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| The blurbs...
...on the Chandler
Travis
Philharmonic
"Dixieland, pop, avant-jazz, rock...and fully over the top."
"A keenly entertaining blend of the Ringling Bros. and
Ra...[that]
puts the harm back in Philharmonic."
"this man should either be locked up or made king of the
planet.
Despite the apparent anarchy, the band (playing their
"psycho-jungle-dixieland")
is incredibly tight."
"He's a true New England eccentric, a master of daft power
pop, and
live, he plays in his pajamas..."
"...like a Mexican version of the Bosstones on Caribbean
holiday..."
"...a truly original musical experience."
"...Jonathan Richman for adults..."
"A beloved legend on his Cape Cod, MA, home turf, veteran cult hero Chandler Travis is a one-of-a-kind songwriter whose absurdist wit co-exists with a bruised idealism that gives his best tunes a deep and haunting resonance. His horn-laden eight piece Philharmonic is gloriously loose yet effortlessly powerful, and thus a perfect vehicle for Travis's deadpan humor and iconoclastic songcraft." - Scott Schinder, Time Out New York (along with a red star indicating that it's "recommended") "There is no one quite as cracked as Chandler Travis... a crazy carnival of sound... an alternative Dixieland band but so much more -- wild detours into rock, pop, spoken word, and experimental sound collages... suggests a gene-spliced hybrid of Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" and "The Who Sell Out"..." - Jonathan Perry, Boston Globe "The irreverent guitarist, singer, and composer Travis, who lives on Cape Cod and has been known to perform barefoot and in his pajamas, has been in show biz for nearly four decades. For years, beginning in the seventies, he co-led the musical act that opened for George Carlin on his tours. His other band, the Incredible Casuals, got its start in the eighties and is a fixture on the New England music scene. This visit celebrates the release of a new album, "Tarnation and Alastair Sim," and one can expect Travis's set of original songs, which mix mind-bending wordplay with Dixieland jazz, shimmering rock, and horn-fuelled R. & B., to go on well into the night: the new album weighs in at a hefty forty-plus tracks." - John Donohue, New Yorker "Travis and his Philharmonic raucously plow back into town with their overstuffed new CD Tarnation and Alastair Sim and its 48 (!) songs. Such overstuffing is just part and parcel of the CTP experience: too many genres (glam rock, Afropop, ska, r&b, Christmas songs, free jazz, Dixieland, Tom Waits-y art-clank, funk) going toe-to-toe with too many instruments (horns, mandolin, synths, guitars, sitar, mando-cello, strings, four drum kits) disgorging a hodgepodge of over-the-top wacky fun." - D. Shaun Bosler, Village Voice "...wonderful, trippy, wild and rewarding... the final track sounds like you've duct-taped blown 1985 Walkman speakers to your head and had a drunken rhinoceros push you on a rope swing." - Rob Conery, Cape Cod Chronicle "Like some cosmic collision between NRBQ, Marcel Duchamp, Captain Beefheart and Spike Jones, the Chandler Travis Philharmonic is utterly charming and totally unpredictable.. lots and lots of fun." - Greg Haymes, Albany Times-Union "If the members of Monty Python had grown up sneaking into bars in New Orleans, they'd have formed a band a lot like the Chandler Travis Philharmonic. The 48 tracks include a CD-opening Christmas song, ad jingles for fake products (including Unibrow Man Oatmeal) and stream-of-consciousness gibberish voice mail from comedian George Carlin left on Travis' answering machine. The disc also includes some delightful Dixieland-flavored pop songs ("Wireless" and "Must Be Love" among them) that prove what we already knew: Travis and crew are as talented as they are clever and bizarre." - Bill O'Neill, Cape Cod Times "... a dynamite band... one giant ball of explosive thunder... there is no real way to describe the music except to say big, bigger, biggest." - Melora North, Provincetown Banner "Inspiring, creative, and honest... To think that this wild group of eight music makers can keep us entertained with such unusual tunes is a compliment to Travis' obviously natural flair for harmony. The album never sounds forced or stupid. It sounds creative and honest. More or less the antithesis of the expected, the CTP is an eight-man musical ride from Dixieland to jazz to pop to the avant-garde and back again. As wacky, zany and bonkers as the music is on tarnation & alastair sim, the CTP does something that should be done more often - it makes music fun. Living up to everything it's created since its 1996 debut as a traveling band that would be proud to be called a circus too, tarnation is an album that touches a lot of musical bases. At 48 songs (less than 70 total album minutes), there's a version of "Brown-Eyed Girl" that definitely won't remind anybody of the original. "Vasco de Gama" features a 50-vocal track; "Dance Godammit" will most likely elicit that exact response; "Ronald" reminds that the CTP is actually a tight musically driven orchestra; and songs like "I'm Chandler's Butterfly" showcase sitar, mandocello, and four drum kits." - Nicholas Smith, Barnstable Patriot "A long and winding road with a surprise around every turn, "Tarnation and Alastair Sim" is a joy ride whether you're a frequent or first-time Philharmonic flyer." - Joe Burns, Cape Codder "Among the highlights are the live opener "It's Almost Christmas Again", which turns a joyous observance into a tinsel-covered threat, the swirly eastern flight "I'm Chandler's Butterfly", the poppy "Wireless", the soul-grooved "Strong Strong String", the blissful tomgue-twisted toe-tapper "Must Be Love", the island exploration "Vasco Da Gama", the zapped-out musical comandment "Dance Godammit" and a brilliantly twisted version of "Brown-Euyed Girl" that finally gives Van's anthem its long overdue trip through the wringer." - Matthew Robinson, boston.com "This band will bring you joy... trippy, jazzy, poppy, rockin'... a record that's impossible to listen to and not smile." - Ed Symkus, Cambridge Tab "a tour de force that canters effortlessly from horn-y Dixieland jazz to sitar-laden psych-rock to Princely funk to whimsical ephemera... " - Brett Milano, Boston Phoenix ...a smattering of applause for "Llama Rhymes" ~ ~ ~ "... a strange, wonderful, totally distinct ode to musical
mastery
and nonsense... imagine Andy Partridge of XTC and Beat poet Gregory
Corso,
wandering between Saturn and New Orleans to sit in with the Sun Ra
Arkestra...
at once simple, abstract and wondrous to behold."
"...the band sounds an awful lot like the Kinks circa Muswell
Hillbillies
("My Old Man"), or XTC circa Oranges and Lemons (the instrumentally
brilliant
and lyrically witty "Village of the Darned")... they are frighteningly
versatile, and many of their arrangements are almost
symphonically
meticulous and complex..."
"At first glance you may be surprised at their weird, cool,
and strange
world, but soon you'll be fascinated by the charm of the songwriting
(which
may remind you of Elvis Costello); then you will have big fun with the
co-existence of free noise and melancolic jazz-pop, and with the humor
of a cult glam-rock show. This is just a great omni-pop record."
"Intelligent, imaginative, witty, entertaining, and sometimes
sweetly
sentimental, "Llama Rhymes" is a CD that reaches the head, heart, and
feet."
"...one of rock's true originals."
"...never a dull moment... Travis is a rock-n-roll Brittanica
...
obviously dead seious about his music."
""Llama Rhymes" is one of the best and most indescribable
Cape Cod
record releases in years, if not ever."
...on "Let's Have a Pancake" ~ ~ ~ "Fast and giddy and loose as a clown's drawers, his
Philharmonic
sounds like the 'Q saluting Louie Jordan."
""Pancake" is a skillful, fun, sometimes funny collection
that is
played with joyous, wreckless abandon, and the Philharmonic is the best
damned music show you can see in a small club ever."
"...like filling a music store with laughing gas, then
turning eight
wonderfully talented virtuosos very loose inside...seriously sharp and
spirited..."
"They put the fun back in dysfunctional!"
""Let's Have A Pancake!" uses accordions, horns, mandocellos,
guitars
and drums to decorate pop songs of inconceivable appeal and inarguable
ingenuity. Expect the unexpected is the only rule..."
"The Chandler Travis Philharmonic are a huge cosmic
accident...very
odd, very beautiful, and you know there's a message in it all. We need
more bands with this kind of nerve and the tunes to back it up...a
delicious,
nutricious, and total mind-fuck."
"...might be the most unconventional act on earth...a Cape
Cod version
of surf-punks Sublime, substituting Dixieland for ska in a lively mix
that
will make a great sound track for your next clambake...one track sounds
like Loaded-era Velvet Underground gone berserk..."
"Inspiring..."
"An eight-piece monster of a band [with] a big raucous
sound...seriously
energizing..."
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