ANT-BEE ON AMAZON

I am very fond of the music of Ant-Bee, but I am the first to admit that sometimes the music I like is a bit rarified for some people's tastes. However, on Amazon, the first reader review has just appeared...

http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Church-Muzik-Ant-Bee/dp/B00533XZ8S/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1348435471&sr=1-1&keywords=ant-bee

An Interesting Take On Psychedelic Music September 13, 2012

By Gary D. Garles

Format:Audio CD

Had my first listen today. The disc started out sounding a lot like their previous efforts, which I dearly love. By the end of the fourth song I was totally hooked. There is a sequence of songs from Flutter-bye through Endless Journey/The Light/Mannah that is as good as any album ever gets. The band plays psych music, and yet the individual songs are just well-written pop. It all works very well together.

Check out Ant-Bee at Gonzo

ANT-BEE ON MTV: Will wonders never cease?

1. Billy James, an author of rock biographies and a musician in his own right, reassembled great musicians from the psychedelic era in his own Ant-Bee project. Featuring contributions from Read More
   
   
   Check out Ant-Bee at Gonzo

FROM STRAIGHT TO BIZARRE DVD

Some weeks ago we looked at this DVD, which is on topic not only because it contains lots of Captain Beefheart stuff (and we have a Captain Beefheart DVD forthcoming as part of the 'Lost Broadcasts' series), but beause we also have a Zappa DVD in the same series, and because Billy James, who is featured massively throughout is also our very own Ant-Bee mainman...

http://ripplemusic.blogspot.com/2012/05/frank-zappa-from-straight-to-bizarre.html


"Just what the world needs: Another record company." No, this is not the motto of Ripple Music, but the slogan that Frank Zappa used in 1968 to launch his record company Bizarre Records. Distributed through Warner Bros. because of a deal with Frank Sinatra's label Reprise, Bizarre and it's counterpart label Straight released some of the weirdest shit you've ever heard - Uncle Meat, Trout Mask Replica and Pretties For You are the three best known releases but there was a lotta other crazy stuff that's really hard to find.

If you like those records then you'll enjoy this DVD. If you don't, it will bore you to tears. It's about 2 hours long and pretty scholarly. Not surprising since it's narrated by and features interviews with British music journalists. American author/musician Billy James is also featured and has some interesting insights. He's worked on books with members of both Alice Cooper and Captain Beefheart. Although the commentary can be a bit dry at times, what makes it interesting is the first hand accounts from the artists themselves. I'm always interested in hearing Neal Smith and Dennis Dunaway talk about their time with the original Alice Cooper group. They both talk about how thrilled they were to get accepted into Zappa's orbit and confirm that due to a misunderstanding they went to Frank's house to audition for him at 9 o'clock in the morning, not 9 at night. They're also honest in their appraisal that they were unhappy with the way their debut album turned out but admire it's uniqueness.

The same goes for John "Dumbo" French and Bill "Zoot Horn Rollo" Harkleroad of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Their work on Trout Mask Replica remains truly one of a kind. Like it or not, there's no other album like it and it never would have happened if Zappa didn't give Beefheart complete creative freedom. They also confirm the legends surrounding it - most of it was done in a single 6 hour session; Beefheart insisted on putting cardboard over the cymbals, etc. Zappa even bailed them out of jail when the hungry musicians got busted for stealing food from a grocery store. Those guys were pretty freaky looking back then, it's no surprise they got caught.

Jeff Simmons was signed to Zappa's label when he was a member of the band Easy Chair but they broke up before recording anything. Simmons wound up doing the soundtrack to a biker movie called Naked Angels and eventually put out the solo album Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up. These are some of the most obscure albums on the label but the two songs were later recorded by Zappa. "Wonderful Wino" turned up on 1976's Zoot Allures and "Lucille…" closed the first chapter of 1979's Joe's Garage trilogy.

Then there's the notorious Permanent Damage album by the G.T.O.'s. This might be even more difficult to listen to than Trout Mask Replica. The vocalists were all well known Hollywood groupies at the time that Zappa encouraged to write about their activities. Pamela Des Barres is the best known member but the other ladies were all linked to heavyweight musicians and actors. The years have not been kind to this record. Not even guest spots from Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Lowell George and assorted Mothers can make their out of tune wailing something you want to hear more than once or twice. The dialogue in between songs is still pretty funny.

Other artists that released albums through Bizarre and Straight were comedians Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley. Zappa's manager Herb Cohen brought folk artists like Tim Buckley that are covered briefly. The Zappa family trust are very unwilling to work with outsiders so most of Zappa's own releases are not dealt with in detail. Too bad since Uncle Meat, Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Burnt Weeny Sandwich contain some of his greatest work. I'd love to hear stories about how he wrote the music and worked with the incredible Mothers of the late 60's. The label eventually ceased due to legal trouble with Herb Cohen and the amount of work that's required of dealing with running a record company but the Bizarre songs remain insane.


--Woody

Buy here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dvd-frank-zappa-from-straight-to-bizarre/23171108?ean=823564527291&itm=1&usri=823564527291

EXCLUSIVE: Ant-Bee interview (Part Four)

Thursday teatime I did one of the most intriguing interviews of my career so far. I spoke to Billy James, who - apart from being the main publicist with whom I have been dealing in recent months, is also main man of Ant-Bee - perhaps the most singular artist on Gonzo (and that is up against some stiff competition). The interview went on for nearly an hour, and this is the fourth and final day.

Part one of this interview

Part two of this interview

Part three of this interview



Jon: When you approach somebody to appear on one of your songs, how much of a remit do you give them? Or do you just give them the title and let them know what it’s about or do you just let them do what they want and then you manipulate the sounds?



Billy: It depends. Like when I had Michael Bruce here I would bring him into the studio and make him do pieces and parts that I did and the same with Bunk Gardner. Or I’d have an idea and say `hey Don can you send me some Moog weird sounds like a brontosaurus crashing into a building or something`. I give him the general idea.



Other pieces for instance Jan Akkerman’s piece he sent me and Peter Banks, I used one piece, but he actually sent three pieces – another two pieces I haven’t had the chance to work on. He had sent me pieces that he had done that were never out on anything so it’s a combination and then a lot of the stuff is combinations of where I will have a piece, you know a sax line that I got from Bunk.



That I recorded back in LA that I’ll fuse on to a slowed down background rhythm guitar piece that I’ve gotten from Michael Bruce from the ‘70s to a lead line that I had Don Preston do recently and I Frankenstein – everything together, so everything is pretty much Frankensteined and the whole record is like a Frankenstein type of a piece where I’ve taken snippets and snatches and things from all types of different eras and mix them all together.



For instance that song 'Living;, that sax solo in the middle of it and the guitar solo are from completely different saxes from the ‘90s and the guitar’s from the late ‘90s from Michael Bruce. So there are different solos from almost ten years apart that I fused together and somehow they work.



Zappa did a lot of that stuff, particularly in the end days – I forgot what he called it – but he would take drum tracks. You know he recorded everything live so he would take drum tracks from one live show, and then take a guitar solo from another show and fuse it on top of it, and it would work and sometimes they would both be in completely different time signatures. But somehow it worked. And I always found that fascinating – a lot of it is a game of chance, as well, you are doing experimenting. But some of the things that you do but it is almost impossible to recreate it again.



The magic is also in the mixing. It’s almost the way like which Jimi Hendrix did the Electric Ladyland 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) ; there was like a live mix at the time so there was so many different mixes of it. So it’s almost an art-form of just the mixing itself, you know. I don’t have anything electronic, it’s not programmable and I still have to do it by hand – a lot of this stuff – and that’s the art to it, you know. You get a magic in the mixing.



Jon: How did the Ant-Bee project start off in the beginning?



Billy: What happened was that originally I was back in the late ‘80s, I mean I am pretty much a trained drummer/percussionist and I graduated out of Berkeley College of Music, which is a well-known music school up in Boston, Massachusetts and I moved out to Los Angeles in 1983 to work with Steve Vai. He was a guitar player who worked for Zappa back in the early ‘80s and I actually befriended him in Berkeley at the music school.



He got the gig with Zappa and he moved to Los Angeles and then when I graduated out of Berkeley he said come on out and do some recording with me. I was 22 years old and I drove out there from Los Angeles to Selma, California. This was before Steve Vai had his first record out or anything; he was really pretty much unknown other than he was playing guitar with Zappa at the time.



So I moved into his house and I did some chart work for Steve and then I played some drum parts for his first record, Flex-Able, which came out and is actually a pretty well-known album and through Steve I met Zappa and that’s how I was able to do some chart work for him, and because he knew I knew a lot about rhythm.



Actually I wrote a text book on rhythm that never came out, but it has an endorsement from Steve and Zappa and Chester Thompson and Bill Bruford and Jan Akkerman and a slew of people, but – oh and Robert Fripp endorsed it and also gave me the title to the book, but because it is so complex I could never find a publishing company to put it out and so it has laid dormant for 30 years.



So through Steve and Zappa and all that stuff, and I was working with him and I started working with Bob Harris who was Frank Zappa’s singer, so a lot of the Zappa guys I started working with once I moved out to LA, and then I did a lot of drum stuff. Just a lot of drum stuff, I really didn’t do a lot of my own stuff until my brother one day gave me a four track reel to reel and so I started experimenting with it. It was probably 1986 at the time. I started experimenting with tapes and this and that and backwards tracks. I was so fascinated with it and I started editing it and I was so very much into Frank and his whole thing about editing and musique concrète and so I started putting pieces of music together.



I was always a big Beatles fan – I always sang and had a good voice. I was always singing Beach Boys stuff and was able to almost imitate. I was really a good imitator of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys and stuff. Even back before I ever recorded stuff I used to sing to their stuff so much and again I played with an English band called The Shout and did EPs and a bunch of garbage pretty much.



I was experimenting with this tape recorder; I put together a sort of psychedelic Beach Boys/Beatles/Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett type recordings. Very low budget demos, because it was like a cheap – reel to reel was only a quarter inch – the sound was horrible and I had no equipment of really doing any effects so much other than a really cheap reverb unit. And then there was like one big psychedelic kind of a weird label out of LA that was very well-known and I don’t know how I had got the idea to send something to them , I’m not really sure, but it was Bomp Records. Have you ever heard of them before?



Jon: Yes....is that Greg Shaw?



Billy: Yeah Greg Shaw, he’s the one. I don’t know what prompted me to do it, but I sent the tapes to Greg Shaw. Next thing I know, I get a ‘phone call saying ‘oh these things are just amazing blah blah blah. I want you to come down to my office, I want to sign you.’ No I wasn’t on Bomp I was on Voxx – like a division of Bomp, and I was one of the only acts - if not the only one - that he financed the recordings.



He loved my stuff so much he paid for all the recordings for the record and put out the first Ant-Bee record which got just tons of press and like I said, Island Records came to me and EMI. Now I can barely listen to it – it’s such an amateurish piece of garbage, but people seemed to love it and that’s first album syndrome. You know, it’s like kindergarten as opposed to electronic music which is like college. That’s the difference. Have you ever heard it? I should send it to you some time. Rob’s releasing all of it.



It’s very psychedelic it’s like a lost Syd Barrett type of a record. No real guest stars on there, it’s got Bob Harris on there. It was sort of promoted on my own. But it became like a cult classic – it was weird, it really took off in the Underground, particularly in England – they loved me over there. And then I got signed to this next label. He put out a bunch of stuff like Gong – he did Hatfield and the North and a bunch of the mid-prog bands which I like them all, but I love Gong. I’m a huge Gong fan. On Lunar Muzik I think the piece I do with Daevid Allen, it’s a long glissando piece and he loves it. He gave me a really nice compliment on it and I think you’d really like that if you like Daevid Allen – it’s a long meditative glissando thing on Lunar Muzik.



Jon: It was Daevid Allen who first introduced me to Rob.



Billy: Wow, really. It’s funny because Rob wanted to release my stuff many years ago. I just wanted too much money – he didn’t want to pay for it.



At any rate, that’s how the first record came to be and took off and then I wound up meeting the Mothers members and then I started getting involved with them, and that’s how the second record – it’s a document of my meeting and working with the original Mothers members and that’s what the Vegetables record pretty much is all about. I was just so into that. Like I said it’s best when you maybe hear them and we can talk about them.



Jon: If you could let me have copies that would be lovely....I noticed your Beatles harmonies



Billy: I wanted to be a Beatle which is funny ‘cos so did Jon, so did Peter Banks so did Greg Lake – everybody I worked for and they all wanted to be a Beatle – everyone wanted to be a Beatle and I wanted to be one too



Jon: They were the best, and you always aspire to be the best



Billy: I wanted to be one from 1968 on, you know. I knew what I wanted to be so my singing, it was always reflective of ...anything was reflective of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and a little Pink Floyd in there, but that’s because I don’t really have the range of singing. I am not a scream singer; I’m not like Paul Rodgers or Roger Daltrey. I can’t sing like that.



Like Brian Wilson, I can’t sing up in the stratosphere like him either, I’m more of a middle sort of crooney type of voice, that’s just the way I sing. There’s only so much new material you can sing that way. I couldn’t sing funk let’s put it that way. I love Peter Gabriel – I’d do anything to be able to sing like him, but there’s no way. Just the way I do it, you have to do a lot of harmonies and do it the old style Beatles/Beach Boy type of singing.



Jon: I think it sounds more like the Revolver era of Beatles harmonies. It’s got the She said, She said sort of vibe to it.



And there, it ended. Actually it didn't, but the next ten minutes were taken up with us chitchatting about mutual friends and acquaintances, and various bits and bobs about work. Thanks Billy, I enjoyed that and look forward to doing it again soon..

EXCLUSIVE: Ant-Bee interview (Part Three)

Thursday teatime I did one of the most intriguing interviews of my career so far. I spoke to Billy James, who - apart from being the main publicist with whom I have been dealing in recent months, is also main man of Ant-Bee - perhaps the most singular artist on Gonzo (and that is up against some stiff competition). The interview went on for nearly an hour, and so far is on the third day.
Part one of this interview
Part two of this interview

Jon: I was really impressed with the Electronic Church Musik album. I was wondering, what came first, the songs or the concept?

Billy: As you know, again it was 10 years in the making .... actually the concept came first. I had the concept of doing something in the lines of how Brian Wilson did Smile and just did a sort of spiritual, religious sort of trip, but it evolved. When pieces came in a lot of it was how is this going to fit in? And this one’s not going to because of the theme of it all.

How does it fit in, whether by a word, or a passage, something’s got to be something to relate to each other. And I had ideas and then again once you start recording and executing the ideas, they never come out exactly the way you want them to be, you know. I grade them on a scale, I remember Zappa saying that’s the way he would do it. He would grade it on a percentage scale. I remember him going through some of the early Mother songs and say well this one was 70% correct to my specifications, and this one was only 60% you know.

And none of them are 100% so you go through them and listen to them and this and that and you take them in and out and see if they’re good enough and interchange or whatever and I had all these years to do, I wasn’t under the gun just finally a little label came to me and said hey we will press up this amount of CDs and give you this amount of an advance and I said, what the hell, you know. Island Records isn’t going to come back to me, which is one thing. I was approached by Island Records out of England when my first record came out in 1989 and the head A & R rep really loved my stuff and I stupidly, instead of .... I was working on newer, more – I wouldn’t say commercial – but probably more not as avant-garde as my first album, but stupidly I sent in my first record and not the new tracks so she writes back and says well I loved it and wanted to sign you but couldn’t get anybody else here as excited. And that was my chance with Island Records over there in England and that would have been great if I had gotten signed.

If I had gotten over there back in the day I think I would have been much more popular. There’s no question about it. If I had moved to England and I didn’t, I stayed in LA, I should have moved to England and continued Ant-Bee there, and I think ... remember Bevis Frond? He was real popular.

Jon: He’s another old mate of mine

Billy: Just around the time he did, and there was another one, the Porcupine Tree guy

Jon: Steven Wilson

Billy: Right. I remember those guys were starting around the same time as I was. But I am just so avant-garde. I always got praise and cheers and a lot of .... but never really took off in that sort of that sort of big direction because you’re just too far out, your music is just too weird and far out. This is just the way I am, and my music, and it’s just the way it’s always going to be. It’s never going to be any different.

Jon: I was just thinking as you were saying that, that if Brian Wilson subtitled Smile, `A Teenage Symphony to God`, yours is a Middle-age Symphony to God.

Billy: Yeah, there you go.

Another guy who started out at the same time as me was Hans Zimmer – now he does all the soundtracks and stuff like that. Now I’ve been sidetracked because Jon Anderson has me doing vocal stuff for him which is very difficult. That’s the other thing, it takes hours of rehearsing to it and, you know, it’s trying to sing behind Pavarotti or something. You know, he’s just like amazing, and I don’t claim to be that type of a vocalist. I’m more like a Beatle-type of singer, a John Lennon-like singer, not like an opera singer like Jon sort of is, so that takes hours and typically I have to transcribe the words and the notes and all that.

I just get it as an mp3 and then I have to transcribe it back and the notes and rehearse on it and this and that, you know. And over and over again. It takes a long time, but other than that I have been actually working on an odd project which is a jazz fusion-type record Ant-Bee style. I really like Miles Davis and Weather Report and that type of stuff and the Mahavishnu Orchestra and I love that fusion type stuff as well, you know the jazz fusion of ’73, ’74 and ’75 you know, those years, and so I’ve been working on this piece that has Bunk and Don and Napoleon – a lot of the Mothers on it. It’s sort of like an Ant-Bee jazz fusion record, I don’t know how to explain it.

But it will be very avant-garde, I don’t know if it will ever come out, but it’s something I’ve been working on. And then I have some extra pieces I did with David Allen that he sent me, kind of like a David Allen EP of him and Gilli that I’ve been working on as well and I don’t know if that will ever come out either.

But I’ve got other projects lined up that I’m working on, but we’ll see.

And so we continue tomorrow with an unprecedented Part Four...

EXCLUSIVE: Ant-Bee interview (Part Two)

Thursday teatime I did one of the most intriguing interviews of my career so far. I spoke to Billy James, who - apart from being the main publicist with whom I have been dealing in recent months, is also main man of Ant-Bee - perhaps the most singular artist on Gonzo (and that is up against some stiff competition). The interview was one of the most engrossing that I have ever done, and here I want to apologise publically to my dear wife, who is always kind enough to transcribe the interviews. This chat was meant to last for 20 minutes, and instead rambled on for nearly an hour. Sorry dear.

We ended Part one of this interview by talking about the Ant-Bee modus operandi. How the various artists with whom he collaborates send him music, either by post or electronically, and then how he edits and moulds the performances..

Jon: That’s very much a 21st Century way of working isn’t it

Billy: It is. One of the Gonzo artists and he’s one of my music heroes – I am actually his personal publicist – is Jon Anderson who you recently spoke with, and I’ve been doing press for him for over a year now and that was somebody I wanted to work with since I was like 12, so it’s odd that after all these years I was finally actually able to start working with him and his last record was pretty much done that way. People would send him musical ideas and things through email – you know as MP3s – and then he would take that stuff for the most part and then sing melodies over the top if he liked them and started working from that. That’s how Survival was completely done, just about.

But anyways, getting back – you know when I originally started working with Jon I never even told him I was a musician because I mainly just wanted to be able to work with him – he is one of my musical heroes, next to Zappa who I was able to do some chart work for in the 80s, but it was a dream come true, and I also really hustled and got him a ton of publicity, and so he is very happy with my work, and it’s been great working with him. But through the grapevine, somehow he found out that I did music and so I sent him that Do you Like Worms piece which is the one you wrote the little thing up on the blog, so I sent it to him and the next thing I know, he asked me to sing background vocals for some of his pieces.

So I’m singing on Open which is the big 21-minute piece he released on his birthday past October. And then I did some background vocals to a piece that hasn’t come out yet called Spirit Grounding, which is a really wonderful piece, and right now I am doing some background pieces for Ever, the next piece that he’s working on, which is an acapella thing so I am working on that now, so that’s you know.

And that’s a dream come true, I never thought in a million years I would be singing background vocals for Jon Anderson. That’s what dreams are made of. And that all came through you know, just by working with him and then him finding out I do music and stuff, and that’s how a lot of musicians I wind up working with.

Jon: It’s a very exciting time to be alive because the internet and technology has opened up so many new opportunities for people

Billy: Yeah well it’s good and bad. I mean a good way is you can be an artist and in the old way you had to send out to a million of those – you know there used to be fanzines – remember there was like a million fanzines. I know England had a ton of them. I used to get all these different.....The Ptolomeic Telescope and Fish out of Water, I mean there was like a million of them. And that was the rave, sort of like in the late 80s/early 90s before the internet thing - now it’s everybody’s websites and blogs and those types of things. But that was the blog – the fanzine, you know but still it wasn’t that easy to get those things, and put the word out about your band.

You still had to send things out, but you were lucky if you got a little write up in a magazine, whereas now thousands of blogs and the internet sites – you know websites to review music and internet airplay and just so many places that you are able to send stuff to get reviews and this and that, there’s tons of them, and also you being an artist, it’s like now you’ve got a home base that you can work out of.

Anybody who’s an artist has a home base now where they can work out of and a person from Russia, Japan or China can just go right there and them and be able to find what they are doing. That’s the amazing thing. It wasn’t that easy before. Unless you were a big artist and you had a big publicist and for a small avant-garde artist like myself or other ones of the time – it’s so much easier. But on the other hand everybody and his brother has a record now.

So that’s the only thing. You’ve got to wade through the thousands of releases. There wasn’t as many music artists as there are now. I mean this is everybody.

Jon: I wonder if it is actually that there are more people now, or just that there always were these people and then the records they made wouldn’t have been heard beyond their immediate family or the people down the pub

Billy: It all comes down to money. They didn’t have the means to be able to record it and then to put the CD out or the vinyl, it was expensive, so that’s the thing. Now all you’ve got to have is a little CD dubbing player – just a computer that burns CDs. Then you just sit in a little recording unit and then programme in there and just about anybody and his brother can record a record and it sounds, for the most part, very professional sounding compared to having a one-mike sort of thing that people used to record on tape you know the reel whatever.

So I think it’s that .. Zoot Horn Rollo, who I did a book with – he was Captain Beefheart’s guitarist from the Magic Band.

Jon: I didn’t know you did that book

Billy: Yeah, it’s called Lunar Notes. Did you ever read that?

Jon: I’ve read bits from it. A friend of mine has got it.

Billy: Zoot Horn Rollo was telling me was that back in his day there were very few musicians so if you could play a guitar you could pretty much get a gig as opposed to now. There’s a zillion musicians out there. Back in those days there weren’t that many so when big professional bands were looking for players or whatever it was almost easier to get gigs, and the same with the songwriter.

You were able to actually able to walk into the office there, sit there with your acoustic guitar and sing to the guy your songs. And then record labels would actually front you up money to do demos. None of that stuff happens any more now – none of that. You have to have a complete finished product for the most part before a record label would even look at you or check it out, unless you were one of those big, huge band that had been out there for years. But for a new band.....forget it.

They don’t advance money – I would say 99% of them don’t, you know, unless you’re a well-known band. If you are a new band, you’re not going to get any advance money – they are going to want a complete finished product to put out.
And for today, that's it. We will be back tomorrow with part three..

EXCLUSIVE: Ant-Bee interview (Part One)

Yesterday teatime I did one of the most intriguing interviews of my career so far. I spoke to Billy James, who - apart from being the main publicist with whom I have been dealing in recent months, is also main man of Ant-Bee - perhaps the most singular artist on Gonzo (and that is up against some stiff competition).

I have a copy of his/their most recent album Electronic Church Muzik and it is one of the most challenging and interesting things I have heard in ages. The list of guest contributors is very impressive with more Gong, Focus and Mothers of Invention alumni than you can shake a stick at. Billy is pictured below with Gilli Smyth from Gong.

I couldn't wait to talk to him...


Jon: I think it’s jolly good. I was surprised how with such a wide and diverse collection of people you’ve got playing on it how cohesive the whole thing sounds

Billy: You have to remember that I’ve been working in sound collages for many, many years – that’s one of the things I do – I am really into editing and dubbing things and sound collages. Almost like the way Zappa used to do it on Only in it for the Money - that one piece The Chrome Megaphone of Destiny – have you ever heard that piece?

Jon: Yes

Billy: I’ve always found that type of material very inspirational and also very interesting and just working with sound collages, you know - musique concrète - and so the other thing you have to remember is that the previous album was Lunar Musik which Gonzo is going to be releasing with the rest of the back catalogue, which took three and a half years to make. This last record took me ten years to make, so I had a lot of time to think about how things were going to be in song order and a lot of the structuring.

There’s a reason why it took so long to do it but I did have quite a bit of a time to figure out how pieces linked together and then some of them sort of cosmically linked together in their own way, you know, once I started working with them, but there’s a bit of a dynamic thread through it. It’s almost a sort of stream of consciousness type of a record, sort of examining the spirituality of man and woman and that’s what it is all about.

Not really laying any sort of trip to you, it’s just a trip. Not feeding you anything, it’s just something there to eat if you can figure all that out, but anyway that’s what it is. It did take a long time to work and this and that. Do you want to know why it took so long?

Jon: Uh huh

Billy: Originally studios – you know the studios that I was working in where I was living in one city about ten years ago after Lunar Music came out and did quite well actually and I went and I toured with the main songwriter and one of the founding members of the Alice Cooper group, Michael Bruce. And there was other projects that I was involved in before I started working on it. But anyway, when I started working on this record, the studios I was going into was very expensive and so with not having the backing of a record label at the time, the two records that I did came on Taste and Divine records which was My Favourite Vegetables and then Lunar Musik which came out in 1998. I didn’t have any backing from a record label and the type of music I do there’s just not that many labels that understand what I’m doing and the commercial potential – as with Zappa’s music, there’s no commercial potential – even I find quite a bit of it, but...

So at any rate, it was up to me to finance the thing as the bottom line and going in the studios that are like $60 to $70 an hour and then you’re only able to go in at certain times – you can’t block book space, and in between a lot of other projects I was working on and being hired to work on - so I was only able to go in there maybe a couple of times every couple of months, every few months, and movement was very, very slow.

Finally I relocated to another city in North Carolina where I’m at, which is called Asheville which is sort of like a mini hippie town in the mountains of North Carolina. I purchased a recording console and set up my own studio and I proceeded then, and this was probably about three years ago, so we’re seven years in. Every single night, for two years straight – just about two years straight – I would record. And I worked and worked and I have hundreds of different versions and all kinds of material and, you know, so what you get out of Electronic Church Musik is only a fraction of some of the pieces I was working with editing together and ...because I have another two albums’ worth of material but I don’t know when I’ll finish them up.

So at any rate I was able to work every single night for two years just about as well as doing my publicity work and put together Electronic Church Musik. Finally I was able to do the whole thing here, really; edit and put everything together and most of the tapes, with the other musicians were all sent to me either – you know they were so long ago.

Peter Banks sent me his tracks on DAT tape so I had to find someone who had a DAT player that dubbed those over. Jan Akkerman, I think he originally sent me his piece on cassette, and I think I had to transfer that over. I believe it was and I think it was the same with Michael Bruce..... it was so long ago, it was like in the 90s – we were still using cassettes. High grade cassettes, you know. CDRs were expensive back then so some of the mediums are different mediums, and some of them later on came as CDRs and then some through the computer – mp3 type stuff, so I had all kinds – I still do – I had hours and hours of material to work through from these artists that I’ve either worked with in the past or recorded with or I had done publicity for and so they got to know me in that respect and then got to know that I’m a musician and my music and were impressed with it and decided they want to work with me, so there’s different ways a lot of these musicians I work with.

So anyway, a couple of years ago I finally had the chance to work with it, put it together , spend night after night and a million mixes and finally came up with what you have there. I wouldn’t say it’s 100% of what I like. You know, there’s certain things you go back and I was still learning the recording console at the time, so that was the other thing. I think now when I listen to it that there are certain things that I would have remixed and done just a little bit different, but you either have to put a stop or a finish date or end up pulling a Brian Wilson's Smile and you never finish it. So I just had to say finally this is it. It’s the best I am going to be able to get right now. I’ve got to put an axe on it and get on with it and get on to something else. And that’s what churned out. And the reviews, other than maybe a couple of odd ones in the Netherlands oddly, everywhere else: Greece and Germany and a lot of great ones in the UK and several good ones here in America. All rave reviews, so it’s been very good and I’ve done several interviews for it, and that’s just what it is. Just another piece of Ant-Bee history that is out in the world right now.

Jon: Did all the contributors that you worked with do their stuff individually and just send it tapes to you, or did you actually record with any of them?

Billy: Some of them did and some of them didn’t. When I was living in Los Angeles I worked with some of the original Mothers of Invention – this was back in I guess 1990, so I don’t know how many years that is. 20 years ago or something like that - Bunk Gardner, and Don Preston and Jimmy Carl Black. And so that material was actually recorded. Some of the stuff I use even to this day was recorded back then. I had Bunk actually come out to my house in Encino, California and I paid him a fee and had him blow horn for three hours. So I have hours and hours of him playing clarinet and flute, you know, just so I knew I’d be using it 30 years later.

And I still do. I’m still using all this material. He also had tapes of him and his brother Buzz from the 70s that are just free form jams that he also gave me carte blanche to use certain sections of that and added them together and use things. And then also Don Preston. When I was out there I went over to his house- well actually it was like a studio, a king of weird studio/apartment in Los Angeles and he had a work room and we sat in there and I gave him some musical ideas and this and that and we worked together recording that out there, which I am still using. Some of the stuff he’s sent over to me recently as well.
Some of the material I did with Michael Bruce was when we were on the road - we were able to go into the studio several times and I was able to get him to record some things as well and then, like I said, the Peter Banks stuff and Jan Ackerman and David Allen – all that type of stuff was sent to me. Gilli Smythe – that stuff was all sent to me, you know, through the different mediums. They weren’t here when they did it, even though I’ve met all of them and been in touch with all them, and then Napoleon Murphy Brock's part – vocal piece that was sent. Him and Don actually did that together at some point. I think at Don’s house and then sent it over to me. So that’s just the way I’m able to work. It’s too expensive to fly people out here and do it all, and everyone pretty much lives in separate parts of the country.

And so the first part ends. We will continue with this remarkable conversation tomorrow..

ANT-BEE: A taster for an interview later in the week..

I was scheduled to interview Billy from Ant-Bee this evening, but it has been postponed until later in the week. This is probably a good thing, because my copy of his fabbo new album 'Electronic Church Music' only arrived about half an hour ago, and now I have enough time to gen up on him properly. In the meantime, here is a link to recent feature on him:

His albums are barely known this side of the Atlantic - and they don't sell shed-loads over there either - and yet they are stuffed with brain fryingly psychedelic wonders and feature guest slots by the likes of Don Preston and Bunk Gardner (The Mothers Of Invention), Michael Bruce (Alice Cooper Group, Jan Akkerman (Focus), Peter Banks (Yes) Zoot Horn Rollo and Rockette Morton (Captain Beefheart's Magic Band), Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth (Gong) and numerous other famous names. So just how did the unasuming Billy 'Ant-Bee' James find himself in such illustrious company and did he, we wonder, come from a musical family background?

Read on...

http://www.totalmusicmagazine.com/interviews/Ant_Bee.htm

Billy pictured with Daevid Allen and Michael Bruce of the Alice Cooper group)

ANT-BEE: Music Pioneer ANT-BEE Releases New CD Featuring Rock and Prog Legends – Former Yes, Focus, Gong, Zappa, Capt. Beefheart, Utopia, Alice Cooper

Featuring guest appearances by Jan Akkerman (Focus), Peter Banks (Yes/Flash), Daevid Allen & Gilli Smyth (Gong), Michael Bruce (Alice Cooper), Napoleon Murphy Brock (Zappa), Zoot Horn Rollo & Rockette Morton (Capt. Beefheart's Magic Band), Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Buzz Gardner, Motorhead and Jimmy Carl Black (Mothers of Invention), Moogy Klingman (Todd Rundgren's Utopia)



Asheville, NC - After a 12 year gap between albums, and fans holding their breaths, avant-garde music pioneer ANT-BEE, best known for recording ex-members of the Mothers of Invention and Alice Cooper Group together on the critically acclaimed 1998 release 'Lunar Muzik', has finally released what could be considered the artist's masterpiece. Possibly the most unique and innovative album to be recorded in decades, ANT-BEE 'Electronic Church Muzik' is an exploration into the spirituality of man (and woman) in a steam-of-consciousness psychedelic trip. Featuring legends of progressive rock and classic rock, ANT-BEE's new opus boasts guest appearances by by Jan Akkerman (Focus), Peter Banks (Yes/Flash), Daevid Allen & Gilli Smyth (Gong), Michael Bruce (Alice Cooper), Napoleon Murphy Brock (Zappa), Zoot Horn Rollo & Rockette Morton (Capt. Beefheart's Magic Band), Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Buzz Gardner, Motorhead and Jimmy Carl Black (Mothers of Invention), Moogy Klingman (Todd Rundgren's Utopia).

Ant-Bee is the brainchild of one Billy James. Formed through a series of musical experimentations in the recording studio back in 1987 in Los Angeles. In 1988, Ant-Bee were signed to Los Angeles record company Voxx/Bomp Records. The first Ant-Bee album was 'Pure Electric Honey', and received rave reviews worldwide. Ant-Bee became an overnight legend in the European underground. The album also featured guest performances by Bob Harris (Frank Zappa) and Rick Snyder ( Captain Beefheart ). In 1990 the live Ant-Bee ensemble was assembled and gigged throughout Los Angeles to the astonishment of most audiences. Also at this time, while recording new material, the first Ant-Bee video was filmed "Here We Go Round The Lemon Tree" which viewed in L.A and Canada.

In 1992 the second Ant-Bee video was filmed "The Girl With The Stars In Her Hair", a much more elaborate production. It was broadcasted worldwide to much critical acclaim. At this point Ant-Bee left Voxx records. An EP of new music was released in Germany and several magazines and European labels released rare Ant-Bee tracks. Also during this period Billy James/Ant-Bee began a long (and current) relationship with the original ex-Mothers Of Invention (Frank Zappa's first group). Thus began a series of recordings, filmings and gigs with these legendary artists (Bunk Gardner, Don Preston, Jimmy Carl Black, Motorhead and Roy Estrada). The Ant-Bee was the first in over 25 years to record most of the original Mothers (sans Frank Zappa) together on CD!!! From this unique collaboration came the second Ant-Bee album 'With My Favorite Vegetables & Other Bizarre Muzik' (released Divine Records UK 1994). It also sold very well and received massive press and airplay worldwide!! For obvious reasons it especially appealed to Frank Zappa fans.

In 1994 Billy James relocated to the east coast to record the third Ant-Bee album 'Lunar Muzik'. Now in an elaborate 24 track facility, the third album soon become a true Ant-Bee masterpiece. Again the original Mothers make guest appearances along with the legendary Daevid Allen of Gong/Soft Machine, Harvey Bainbridge of Hawkwind and the original members of the Alice Cooper Group (namely Michael Bruce, Neal Smith) making 'Lunar Muzik' the most ambitious and pioneering project of the '90s!!! Also to promote the release of this album was the filming of the psychedelic video 'Child Of The Moon'. After a tour of the east coast with Michael Bruce, the Ant-Bee began work recording the fourth album 'Electronic Church Muzik' which promised to be an even bigger extravaganza then the previous album. Possibly the most adventurous album of the decade, after 12 years the new ANT-BEE album 'Electronic Church Muzik' is now available!



ANT-BEE 'Electronic Church Muzik' is available from http://www.barkingmoondog.com/ and soon available through CDBaby and iTunes.

For more information: http://www.ant-bee.com/