Sunday, April 27, 2008

Diamanda Galas


In my continuing attempt to document my favorite female rock artists, I found a clip that isa a double treat for me. This is the piece, Do You Take This Man? by Diamanda Galas, an incredible vocalist and performance artist who teamed up with John Paul Jones, the ex bass player for Led Zepplin for the 1994 Recording, The Sportting Life.
Madame Galas is a Greek born singer who can sing anything. Together with Jones, they constructed a minimalisst record full of violence and powerful imagery.
I saw them perform in New York at this time and walked away thinking that Jones was one of the greatest musicians I had ever seen.
I thought Galas was one of the most poweerful emotional vocalists I had ever seen.
They performed as a trio, Jones playing assorted bass guitars , Pete Thomas on drums and Galas, vocals and keyboards on some songs. When they performed just bass, drums and vocals, Galas would perform violent scat that took the place of any twenty great rock guitarists. This was definitive!
John Paul Jonews was one of the great arrangers of early British Pop, he has alsso been contributing to contemporary music as a producer and arranger. He has done orchestral strings for REM and Ben Harper among others.
His 1999 album, Zooma is one of the greatest rock bass records I have ever heard...

2 comments:

-Sepp said...

Off topic.
My old neighbor who turned out to be a closet Zappa fan has offered me a DVD of Dweezil Zappa playing all of Frank's stuff with Frank's old bandmembers!
I'll make sure to youtube it for ya and send you the links unless you want your own disk sent to you.

microdot said...

Wow! I had heard that Dweezil was touring performing this stuff. I haven't heard any of it. He sure had a lot of great influences as a kid. I heard that Steve Vai was jamming with him when he was just a tyke.
I heard some of the stuff he recorded with his brother Ahmet, which was very good and very strange.
I have a few interesting Zappa sites that I look at from time to time. Some are filled with video and audio downloads.
I am trying not to post Zappa stuff until we celbrate the yearly Zappadan Blog Festival.
The DVD is very tempting, Sepp.
Drop me an email at my gmail address
18speed@gmail.com