Deerhoof’s set at last year’s Time:Spans festival was a surprise in even in the midst of 11 days of unpredictableness. The festival has all the earmarks of experimentalism; it’s organized by the The Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust, named for a contemporary of John Cage and Morton Feldman, and held primarily at the Dimenna Center for Classical Music. Deerhoof isn’t a typical rock band, but Time:Spans sure isn’t any kind of rock festival.
They did play some Cage and Feldman that night, however, along with Pauline Oliveros, Karlheinz Stockhausen and other major figures of the last century’s contemporary classical music. They also played bits of the B-52’s, the Beach Boys, Ornette Coleman, Eddie Grant, and Kermit the Frog. They played Kraftwerk, Ennio Morricone, Gary Numan, Parliament, Silver Apples and Sun Ra. Under the banner In All Languages: Deerhoof Plays Hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, they played a lot. The set of genre smashing medleys has now been released under the simpler title Love Lore and is available on their Bandcamp page.
The expanse of Love Lore isn’t entirely without precedent. In 1983, the L.A punk band Circle Jerks released an epic piece of stupidity with “Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45),” a five-minute mash of Paul Anka, the Association, Captain and Tennille, Carpenters, Starland Vocal Band and Tammy Wynette. The notes to Naked City’s 1992 album Radio lists more than five dozen direct and varied inspirations for the album’s 19 tracks. Love Lore falls somewhere in the gulf between the two; 43 works played in part (sometimes very small part) over the course of five tracks totaling just over half an hour, stitched together in transitions that would make a brilliant mixtape or wouldn’t work without a crossfade but most often only work because it’s the same band passionately playing through.
The set ends with a love letter to both Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed in a cover (maybe the only song complete enough to call a “cover”) of the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” that interpolates Anderson’s “Example #22.” It’s pretty much perfect. The whole album is available as a free download if only because licensing fees would make it impossible any other way.
Author
Kurt Gottschalk is a writer, journalist and broadcaster based in New York City.
