The Naked Stash

I went back out to see the Linus Pauling Quartet (#13, Live 2011) again. While hanging around, I met an associate of one of 3 Linus guitarist/vocalists Charlie Naked and former member of jazz-freaks The Defenestration Unit. Both Charlie and his buddy...



The Defenestration Unit, live at the Art Car Museum

Awhile ago, I had found a Live at Super Happy Fun Land recording by Defenestration (05/27/2005). They play out-there free-jazz improv, which you can stream or download from that link. But what this guy told me was that he'd also played with Charlie in another group: Bartiromo.



Bartiromo, Is This Seat Taken? (1998)

And I discovered all four of their albums also on Archive.org!! Like the Defenestration Unit (but maybe more like a well-'luded Hawkwind spacing out), Bartiromo plays apparently improvised jams and also included guitarist/trombonist Mike Switzer - made famous by the LP4 song and recent soundcheck "Bongfire," but not the dude I met. I'd never heard any of these, nor even heard about it... Four albums for ya here: Is This Seat Taken? (1998), Six Months of Silence (1998), Shitwah (1999), and Human Rinds (2000).



A little more digging unearthed Fist of Kong does stuff (2006), yet another psych-jazz-improv release by yet another combo by Naked. I haven't listened to this yet, but seems like it's gonna be kinda jazzy and occasionally noisy, and probably pretty cool. But maybe you see where this is going...

Even more digging recovered a major stash of Charlie Naked solo works, available on the Archive. Charlie Naked. Solo. According to his age-old website, this barely scratches the surface of solo releases.



Charlie Naked, Divine Homework (1995)

The homepage breaks down three phases of Charlie Naked... First phase: "the first nine cassettes... different from later efforts by its emphasis on the influences of Free Jazz and drone music." Looks like the only one from Archive.org that belongs here would be Divine Homework (1995), "a soundtrack to a movie never made, nor even conceived of..."



Second phase: "moved away from jazz and drone influences and began exploring more electronic experiments, including the use of radio static, television audio samples, and electric guitars more than saxophones or acoustic piano." Don't think this is represented in the Archive. You can sample and download selected tracks and excepts from the earlier days from the Albums page.



Charlie Naked, Expansion and Collapse (2010)

Third (and current) phase: "involved the processing, editing, and construction of sound pieces on the computer, rather than on the 4-track cassette recorder... sparser, more ambient soundscapes, with much less distinct instrumentation, and considerably longer running times." From what I've gotten to, this stuff is fantastic. Starting most recently and moving backwards, Expansion and Collapse (2010) - two-thousand and TEN!! Then Anthracite (2007), "the first of three all-guitar albums" - so there's one missing release already. Factory Drones (2006), which is "Minimalist minimalism." Back to Crinoline (2005), "a rare unreleased ambient album" (highly recommended)! And finally, The Countess (2004), "a collaboration between experimental music creator Charlie Naked and viola player Jo Bird, of Houston's Two Star Symphony." How did I miss that 1/5 of my favorite local Quartet had such an extensive catalogue?

And of course, while searching for images, I literally found a month-old Charlie Naked split-release with Trills, əˈnɛmənii (2011), over at Bandcamp:




Charlie Naked tracks are the two-parter "Abyssal Gigantism" at the very end. Two-thousand-ELEVEN!! A bit more info here. Enjoy the explore.


Oh, and brand news! Linus Pauling Quartet rocking out again on Sunday, Feb. 19th, with Jucifer and Omotai! Linus sure are playing with a lot of metal acts recently...