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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
By far the wildest rock'n'roll animal of the new-wave era was
Von Lmo. Alas, he was also one of the
least friendly to the record industry.
Future Language (1981) and the posthumous Cosmic Interception,
which collects material from the time of the new wave, feature ferocious space-rock jams
that borrow the energy of Hawkwind, the loudness of Blue Cheer, the fury of
MC5 and the free format of Albert Ayler, propelling anthemic melodies and
distorted heavy-metal guitar.
Full bio.
The story of Von Elmo (born Frankie Cavallo in 1954 in Brooklyn) is shrouded in legend. He was certainly an enfant prodige of the drums, active from boyhood in an impressive number of groups: in Funeral Of Art with organist Otto Von Ruggins around 1970, in Pumpo with guitarist Rudolph Grey from 1972 to 1974, in Why You Murder Me as a duo (free improvisation) with Grey alone, in Kongress with Von Ruggins and an Australian magician around 1976 to 1978; finally in Red Transistor, again with Grey, but this time on organ and guitar. From this group came out the single
Not Bite/ We're Not Crazy
(Forced Exposure) at the height of the New Wave boom.
Then, in December 1978, Von Lmo (the pseudonym and the band) was born and soon became the main attraction at Max's Kansas City in New York, taking over from the likes of Johnny Thunders, Patty Smith and Talking Heads. He was the one who played the last concert before the venue went out of business, on November 27, 1981.
That group managed to record an album: Future Language (Strazar, 1981). Their style was described by him as “super space-age heavymetal dance rock.”
The sax-enhanced anthem Future Language adds a catchy hook to frantic drumming and guitar noise, and sets the template for the rest of the songs, which
run the gamut from epileptic rock'n'roll raids like Crash Landing '88 to more traditional revival material like the swinging This Is Pop
and the Devo-esque Radio World
via the heavily distorted voodoobilly Outside Of Time
and the feverish cosmic Ultraviolent Light.
The peak of hysteria is Leave your Body, a furious boogie locomotive buried in saxophone moans while the singer howls like a demonic preacher.
A close second is the goofy and galopping interstellar anthem Be Yourself.
The record was played with manic energy, fulfilling the old mission of
MC5 and
Blue Cheer.
The posthumous Tranceformer (Munster, 2002) contains both the album Future Language and rarities and unreleased material.
In parallel, Von Lmo was leading a career as an avant-garde musician resulting in lengthy jams (even over an hour in duration) which were solos of distorted guitars at maximum volume.
However, due to his "unfriendly" temper and to drug addiction, Von Lmo ostracized himself from the recording world. After that one rehearsal, this sort of Sun Ra of rock music disappeared for several years. Legend has it that in a fit of rage he destroyed all remaining copies of his record and all photographs of the time. During the 1980s, however, his fame grew to the point where he became one of the cult figures of the underground scene. Not only did several musicians (notably the Plasmatics) begin to copy his music and shows, but fanzines dedicated to reconstructing his history sprang up. For the record, similar fate befell Grey, a no less misunderstood genius, whose new single, Implosion '73/ Transformation (New Alliance), a kind of free-jazz for feedback, would not appear until the 1990s.
In July 1991, suddenly, the man reappeared in public, not changed at all. His “cosmic” message had remained the same (“we transmit/ you intercept”), the music was even louder. In February 1994 a new record,
Cosmic Interception (Variant), was finally released, on which some of the old warhorses (recorded in 1979) appeared, beautifully updated to the cyberpunk era (only Cosmic Interception and Inside Shadowland are from 1994).
His style has remained a roaring rock and roll sung in that “Black” roar, armored in MC5-worthy excesses and dropped into danceable structures. The title track, with Otto Von Ruggins' pressing staccato keyboards, takes one back to the hellish climates of
Suicide, while Juno Saturn's mechanical saxophone phrasing and a haunting rhythmic beat (Bobby Ryan's drums and Craig Coffin's bass) make Radio World a rhythm and blues for robot armies. Even the lesser tracks offer sounds as classic as they are delirious: another saxophone ballet and Mike Kross's stratospheric guitar propel the anti-discomusic of Ultraviolet Light; feverish rockabilly and grim heavymetal interpenetrate in the galactic message of Leave Your Body; the magniloquent “symphonic” atmosphere of Inside Shadowland gives way to a fantasy-horror drama.
Almost all the songs could easily go on for hours, being based on the pounding repetition of an elementary pattern. It is logical, then, that the band's anthem,
Be Yourself, drags on for six minutes at unbridled gallop temp without the slightest variation. Deafening and frenetic, these sabbaths are ravaged by Saturn's pantagruelic style on saxophone, which is a kind of cosmic background wave, by rhythms that are loaded with TNT, by guitar riffs that are palaces of noise. Towering over so much cataclysm is the leader's hoarse, visceral singing, loud enough to crack the walls of his spaceship. Breathlessly, the group carried out one of the most memorable raids in the scene of the New Wave.
The legend was largely sculpted by
the 1980s performances of Red Resistor, which were mostly ferocious noise;
not songs, but long improvised jams; precisely the kind of music that Von Lmo performed in his live show. Red Resistor (Variant, 1996) condenses four of these shows (and X+Z=0 has perhaps the best guitar solo of his career).
At the border between Hawkwind and Chrome, Von Lmo created an exuberant genre and revived Devo's demented subculture.
Unfortunately, Frankie Cavallo ended up in jail again at the turn of the century
(apparently for a sex-related offense).
Released from jail, Von Lmo formed Avant Duel with Otto von Ruggins for
Beyond Human (2012), his first release in 15 years.
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