JIM BRAVO & THE BEETHOVEN FRIEZE
WAVELENGTH #29
AUGUST 27 - 11PM
Jim Bravo (let's clear this up once and for all - it's his real name) is a Toronto artist who's been performing his music for almost four years. His supporting band has varied from a single guitar to a seven-piece revolving circus. His most dynamic and cohesive band to date is The Beethoven Frieze (named after a painting by Austrian symbolist Gustav Klimt), featuring Mandy Mintz and Rocco Signorile. The group will have a new release in October. Jim and I congregated in the basement to discuss "the creative process".
ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN SONGWRITING AND PAINTING
I have a friend who's a painter and a musician - his work reflects his base minimalism. It's got a minimalist construction with spurts of colour - so does his bass playing- With me, musically, I've got a couple of tornados flying around in my head. My paintings used to be about colourful freakouts with saturated primaries - no mixing. Now they're becoming tighter - pick a theme and work on it. If there's any correlation, it's that both are becoming clearerÖ and it's a conscious effort. Once I find something I'm comfortable with in music I'll stay there for a long time. I won't notice that I should be moving on because I've turned to painting, but then the music's growing mouldy. I dropped "serious" painting for a while and started expanding my music collection - just getting back into some older stuff that's always been in my subconscious.
ON RECENT SONGWRITING AND INFLUENCES
Lyrically, my imagery is less abstract than it was before. Early on as a songwriter there was a lot of anxious energy; it (lyrics) used to just be whatever rhymed and now I'm making a conscious effort to tell a story. It's confusing when someone listens to you playing on your own and tells you, "you should check these bands out," so you go and buy those albums, take them home and listen to them and you think, "this person's on my wavelength" (you'll be hearing from our lawyers - copyright infringement ed.) and you're supposed to be influenced by it. It's a good thing that there's someone else out there, but it can make you paranoid - "If I write this song, they'll just say it's a spin-off of/sounds just like (whatever)". You get self-conscious as a writer. With Syd Barrett I was in Octopus-land forever! Now, in a good way this experience can move you in other directions - get you away from that.
ON SHARING MUSIC
When I was at O.C.A., a group of us would be painting and listening to music on the fifth floor of the Stewart building. It was a good cesspool of music and I mean "cesspool" in the dirtiest, best sense! It's music that's not supposed to collide at all but collides in your brain and melts - like that album cover by Guided By Voices (Do the Collapse); just a whole bunch of different cars, compressed into one.
Ol' Dirty Rosen