Need New Body is a Philidelphia-based band that arose from the ruins of another band called
Bent Leg Fatima, which featured
Dale Jimenez on keyboards,
Jeff Bradbury on vocals/banjo, and
Chris Powell on drums. As
Fatima began to slow down, Powell invited his longtime friend
Chris Reggiani to play bass, and the
foursome called itself
Need New Body. With the addition of
Jamie Robinson on piano and
Jim Reggiani on percussion, the band was well on its way to completely bewildering its audiences while simultaneously making them shake
what their mommas gave them.
N.N.B.'s live act is nothing short of a
spectacle. The band, often in full
fang-bearing monkey regalia, screams sing-song-y lyrics into area mics while pounding on their instruments like the
primates they dress up as (that is, of course, assuming that the aforementioned monkeys have tremendous
musical ability). Their music is at once very
strange and very
danceable, which basically translates into
very enjoyable. The swirls of
organ,
drums,
bass,
pots and pans, and
banjos, create a "
wicked hurdy gurdy", to quote their label's website. They have been known to cover bits and pieces of
Frank Zappa tunes, and even though they have lots of written material,
Need New Body's concerts usually consist of long stretches of
free avant-jazz improvisation. The only consistent aspect of their live shows is the fact that all six band members are enjoying what they are doing. They laugh audibly, they dance about, they sing along with
Bradbury as he belts out lyrics to, say,
Gamble On:
Take my advice, don't take my hand, I've got a bad reputation...
On top of being an incredible live act,
Need New Body has also done some time in the studio:
-
Need New Body, 2001, released on
Cenotaph Audio records.
The band’s first album can’t be specifically assigned a
genre or
style, as it encompasses many different sounds. Over its 22 tracks,
Need New Body seeks to combine many musical styles and create
the postmodern musical
masterpiece of our time. Whereas most like-minded bands that attempt this feat go at it in far too serious a manner,
Need New Body operates with a sense of utmost playfulness and over-the-top
surrealistic humor, much like one of their obvious influences,
Frank Zappa. However, while
Zappa was a masterful
composer, the guys in
N.N.B. have a much more spontaneous,
off-the-cuff feel to their work.
The album features collaborations with the likes of
Blue Hawaii from Chicago’s
Bablicon, as well as members of
The Lilys,
Ink and Dagger, and
Aspera Ad Astra. They all add to the
freewheeling mood of the album without bringing the sounds of their own individual acts (thank
god).
The album literally features the majority of the defining aspects of
20th century music as a whole- from
film music ambience and
free jazz freakouts to
worldbeat polyrhythms and
hip-hop, even
spoken word and
klezmer are combined fluently (and oftentimes quite humorously). Still, they don’t sound like they’re trying to be overly eclectic. The album has definitive unity and flow to it, with some tracks even bordering on being outright accessible, such as the
rock-tastic “
C.R. Eyeball”, and my personal favorite of the album, “
Gamble On”.
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