Aviv Rubinstien of L.A. indie-punks Jacob the Horse told us about his love for a Mark Ribot lick on a Tom Waits gem...
Aviv Rubinstien: The Riff the Blew My Mind is Mark Ribot's guitar take in the Tom Waits song "Hoist That Rag." Second track off of the 2004 album, Real Gone, the song's quasi Calypso style might not fit in the pantheon of punk favorites, but there is a frenetic energy to the guitar that we try to metamorphose into our uptempo screamers. Ribot's whole guitar lines from the verses where he seems to be in conversational counterpoint with Waits's vocal, to the chorus where it takes the place where the melody would go traditionally, to then the solo which comes in before the two minute mark in this four-plus minute song and lasts nearly 90 seconds.
The solo has its own movements, going from the song's main riff, to a seemingly endless repetition of four notes, creating a trance-like rhythm while still feeling largely improvisational. When that section breaks and Ribot replaces two of the four notes, snapping the listener back to reality, the solo then devolves into a jazzy, sometimes dissonant, conversation with itself that feels both disjointed and inevitable, finally the guitar returns to the song's primary riff allowing the listener to catch their breath (much needed) before the third verse.
Possibly fun fact: When recording the song "Red Rain Boots" for our album At Least It's Almost Over, I laid down a placeholder solo while Josh Fleury (our lead guitarist) was working on the orchestral compositions. I am no soloist and could barely muster Ribot's repetitive riff, hoping to evoke the same jazzy trance: an utter failure, but it hopefully gave enough of the dissonant vibe for Josh to save the day with his epic orchestration.
Come to think of it, this isn't the only song on our record that "Hoist That Rag"inspired: We were aiming for that same charging trance in "Tympanis" which was originally meant to be played with that Calypso feel before the rest of the band rightly told me that that was a bad idea.
To make an already long story short, "Hoist That Rag," Real Gone, and Waits's entire oeuvre is an ongoing inspiration for me as a songwriter and player, if not in tempo than in attitude, showing me that sloppy can be beautiful, like a drunk ballerina.
Jacob the Horse's album At Least It's Almost Over is out now...
Photo by Heather McAlpine
