Living Ghost Returns
This is a reworking of Living Ghost, which appeared on my album 1+1=1 (2000). At the time I was writing the piece I was working and performing with vocalist Maoko Hasegawa aka MC Mao aka Ursa Minor. We improvised with the material, finding ways to switch between the 2 tempos or "gears" in the piece in such a way that we wouldn't lose the pulse for the audience. At one performance in Japan she became suddenly and alarmingly agitated in the faster section of the tune - screaming “HAIGHTIES WERE LIVING GHOSTS” in mantra-like repetition. I took the piece down to the lower tempo and calmed the music. Ashen faced she began to rap to the enthralled audience the story of her brush with the Haighties...
When Maoko was living in San Francisco she was involved in the confused and twilight world of the Haight St. drug scene. Haight St. was home to the Grateful Dead, the Flower Children, the original Psychedelic Shop, and was the epicentre of the Summer of Love in 1967. It has become a Mecca for the world's hippies and minor drug users since. A scene such as this, rich in acid and weed-fuelled paranoia, is fertile ground for gossip, conspiracies and horror stories. Maoko had heard tales of a Hippy Death Cult - the Haighties. Back in the 70's they'd managed to blur the line between life and death itself and now their malign spirits could cross over into reality as brainless undead hippies. When you know they are there you can see them any night of the week, vacantly wandering up and down Haight St. trying to score. But worse still is that being free loving selfish children of the bong they will try to have sex whenever and wherever and with whatever they can. It's best to sleep with one eye open because they will come to you as an Incubus. Worse still, a Haighty once managed to seduce a woman - and after he impregnated her he revealed himself as the undead - a living ghost. For Maoko, a teenager from Kumamoto alone on the streets of San Francisco with a head full of cheap drugs this was reality.
I recorded the original version of Living Ghost in 1999 - but I was never convinced that I had really done justice to Maoko's story. There was too much of my original idea for the piece and not enough focus on the story telling. So 10 years later it was time for Living Ghost Returns.
I began by reworking and improving upon the aspects of the original material I wanted to retain - the 2-speed groove, Ian Dixon's trumpet, the eeriness of the atmosphere and the screaming violins. Then I set about adding new flesh to these bones - elements that are more related to the story. I enlisted the help of guitar hero Jörg Lehnardt to produce a cloud of guitar solos. His exhaustive knowledge of guitar technique and sound means that he could play almost endless solos over the piece - each one redolent of another era, or guitarist. Then I reworked the double-tempo section of the piece by building up with Mike Bennett, instrument by instrument, a full-scale Latin percussion section. A samba band made up of clones parading up and down Haight St. for the entertainment of the dancing dead.
My vision of the Haighties is of a legion of semi-decomposed Jimi Hendrixes, Carlos Santanas and Jerry Garcias all playing air guitar solos, rolling spliffs and attempting to couple with all the living flesh they can find in an orgy of acid, sex and death. Their dreamcatchers filled with the endless writhing of a parallel world of stinking brainless hippy selfism and escape. The visual riches of psychadelia and 70's excess co-joined with necrophilia and the undead are there to be plundered.
