| 40 GRIT / RUMPLEFORESKIN |
| 4O GRIT / RUMPLEFORESKIN LINE-UP: Manny Arenas: vocals, poetry, and howls Jeff Aach: guitar, pedals and Aachroach Courtney Allendar: bass and pedals Keith "Cato" Martinelli: drums and percussion |
| 40 Grit was an experience for me. I really opened myself up as a singer. I was forced to compete with two screaming guitars (bass & six-string) filtered through all sorts of effects, and one wailing drummer, pounding out disjointed rhythms. My artsy delicate peotry wouldn't fly in this outfit, and most of my carefully chosen words wouldn't even be heard over the din created by these guys. I was forced to vocalise, using my voice as an instrument. It took a while for me to adjust, and I don't think I ever completely made the transition, but I think I did well, if not better than most. I tried some poetry pieces, in the Dark Young style, but they didn't stay in our repertoire for long. I then wrote a couple of pieces; the first, "Truth Cake" using a ditty I had written based on an old expression my buddy Phil has for telling it like it is. He calls it "doling out the truth cake". The second piece, "Ride My Grill", came from an expression Cato used to describe the nacent song's riff. He said it sounded like a car purposefully speeding along, saying, "Ride my grill!". I took that and expanded on it by referring to an old horror movie from the 70's about a possessed black car which ran down people on a desert road. I also made a passing reference to the giant from "Jack and the Beanstalk". Another song idea, which came from a comment by a band member, was "No Candy From Courtney". Courtney, our bassist, was talking about how he'd gotten all of this Hallowe'en candy for when the children in his building came knocking on his door. Well, they never came. Not only was he hurt by the slight, but he was stuck with all of this candy, which would probably go bad. He vowed that the following year he would not buy any treats; and if anyone knocked on his door, he'd chase them away saying "No candy from Courtney, no candy from Courtney!" Thus, a song was born. There were other attempts at songs, and I even got them to learn "Tetragramophone", but they liked to do improv best. The one other song which I wrote a lyric for, but never got to sing in it's entirety, was the theme song for the band, which by then had changed its name to "Rumpleforeskin", since we'd heard that a NYC band had beat us to the punch with the name 40 Grit. It is a spoof on the actual song that Rumplestiltskin supposedly sings in the children's fairytale. I wonder what old Arthur Rackham would have come up with for an illustration to this little ditty! |