music, what do you look for to express through her?
For the most part, I have little control over the music I make. Despite having all these great digital tools nowadays, I always get sidetracked by the sounds themselves into making something I hadn't intended to.  It's always been that way for me.  As soon as I begin to play or make music, something takes over. I feel like I'm picking up a trail of some sort and just trying to follow it through.  Any concept or rationality gives way, and I can't help but keep on going. I don't know what I'm doing, but sometimes when I'm playing it makes more sense than anything else in the whole world. Often times while playing with Gas Tank Orchestra my eyes rolled back in my head and I just went with it. I regularly played didgeridoo for voodoo cermonies in New Orleans for a year.  It wasn't so much about expression as about being open and letting the spirits take over. If anything, I wish to express curiousity for what lies beyond.

How do you feel that you evolved through the years? 
I've learned a lot about different musics, learned to play a lot of instruments, learned to use plenty of different programs, but I haven't really changed much. I guess the biggest evolution for me was learning circular breathing. There was a very cold winter one year while I was living in New Orleans. The water pipes froze. I was living in a sheet metal shack and just stayed in bed with my coat, hat, and gloves on for a couple days and taught myself to circular breathe. From then on I began to focus on wind instruments. I got into exploring harmonics with didgeridoo, reeds, and brass. At times I could feel the vibrations reflect back into my mouth, my head, my vocal chords, and throughout my entire body, a most excellent buzz. I suppose I've also developed a good ear and a knack for playing with other people through the years. GTO was a great format for group improvising. We switched instruments for every piece, everyone had to learn to play everything, and we all learned to play together.  At times it was like a ouija board where the group was incredibly responsive to the slightest impulse. I've learned to be a leader without being such a fascist.  I used to have a band where I patched everyone into a mixing board and turned them off if I didn't want to hear them.

To conclude. Which are your current activities and future plans?
These days I'm living in New York City.  I DJ at Open Air Bar on Share night when everyone can jack in at once with audio and video.  Most folks bring laptops, but I just burn loops to CD and bring a CD player and a little MXR eq.  With the eq I can mix and kind of scratch.  I use all kind of loops: beats, samples, field recordings, lots of my own stuff.  I've been doing sound design for theater.  I play saxophone and samples in a band called the Lower Eastside Social Club, along with bass, drums, guitar/piano, and saxophone/clarinet, it's pretty much a free improv/jazz group.  I go over to another place called ABC No Rio where Blaise Siwula hosts COMA, a night of open free improv sessions.  I'm looking for sound design projects and hoping to break into the commercial advertising scene so I can make to bread to buy a laptop.  I'd like to do film work too, but I do have mixed feelings about intentional manipulation.  Then again, I'm very interested in brainwave entrainment and transcranial magnetic stimulation.  Ultimately, I'd like to do research on using sound to expand consciousness.  Oh yeah, I'd also like to do some serious rocking out!

Thank you friend. Some words to conclude?
Thanks to all my teachers, some I studied with: Fred Hilse, T. Ranganathan, Abraham Adzinyah, Sumarsam, Ron Kuivila, Alvin Lucier, those I studied: John Cage, Harry Partch, those I listened to over and over: Sun Ra, , Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, Jandek, and those I had the great fortune to play with: Peter Nu, Blaise Siwula, and Peter Kowald.  Thanks as well to all who ever played in the Gas Tank Orchestra: Carey Burtt, James Digiovanna, Jeff Krone, J. Poggi, Jamie Kalel, Chris Wassel, Matt Vis, Matt Salada, Lisa, Joseph, Jason, Vanessa Smith, Kelvin, Dreiky Caprice, Simon Cheffins, Markus Wolff, Rebecca Snyder, Michelle Schmida, Kent, Scott Magee, Kathleen Kraus, Dana Cross, Bunny, Pir Hervey, Matthew Rosenbeck, and many more who joined in if only for a moment.  Finally, thanks to my Dad who believed I could master the piano and my mother who asked me to chop it up.

  www.home.earthlink.net/~gjwildes/ 

Nucleus interview:  11/05/04