PILLS, THRILLS AND BRAIN CELLS
Apr 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Stacia Monteith
Notorious techno fiend Green Velvet paces the darkened stage with a length of cord, hooking up his gear and that of his band, The Rejects. He blasts into his first track, the edgy rant “Stranj” from his new album Whatever (Relief, 2001). Despite such technical problems as a notably absent spotlight, an overzealous green laser assault and mad feedback echoes, Green Velvet continues the show. Fueled by his own brand of jackhammer electro-techno-funk, he performs a robot dance, tweaks his vocal box and takes on the personas of a whole cast of characters — including a few women. When the spotlight finally catches him doing his hilarious “Percolator” dance, the roaring hero rips off his shirt, revealing tight abs. The crowd screams. At the end of the set, he throws down his keyboard like a rock star, but his self-mocking facial expressions dismiss any pretention. Giddy fans are smiling, if a little stunned.
Green Velvet is the out-of-control techno alter ego of DJ/producer Curtis Jones, a longtime fixture of the Chicago scene. Despite his over-the-top performances and banging sound, Jones uses his music to spread a deeper sociopolitical message. He also records brighter house tunes under the Cajmere moniker. His classics include “Answering Machine,” which finds Mr. Velvet spurned by one girl, stalked by another and evicted from his apartment. Another tune, “Flash,” gives parents a camera and takes them on a tour of “Club Bad,” whereas other tracks explore alien abduction, ponder reincarnation and delineate existentialism. The name Green Velvet, in fact, was a joke name created by an ex-girlfriend's father, who found the goat-fur sweater reference humorous. “He knew I was Cajmere,” Jones says with a laugh. “And he thought that was ridiculous.”
Currently under the spotlight as a result of his latest club smash, the electro-funk “La La Land,” the Green Velvet persona first exploded from the underworld to the mainstream with the release of Green Velvet, a collection of club hits issued in 2000 on Warner Bros.' now-defunct F-111 dance imprint. His current album, Whatever, was recorded in a one-month sitting at Chicago's famed Wax Trax Studios. As with “La La Land,” the album fuses ‘80s electro influence with Velvet's trademark banging beats and effected vocal roar. “I wanted something that had a retro influence but not just a regurgitation of that sound,” he says. Some tracks even lean toward industrial — not surprising when you consider Jones' fetish for obscure English industrial bands. With its propulsive synths and angry, unadulterated vocals, “Stop Lying” comes closest to this sound. Also featuring pounding beats, “Minimum” is a high-pitched and punk-flavored journey to an angry climax.
CULTURE CLUB
Even from a cultural perspective, Whatever, steeped in an energetic ethos reminiscent of early punk, is more in-your-face than its predecessor. The album reflects a sentiment that Jones describes as anger-inducing and revelatory. “Once you realize that you've been told something that you really don't need to follow, you can break free,” he says. Reflecting this philosophy, “When” is a pointed attack on racism, using a frenzied synth pattern and digital bell tones to underline sardonic arguments such as “We're all inferior.” “Sleepwalking” profiles self-hating kids who only feel free at night. The track bumps along on a happy, squelchy funk groove with pistol effects and bongos contrasting sharply with Jones' robotic monologue. Yet the most forceful cut on the record is perhaps “Great American Tragedy”: “This is not a fucking phase!/Land of opportunity/Land made for you and me/Land of misconstrued facts/The free are on their backs.”
Velvet's social commentary is also evident in the lyrics to the aforementioned “La La Land”: “Something ‘bout those little pills/Unreal the thrills they yield/Until they kill a million brain cells.” Some clubbers interpret Velvet's lyrics as a perverse homage to their own depravity. Indeed, Jones is often asked whether “La La Land” is a cautionary drug tale. “It's more of a documentary than anything else,” he explains. “I try to write things in a way that is tangible to a wide array of people. But I think ‘La La Land’ is a cautionary song because those people who really know what I'm talking about might see themselves in the song. We think of going out and having a good time and partying, but we don't think about the adverse consequences.”
An enthusiasm for performance shaped the recording of Whatever and caused an evolution in Green Velvet's stage show. “I've been doing shows for a while, since back in the early ‘90s with ‘The Percolator.’ As far as the techno stuff, it's morphed into something that's a bit different than what I started out with. It's typical for a techno producer to just stand there behind the equipment tweaking knobs. I used to do that, then put some vocals on top. I decided I wanted to do something that was more of a show, because I'm old-school and I wanted to emulate the people whose music and stage presence inspire me.”
Some of those influences include David Bowie, Sly Stone and Grace Jones, which may explain Green Velvet's eccentric tendency to glue green knobs, fluorescent golf tees or circular tea bags to his shaved head. “Their personalities are just off-the-hook,” he raves, “and their music was always beating.”
For the past two years, Jones has worked with bandmates Christopher Nakuza and Hugo “Spaceboy” Moya. “They throw down at the show,” he gushes. “I think they're great.” The band members play strap-on keyboards tethered to racks of synth modules and effects. “The strap-on keyboard controller is visual, but it's also functional: It's triggering the sound modules that we have in the racks. Spaceboy is actually playing the bass sounds and other effects from the modules that we have onstage. I'm playing different sounds via MIDI from the sound modules. So it's not like the keyboards are just props. Nazuka plays most of the keyboards onstage. People think that he's just up there faking it, because when he locks in, he's so on-beat, it's just crazy! Sometimes I can't believe he's playing it. He's sick!”
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
For an artist whose playground contains so many retro influences, Jones' affection for retro gear is unsurprising. In fact, he tries to avoid using samples at all, relying instead upon older technology. Although he praises some newer equipment, he is not completely sold. “The old stuff is always better than the new junk. The older stuff was made with a bit more love and care. The newer stuff is all about commercializing and making money. Bottom line.” Even so, Jones' studio is stocked primarily with newer pieces of equipment, albeit those based on older technologies. His stash of gear includes a 1980s-era Sequential Circuits Pro-One, an Access Virus, a Roland JP-8000, a Studio Electronics Omega 8, an Akai MPC3000 and a variety of Big Briar Mooger Fooger effects. “There are some Mooger Fooger plug-ins for [Digidesign] Pro Tools, too,” Jones says. “A lot of the new stuff is dope, like the Virus. You can do some amazing things with that, and it's reasonably priced.”
Although he enjoys having a home studio, Jones feels that he benefits most from the pressures of recording in a commercial studio. “It's not just the distractions, it's that ‘Oh, I can do that tomorrow’ mentality. When you're in the studio, you're paying for it. It's like, ‘I better do something so that I have something to show for the time and money that I'm wasting in here.’ The money constraint is sometimes enough to motivate you. You lock a musician in a studio for two weeks, and I'm sure any of 'em could come up with an album. Once the creative process gets going, it's a powerful thing.”
Jones has been experimenting with new vocal styles that he calls “energy vocals.” “The vocal delivery on a lot of my prior stuff was a bit more monotone,” he explains. “This stuff is more dynamic. I'm just trying to get in tune with myself, trying to express myself. I'm trying to tell a story.” Jones uses lots of processing on his vocals to make himself sound like different characters. “I use a little vocal box with different effects on it,” he says. “It's simpler than a vocoder. I push the pedals, and I can pitch up my vocals and make it sound like a girl. It has other effects on it that can make me sound more robotic or whatever.” Then there's the phenomenon of Green Velvet's laugh. Unaided by technology, it ranges from maniacally staccato to deep, expansive bursts of air to a more stoner-sounding, Beavis-like, “heh-heh-heh.” The laugh is all over his recordings, used to both humorous and disturbing effects.
And what about that poor little keyboard he throws down at the conclusion of his show? “This is the second one,” Jones admits. “There was one that I had been using for a while, but I had to put it to rest. Those things are actually quite durable. You can just throw them all over the place, and they'll still play. They're like, ‘Okay, when's the next show?’ That's one of the greatest things about them.”
WEIRD SCIENCE
Jones started his musical aspirations playing a cheap portable keyboard bought at K-Mart. “The keyboard was maybe 60 bucks. The mic was from Radio Shack — 15 dollars or something. My only investment was a 4-track. I was like, ‘Whew! That was a lot of money,’ like $300. I was a starving student at the time. I've now turned into more of a starving artist. But now, it's so crazy. A cheap keyboard is $700. So I was just messing around with stuff.”
Before his incarnation as a techno star, Jones was a chemical engineering student at UC Berkeley. “While I was attending undergraduate school, music was just a hobby, because people always expect you to have a hobby. So I said, ‘Okay, well let me have a hobby,’” he says, laughing demonically. “I started messing around with electronic stuff 'cause that's more up my alley. You know, being a chemie and being into sci-fi, I said, ‘Look, there's this electronic sound.’ I would go out and buy little weird things.” When asked about the connection between engineering and music, the mad scientist of techno responds: “You have to be a bit more creative than analytical when it comes to music, versus school. There's room for analytical problem-solving in music, but it's not as intense as school. With music, there's no right or wrong answer, even though critics think so. That's one of the things I liked about chemical engineering. It's an exact science, so there's a definite answer.”
Jones' nonmusical influences include “all those cheesy, badly produced B-movies like The Hand, Dr. Who and all that junk.” Video games are also a factor. “I used to play them back in college. Video games then were dope. Tetris, Centipede and Galaga — that was my game. I wasn't into Pac Man that much.” Nevertheless, a Pac Man — like pill-munching figure does make an appearance in the video for “La La Land” when Green Velvet plays a handheld video game.
VELVET'S UNDERGROUND
Despite the attention placed on that particular club-themed single, Jones' thematic impetus reaches far beyond the ropes of clubland. He is angry about racism and threats to civil liberties. He acknowledges the severity of recent events but cautions against a reactionary response. “We have to realize that if we want to live in a free society, we need to have freedom of press, freedom of speech and privacy,” Jones says. “People shouldn't just give in to the authorities out of fear.”
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