sary to a compendium of boom chuck’s wide-ranging possibilities. Maybe you don’t want to know about all the possibilities, but after Generic Boom Chuck, you’ll know there’s a good idea there. And to know this cassette is to know John Davis—it’s that personal. John Davis’ moods, like his cassette, range with great originality from clown-like happiness and wit through astute intellectual measure to downright offensive irascibility. He’s authentic, honest, unpackaged, always right there. He takes large risksand is sometimes disappointed. He wants to communicate and be communicated with—he is quite good at it and hopefully expects the world to share his level of intensity. W h e n I was a kid,” says Davis, “my father would always get those notes from the teacher — ‘Dear Mr. Davis: John is a very intelligent The Incredible recording child, but I have thirty other students, blah, blah, blah.’ So I started doing a lot on my own. A one-man band even then.” Davis’childhood was nearly nomadic. His father was the American Consul General in Argentina where John was born. After Buenos Aires came Panama, then John’s first home in the states with his father’s assignment toWashington D.C. Next came four years in Italy, five years in Brazil and then Hong Kong. “Every few years my friends all suddenly disappeared,” remembers John. Again the stuff of future one-man bands. As a kid, John spoke Spanish or Italian or Portuguese as often as he did English. “I discovered both the orgasm and the harmonica in Naples when I was eight. I went into the PX there and bought my first harmonica —a German Hohner. I was amazed at this incredible instrument that I could play all by myself.” A career diplomat, John's father quit the foreign service in 1972 because he was appalled at its corruption. “The appointments were becoming totally political,” explains John about his dad’s beliefs. “Presidents started sending their friends as Ambassadors . . . guys who knew nothing about the notion of diplomacy. So Dad retired to Arizona.” In the meantime, John was sent to school in the United States, his parents’ effort to Americanize him a little. They picked San Francisco and the year was 1966. Of course John Davis immediately became a hippy and a musician. Soon after San Francisco, Davis came north to study at Pacific University. He’s stayed in Oregon since then, making Portland his first real home. ‘Tve played in bands here with other people,” he explains, “but they were never as far into it as I was . . . or they didn’t hear the same sounds I heard.” So the one-man band was inevitable. “For me it works,” says John. “All the different guys have to get along. The manager, me, says ‘get in there and practice,’ so I do, and if the band, me, says, ‘I’m tired of playing this song,’ it’S time for the writer, me, to write a new song. And we don’t have to wait for the guy who’s always late.” Being a one-man band is an incredible physical feat, like complex juggling. John trains for it, jogging backwards for one of his three miles a day, so as to work the foot and leg muscles needed to keep each limb playing a separate instrument. The challenge of playing solo and live is part of the show with him, just like it was when he mastered hang gliding all the way to winning the 1979 U.S. Nationals. “Hang gliding is nothing more than a way of making things simpler, more direct. It’s one guy ... flying. I think there’s some sort of correlation between the rawness, the pureness of an idea and its ability to thrill people. Both hang gliding and being a one-man band are extensions of your own abilities with the right personal technology.” Tn he o t c o br n a c n e d p t n o ef w a a o t n a el - l m . a T n h e b r a e n w d ai s s Wilbert Harrison doing “Goin’ to Kansas City.” “And Jesse Fuller, too, was a one-man rock and roll band, with ‘San Francisco Bay Blues.’ And if you’ve never heard of those guys it’s because they got passed over because of low technology ... didn’t have a full sound. Now the technology makes it possible for a one-man band to have a full sound. It’s like pushing an abacus through some electronic chips. Rawness and technology meet in the modern one-man band.” Aesthetic theory aside, Davis didn’t slough off when it came to making his art available to the public. The giant entertainment corporations, structured to grind slowly forward (even more slowly now that recorded music sales are down), are neither equpped nor likely to plug a John Davis right into his specialized market, but that’s not the only way to go. “I feel like the music industry and real people are pulling further and further apart, because they have no real contact with each other, just dollars. The public is being cheated,” says Davis. “But there’s still room for the little guy who can become his own mini-corporation and release a cassette. Why shouldn’t I compete on the market when I have something to say, a good idea, and an original product?” It was Island Records and the reggae industry that originally introduced Chris Blackwell’s One-Plus- One concept, where the same album appears on both sides of a cassette, tacitly inviting re-recording on one side. Artistic anarchist that he is, John Davis has gotten right to the point and left side two of Generic Boom Chuck completely blank, for your own use. “I was going to put a stressrrelief rap on side two, but I decided blank was a neat idea,” says Davis. “Doing a cassette instead of a record is perfect for someone like me, because it’s much cheaper than a record when you’re doing a smaller quantity, like five hundred. People will be doing it much more in the future. The industry gets more conservative in hard times, but, ironically, the art gets better. The art’s gonna get better and better in Portland. I’m trying to do my part. 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