Tav Falco's Panther Burns
Encyclopedia
Tav Falco's Panther Burns, sometimes shortened to (The) Panther Burns, is a rock band originally from Memphis
, Tennessee
, United States
, led by Tav Falco
. They are best known for having been part of a set of bands emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s who helped nationally popularize the blending of blues
, country
, and other American traditional music
styles with rock music among groups playing in alternative music and punk music venues of the time. The earliest and most renowned of these groups to imbue these styles with expressionist
theatricality and primitive spontaneity were The Cramps
, largely influenced by rockabilly
music. Forming just after them in 1979, Panther Burns drew on obscure country blues
music, Antonin Artaud
's works like The Theater and Its Double, beat poetry, and Marshall McLuhan's
media theories for their early inspiration. Alongside groups like The Cramps and The Gun Club
, Panther Burns ranked among the contributing influences and progenitors of the Southern Gothic
-tinged roots music
revival scene that arose during the last two decades of the 20th century and continued into the early 2000s.
Artists who have referenced Panther Burns as one of their influences include the American alternative music artists Southern Culture on the Skids, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
, Jack Oblivian
, the Royal Pendletons, and The Gories
, as well as lesser known regional artists like Tampa's Barons of Love and Orlando band leader Aaron Jarvis. In Europe, neo-psychedelic
groups who have cited the Panther Burns as an influence include England's Spacemen 3
, and Psychedelic Ubik; Scotland's Primal Scream
; Germany's Cuban Rebel Girls (named after one of Falco's original songs), Legendary Golden Vampires, and Tumbling Hearts; France's The Dum Dum Boys; and Italy's Time Machine.
For Panther Burns' own professed influences, the list is lengthy, from The Cramps to Bix Beiderbecke
, Jessie Mae Hemphill
, The Sonics
, Mack Rice
, Chuck Berry
, Phineas Newborn Jr., Calvin Newborn, Frank Sinatra
, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Einstürzende Neubauten
, the Johnny Burnette Rock and Roll Trio
, Brian Eno
, Marlene Dietrich
, Bessie Smith
, Ma Rainey
, Xavier Cugat
, Junior Kimbrough, Laura Dukes, Mud Boy and the Neutrons
, Chris Spedding
, Jimmy Reed
, The Nightcrawlers, the Velvet Underground, Junior Parker
, Othar Turner
, Charlie Feathers
, Howling Wolf, Mose Vinson
, Van Zula Hunt, Cordell Jackson
, Ronnie Hawkins
, the Ventures
, Scotty Moore
, Elvis Presley
, Skip James
, Pat Hare
, The Doors
, R. L. Burnside
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
, John Fahey
, Joe Meek
, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Gene Pitney
, and Elmore James
, among many others Falco has listed over the years.
After forming Tav Falco's Panther Burns and making their first recordings in Memphis, the group soon evolved as a rotating crew of additional musicians hailing mostly from Memphis, New York
, and New Orleans. In the early 1990s, Falco moved to Vienna and later, Paris; at that time he began working more with European musicians. He currently resides in Vienna.
, attracted by The Cramps' feral, flamboyant rockabilly style, had brought them to Memphis to record sessions he produced that were later released as Gravest Hits and Songs the Lord Taught Us. Chilton had initiated the development of a rockabilly and country-tinged alternative rock music scene in Memphis, beginning with his Cramps sessions and his off-kilter Like Flies on Sherbert sessions recorded in 1978 through August 1979, following a stint working in New York's CBGB
punk scene as a solo artist after the breakup of Big Star. This New York period had somewhat converted him to a turbulent and chaotic "punk performance ethos", according to Ross Johnson, writing in The Memphis Flyer. The Cramps sessions were the catalysts inspiring some of the young musicians who eventually helped launch Panther Burns to first start performing in public. Future Panther Burns drummer Johnson first performed publicly in a group called The Yard Dogs led by Alex Chilton in the summer of 1978; he made his first recording session appearance on Like Flies on Sherbert, drumming and bantering off-the-cuff, comical lyrics to "Baron of Love". This Chilton album is sometimes panned in retrospective reviews today by writers expecting Big Star's chiming guitars and tight, power pop recordings, but at the time the album came out, it was praised by critic Robert Christgau and was influential among young Memphis alternative musicians breaking out of the late 1970s era of disco music and slick, mainstream radio rock and starting to create their own punk rock/garage music scene unrestrained by industry dogma.
Falco had focused his 1970s work on video and photographic documentation of blues performers and local culture in the Memphis area with fellow videographer Randall Lyon, in a partnership they called TeleVista Projects, Inc. Chilton, who first encountered Falco while Lyon and Falco were videotaping some of the Sherbert sessions, formally met Falco a couple of months later after witnessing his self-described "art-action happening" during an October 1978 Mud Boy and the Neutrons "Tennessee Waltz" event in Memphis, at which Falco, untrained in music theory, surprised the audience by blowing a police whistle and chainsawing a guitar on stage halfway through a haywire rendition of Leadbelly's
"Bourgeois Blues".
Falco's association with Chilton and a small circle of record-collecting musicians helped deepen their shared, longstanding interest in the blues form. Chilton became inspired to work more with his blues and soul roots, after having temporarily been focused more on rockabilly and country music by the late 1970s. At the same time, The Memphis Flyer piece viewed the origin of Chilton's interest in forming the band as stemming from a desire to find "enthusiastic amateurs to play with" in Memphis, due to his recent exposure to Manhattan's budding punk music scene. "We were inept and offensive — just what Alex was looking for", wrote Johnson.
After Chilton completed the Like Flies on Sherbert recordings (for which Falco created some cover art graphics), Tav Falco's Panther Burns group was formed in February 1979 in Memphis by Falco (vocals, guitar) with Chilton (lead guitar/drums/backing vocals), Ross Johnson (drums), and Eric Hill (synthesizer). In the first couple of years Rick Ivy (trumpet), Jim Dickinson
(piano), Vincent Wrenn (synthesizer), Ron Miller (bass), Jim Duckworth (guitar/drums), and Jim Sclavunos
(drums), soon joined to play important roles. The group took its name from the Panther Burn plantation south of Greenville, Mississippi
. The town, in turn, had taken the name in reference to a wild cat whose raids and nocturnal shrieks had so disturbed area residents in the 19th century that they set a on fire to keep it at bay after all attempts to trap or kill it had failed; the lore of the elusive animal shaking up a sleepy planters' hamlet appealed to the band.
The attention Chilton's early presence brought the band led to an increased interest in blues music, along with the already emerging Cramps-influenced rockabilly interest, in Memphis' alternative music scene at that time. Falco's initial inclusive approach of mixing enthusiastic players without formal musical training together with professional musicians was in tune with those of noted primitive experimenters Half Japanese
and the 1970s East Village
alternative music movement of performers like Talking Heads
, James Chance and the Contortions
, and Klaus Nomi
in which visual artists and musicians formed bands together. In the beginning years of the band Falco told writers that because of his unschooled musical background, he represented "the possibility of anyone performing who wants to". Though confounding the expectations of some listeners, these musicians considered restoring a sense of unbridled enthusiasm to creative work to be more important than conforming to sterile, rigid industry standards, as reflected in the name choice for the small recording label moniker Falco soon adopted to release and co-release the group's future recordings: Frenzi.
to experimental artist groups OPEN SPACE in Victoria, Center for New Art Activities in New York, and RELAY in San Francisco. Falco explained to the disgusted host that the group was merely a "neo-rumorist orchestra" for a TeleVista experiment, creating what he termed an "anti-environment” to make visible cultural treasures and older, local performers overlooked in the daily environment by mainstream society and the establishment.
The band's early happening
-styled, so-called "art-action" performances at downtown Memphis cotton lofts at the time frequently included waggish projected
images, like the group's trademark burning panther image, trained on the musicians, harking back to Velvet Underground-era, psychedelic days of the 1960s. A screen-print
artist since the 1970s, Falco promoted many of the early 1980s local live shows by using hand-screen-printed posters which band members and friends helped him create and paste around midtown Memphis. They performed many of these Memphis concerts at local new music dive The Well (later called Antenna Club) with other area bands of the period. They also opened for The Cramps and played double bills with The Gun Club during this period in cities including New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles. In the early 1980s they performed in an anti-nuclear rally with Allen Ginsberg
at The Peppermint Lounge in New York. Reactions to the cacophonous, disjointed, amateurish side of the group's early performances varied from enthusiasm to disparaging ridicule. In 1980, New Orleans writer Bunny Matthews, explaining that he enjoyed the group's ability to put its audience "through changes", drolly summed up the experience: "No one is ever going to attend a Panther Burns recital and leave with mixed feelings".
Behind the Magnolia Curtain, the group's first album, was recorded in 1981 and released on the British Rough Trade Records
label in 1982. The album featured on some tracks, including "Bourgeois Blues", an appearance by a small, marching drum corps that included blues artist Jessie Mae Hemphill, who had participated in her grandfather's Northern Mississippi fife-and-drums groups as a child. The contrast between the strong, military beats of the drum corps dueling with Falco's occasionally out-of-sync vocals resulted in the wild, blues-rock chaos of songs on the album like the frenetic "Bourgeois Blues".
"We were thrown off quite a few stages during that period", wrote Johnson. "Though we initially enjoyed the effect we had on club audiences, somewhere along the way we tried to clean up our sound". The recording was followed by the slicker rockabilly revival style of Blow Your Top, without Chilton's participation, and in 1984, the Jim Dickinson-produced Sugar Ditch Revisited album was recorded, featuring a more subdued playing style by Chilton along with New Orleans bassist René Coman. That year, following a brief tour opening for The Clash
before irritable college audiences impatient for the main act, Chilton stopped touring regularly with the group to resume his increasingly minimalist
solo touring and recording career. Chilton's restrained, evolving solo style was beginning to diverge from his previously fiery, strident Panther Burns guitar style that had often featured reverb and feedback
; however, he continued to produce several of their later albums.
Transition to less primitive performance style
Since the more refined productions of Sugar Ditch Revisited and 1987's The World We Knew, the band has concentrated less on raw, primitive sounds than in its early years. The group has developed into a combo working more with the feel and subtleties of the genres it explores, including tango and roots-oriented styles, with occasional forays into deranged, garage blues, as heard in Panther Phobia or in the frenzied guitar work performed in some of the 1980s and 1990s live shows by New Orleans musician George Reinecke, as also heard on Red Devil. The main constant in the varied work remains Falco's provocative vocals and wordplay.
Over the years, the group has recorded and toured with different lineups featuring a mix of energetic, alternative musicians working at times alongside seasoned rock-and-roll, soul, and jazz veterans to create its howling sounds, always centered around the presence of vocalist Falco. Panther Burns occasionally opened for major punk rock acts in the 1980s, appearing on double bills with some of their older heroes like Cordell Jackson, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and rockabilly great Charlie Feathers in the same time period, but usually headlined its own gigs at small clubs across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Venues the group has played at during its career have ranged from no-wave
clubs in the East Village to New Jersey hardcore punk
pits, music heritage festivals, alternative rock clubs, the Ottawa Bluesfest
, Central Park Conservatory, and many others. In the early 2000s, the group began to play mostly in Europe due to Falco's relocation there. A 2006 minitour of Europe and the United States featured the main lineup from the previous several years performing with Falco: Roman drummer Giovanna Pizzorno with Parisians Grégoire Cat on guitar and Laurent Lo on bass.
Panther Burns have released a number of recordings through the years on indie rock
labels like New Rose Records (France), In the Red, Au Go Go Records (Australia), Last Call Records (France), Triple X, Upstart, and Sympathy for the Record Industry
. The band's recordings have included raucous, yet controlled studio albums produced by Chilton and sometimes Dickinson; a live 10th anniversary show album was produced in 1989 by longtime group guitarist Ron Easley, followed the next year by a studio album, Return of the Blue Panther, produced by former group bassist Coman. Coman, a jazz musician who leads The Iguanas rock group of New Orleans, recorded the album with guitarist Reinecke at the mixing board. The group has also recorded a tango-oriented album, a live concert mini-album, and a lo-fi studio album with Doug Easley of Easley McCain Recording
. Among the group's early recording engineers were Ardent Studios'
John Hampton, as well as former Sun Records
session musicians Stan Kessler and Roland Janes of Phillips Recording
.
band influenced by Memphis music styles". The original band lineup featured two guitars, synthesizer, and drums, later usually omitting keyboards or synthesizers at live shows. The group's somewhat experimental recordings have embraced and deconstructed
a number of influences and genres.
With his signature Höfner
fuzz-tone guitar and a stage presence characterized by his Argentine-styled pompadour
, pencil moustache, smoking jacket, and urbane manner, Falco infused his shows with theatrical antics and a reverence for the originators of country blues and rockabilly. The band's assorted song subjects and album photography themes have included Memphis scenery, Carroll Cloar
's Panther Bourne painting, the occasional reference to historical figures like American rampage murderer Charles Starkweather
, motorcycle imagery, denizens of Memphis neighborhoods, tango imagery, and blithe introspection, among other themes.
Falco's treatment of the blues classic "Bourgeois Blues" adds a line from Ginsberg's famous beat poem "Howl".
In a 1984 interview discussing his anti-environment concept and music, he said that many outstanding, but lesser known blues and rockabilly artists were "treated like the idiot wind". Similarly, he continued, "the beat writers and theorists like Antonin Artaud were treated like they were crazy. It wasn't until he died that everyone realized he was a genius". Two of his originals, "Agitator Blues" and "Panther Phobia Manifesto", evinced playful humor and a left-leaning, Utopian anarchist political stance. In "Panther Phobia Manifesto", Falco referenced lines from influences as disparate as William S. Burroughs
, Screamin' Jay Hawkins
, Howlin' Wolf
, Rod Serling
, French psychedelic band The Dum Dum Boys, and Dadaist poet Louis Aragon
, in wishing a "huge firedamp explosion" to closed-minded members of society who blindly follow the dictates of the establishment. Proclaiming that everywhere the Panther Burns go, they are greeted with derision, he riffed from Aragon, "Laugh your fill, the Panther Burns are the ones who always hold out a hand to the enemy".
The group's wide-ranging styles have included Argentine
tango music
, country music
, rockabilly, r&b, soul music
, novelty tunes, early rock and roll
, country blues, and pop
standards of the 1950s and 1960s like Frank Sinatra
's "The World We Knew", among others. Set lists have included mutated covers of songs originally performed by such diverse artists as J. Blackfoot, Doc Pomus
, Bobby Lee Trammell, Gene Pitney
, Reverend Horton Heat, Jessie Mae Hemphill, R. L. Burnside, Mack Rice
, and Allen Page (of the small 1950s Moon Records label helmed by early rock-and-roll producer/songwriter Cordell Jackson), among others.
Terms the band says have been inaccurately "foisted upon" the group by media include "rockabilly, wreckabilly, psychobilly
, punk, post punk, post-modern, garage
, bluesabilly, roots
, and permanent wave". The earliest description the band gave itself on a concert poster read simply: "Rock'n'Roll". Media confusion in categorizing led the band to eventually invent its own self-descriptive terms, such as "panther music" and "backwoods ballroom", also at times calling its tumultuous performance style "art damage".
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, led by Tav Falco
Tav Falco
Tav Falco is an American-born musical performer, performance artist, actor, filmmaker, and photographer. He has led the psychedelic rock-and-roll group Tav Falco's Panther Burns since 1979...
. They are best known for having been part of a set of bands emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s who helped nationally popularize the blending of blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, and other American traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
styles with rock music among groups playing in alternative music and punk music venues of the time. The earliest and most renowned of these groups to imbue these styles with expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
theatricality and primitive spontaneity were The Cramps
The Cramps
The Cramps were an American rock band, formed in 1976 and active until 2009. The band split after the death of lead singer Lux Interior. Their line-up rotated much over their existence, with the husband and wife duo of Interior and lead guitarist Poison Ivy the only permanent members...
, largely influenced by rockabilly
Rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating to the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...
music. Forming just after them in 1979, Panther Burns drew on obscure country blues
Country blues
Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...
music, Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
's works like The Theater and Its Double, beat poetry, and Marshall McLuhan's
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
media theories for their early inspiration. Alongside groups like The Cramps and The Gun Club
The Gun Club (band)
The Gun Club was an American punk blues band from Los Angeles, California that existed from 1979 to 1996. Led by flamboyant singer and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club merged the contemporary genre of punk rock with the more traditional genres of blues, rockabilly and country music.Along...
, Panther Burns ranked among the contributing influences and progenitors of the Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot...
-tinged roots music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
revival scene that arose during the last two decades of the 20th century and continued into the early 2000s.
Artists who have referenced Panther Burns as one of their influences include the American alternative music artists Southern Culture on the Skids, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are an American alternative rock trio, formed in 1991 and based out of New York City, New York. The band consists of Judah Bauer on guitar, backing vocals, harmonica and occasional lead vocals, Russell Simins on drums and Jon Spencer on vocals, guitar and theremin...
, Jack Oblivian
Jack Yarber
Jack Yarber, also known by his stage name, Jack Oblivian, is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist based in Memphis, Tennessee. He was a founding member of the garage-bands The Compulsive Gamblers, and The Oblivans and currently fronts Jack O & the Tennessee Tearjerkers.Yarber has also been...
, the Royal Pendletons, and The Gories
The Gories
The Gories are an American garage rock trio that formed in Detroit in 1986. They were among the first 1980s garage punk bands to incorporate overt blues influences...
, as well as lesser known regional artists like Tampa's Barons of Love and Orlando band leader Aaron Jarvis. In Europe, neo-psychedelic
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
groups who have cited the Panther Burns as an influence include England's Spacemen 3
Spacemen 3
Spacemen 3 were an English alternative rock band, formed in 1982 in Rugby, Warwickshire by Peter Kember and Jason Pierce. Their music was "colorfully mind-altering, but not in the sense of the acid rock of the '60s; instead, the band developed its own minimalistic psychedelia"...
, and Psychedelic Ubik; Scotland's Primal Scream
Primal Scream
Primal Scream are a Scottish alternative rock band originally formed in 1982 in Glasgow by Bobby Gillespie and Jim Beattie and now based in London. The current lineup consists of Gillespie, Andrew Innes , Martin Duffy , and Darrin Mooney...
; Germany's Cuban Rebel Girls (named after one of Falco's original songs), Legendary Golden Vampires, and Tumbling Hearts; France's The Dum Dum Boys; and Italy's Time Machine.
For Panther Burns' own professed influences, the list is lengthy, from The Cramps to Bix Beiderbecke
Bix Beiderbecke
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s...
, Jessie Mae Hemphill
Jessie Mae Hemphill
Jessie Mae Hemphill was an American award-winning electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the primal, northern Mississippi country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage....
, The Sonics
The Sonics
The Sonics are an American garage rock band from Tacoma, Washington, originating from the early and mid-1960s. Among The Sonics' contemporaries were The Kingsmen, The Wailers, The Dynamics, The Regents, and Paul Revere & the Raiders...
, Mack Rice
Mack Rice
Mack Rice , is a American songwriter, whose compositions have been performed by many well-known artists, including The Staple Singers, Ike and Tina Turner, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Shirley Brown, Rufus Thomas, Etta James, Billy Eckstine, Eddie Floyd, Buddy Guy, The Rascals, Wilson Pickett,...
, Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
, Phineas Newborn Jr., Calvin Newborn, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Einstürzende Neubauten
Einstürzende Neubauten
Einstürzende Neubauten is a German post-industrial band, originally from West Berlin, formed in 1980. The group currently comprises Blixa Bargeld , Alexander Hacke , N.U...
, the Johnny Burnette Rock and Roll Trio
Johnny Burnette
John Joseph "Johnny" Burnette was an American rockabilly musician. Along with his older brother Dorsey Burnette, and also a friend named Paul Burlison, Burnette was a founding member of The Rock and Roll Trio. He was the father of 1980s rockabilly singer Rocky Burnette.-Early life:Johnny Burnette...
, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
, Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey
Ma Rainey was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues....
, Xavier Cugat
Xavier Cugat
Xavier Cugat was a Spanish-American bandleader who spent his formative years in Havana, Cuba. A trained violinist and arranger, he was a key personality in the spread of Latin music in United States popular music. He was also a cartoonist and a successful businessman...
, Junior Kimbrough, Laura Dukes, Mud Boy and the Neutrons
Mud Boy and the Neutrons
Mud Boy and the Neutrons is a Memphis rock music band who influenced the Memphis alternative rock scene in the 1970s through the 1990s, inspiring groups like Tav Falco's Panther Burns, North Mississippi Allstars , Big Ass Truck, and others from the area.They released three albums on labels like New...
, Chris Spedding
Chris Spedding
Chris Spedding is an English rock and roll and jazz guitarist, best known for his session work. Allmusic states - "Spedding is one of the UK's most versatile session guitarists, and has had a long career on two continents that saw him tackle nearly every style of rock and roll, as well as...
, Jimmy Reed
Jimmy Reed
Mathis James "Jimmy" Reed was an American blues musician and songwriter, notable for bringing his distinctive style of blues to mainstream audiences. Reed was a major player in the field of electric blues, as opposed to the more acoustic-based sound of many of his contemporaries...
, The Nightcrawlers, the Velvet Underground, Junior Parker
Junior Parker
Junior Parker was an American Memphis blues singer and musician. He is best remembered for his unique voice which has been described as "honeyed," and "velvet-smooth"...
, Othar Turner
Othar Turner
Othar "Otha" Turner was one of the last well-known fife players in the vanishing American fife and drum blues tradition...
, Charlie Feathers
Charlie Feathers
Charles Arthur "Charlie" Feathers was an influential American rockabilly and country music performer.-Biography:...
, Howling Wolf, Mose Vinson
Mose Vinson
Mose Vinson was an American boogie-woogie, blues and jazz pianist and singer. His best known recordings were "Blues With A Feeling" and "Sweet Root Man". Over his lengthy career, Vinson worked with various musicians including Booker T. Laury and James Cotton.-Biography:Vinson was born in Holly...
, Van Zula Hunt, Cordell Jackson
Cordell Jackson
Cordell Jackson was an American guitarist thought to be the first woman to produce, engineer, arrange and promote music on her own rock and roll music label...
, Ronnie Hawkins
Ronnie Hawkins
Ronald "Ronnie" Hawkins is a Juno Award-winning rockabilly musician whose career has spanned more than half a century. Though his career began in Arkansas, USA, where he'd been born and raised, it was in Ontario, Canada where he found success and settled for most of his life...
, the Ventures
The Ventures
The Ventures is an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 in Tacoma, Washington. Founded by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle, the group in its various incarnations has had an enduring impact on the development of music worldwide. With over 100 million records sold, the group is the best-selling...
, Scotty Moore
Scotty Moore
Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III is an American guitarist. He is best known for his backing of Elvis Presley in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis' Hollywood years...
, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, Skip James
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, Pat Hare
Pat Hare
Auburn "Pat" Hare was an American Memphis blues guitarist and singer.-Biography:He was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas. He recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, serving as a sideman for Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, Bobby Bland and other artists...
, The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
, R. L. Burnside
R. L. Burnside
Not to be confused with R. H. Burnside, stage director.R. L. Burnside , born Robert Lee Burnside, was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist who lived much of his life in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi. He played music for much of his life, but did not receive much attention...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, Joe Meek
Joe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Gene Pitney
Gene Pitney
Eugene Francis Alan Pitney, known as Gene Pitney , was an American singer-songwriter, musician and sound engineer. Through the mid-1960s, he enjoyed success as a recording artist on both sides of the Atlantic and was among the group of early 1960s American acts who continued to enjoy hits after the...
, and Elmore James
Elmore James
Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He was known as "the King of the Slide Guitar" and had a unique guitar style, noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.-Biography:James was born Elmore Brooks in the old Richland community in...
, among many others Falco has listed over the years.
After forming Tav Falco's Panther Burns and making their first recordings in Memphis, the group soon evolved as a rotating crew of additional musicians hailing mostly from Memphis, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and New Orleans. In the early 1990s, Falco moved to Vienna and later, Paris; at that time he began working more with European musicians. He currently resides in Vienna.
Background and early history
In 1977 and 1979, Alex ChiltonAlex Chilton
William Alexander "Alex" Chilton was an American songwriter, guitarist, singer and producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star...
, attracted by The Cramps' feral, flamboyant rockabilly style, had brought them to Memphis to record sessions he produced that were later released as Gravest Hits and Songs the Lord Taught Us. Chilton had initiated the development of a rockabilly and country-tinged alternative rock music scene in Memphis, beginning with his Cramps sessions and his off-kilter Like Flies on Sherbert sessions recorded in 1978 through August 1979, following a stint working in New York's CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
punk scene as a solo artist after the breakup of Big Star. This New York period had somewhat converted him to a turbulent and chaotic "punk performance ethos", according to Ross Johnson, writing in The Memphis Flyer. The Cramps sessions were the catalysts inspiring some of the young musicians who eventually helped launch Panther Burns to first start performing in public. Future Panther Burns drummer Johnson first performed publicly in a group called The Yard Dogs led by Alex Chilton in the summer of 1978; he made his first recording session appearance on Like Flies on Sherbert, drumming and bantering off-the-cuff, comical lyrics to "Baron of Love". This Chilton album is sometimes panned in retrospective reviews today by writers expecting Big Star's chiming guitars and tight, power pop recordings, but at the time the album came out, it was praised by critic Robert Christgau and was influential among young Memphis alternative musicians breaking out of the late 1970s era of disco music and slick, mainstream radio rock and starting to create their own punk rock/garage music scene unrestrained by industry dogma.
Leadbelly
Huddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....
"Bourgeois Blues".
Falco's association with Chilton and a small circle of record-collecting musicians helped deepen their shared, longstanding interest in the blues form. Chilton became inspired to work more with his blues and soul roots, after having temporarily been focused more on rockabilly and country music by the late 1970s. At the same time, The Memphis Flyer piece viewed the origin of Chilton's interest in forming the band as stemming from a desire to find "enthusiastic amateurs to play with" in Memphis, due to his recent exposure to Manhattan's budding punk music scene. "We were inept and offensive — just what Alex was looking for", wrote Johnson.
After Chilton completed the Like Flies on Sherbert recordings (for which Falco created some cover art graphics), Tav Falco's Panther Burns group was formed in February 1979 in Memphis by Falco (vocals, guitar) with Chilton (lead guitar/drums/backing vocals), Ross Johnson (drums), and Eric Hill (synthesizer). In the first couple of years Rick Ivy (trumpet), Jim Dickinson
Jim Dickinson
James Luther "Jim" Dickinson was an American record producer, pianist, and singer who fronted, among others, the Memphis based band, Mudboy & The Neutrons.- Biography :...
(piano), Vincent Wrenn (synthesizer), Ron Miller (bass), Jim Duckworth (guitar/drums), and Jim Sclavunos
Jim Sclavunos
Jim Sclavunos is an American rock music drummer, percussionist and producer.Sclavunos, a half-Greek and half-Italian from Brooklyn, New York , is well-known for his exceptional height at 6'7". Sclavunos has performed with Sonic Youth, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Lydia Lunch and was a member of 8...
(drums), soon joined to play important roles. The group took its name from the Panther Burn plantation south of Greenville, Mississippi
Greenville, Mississippi
Greenville is a city in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 48,633 at the 2000 census, but according to the 2009 census bureau estimates, it has since declined to 42,764, making it the eighth-largest city in the state. It is the county seat of Washington...
. The town, in turn, had taken the name in reference to a wild cat whose raids and nocturnal shrieks had so disturbed area residents in the 19th century that they set a on fire to keep it at bay after all attempts to trap or kill it had failed; the lore of the elusive animal shaking up a sleepy planters' hamlet appealed to the band.
Half Japanese
Half Japanese is a punk rock band formed by brothers Jad and David Fair in their Coldwater, Michigan bedroom around 1975. Their original instrumentation included a small drum set, which they took turns playing; vocals; and an out of tune guitar...
and the 1970s East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
alternative music movement of performers like Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
, James Chance and the Contortions
James Chance
James Chance, also known as James White , is an American saxophonist, songwriter and singer....
, and Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi
Klaus Sperber , better known as Klaus Nomi, was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona....
in which visual artists and musicians formed bands together. In the beginning years of the band Falco told writers that because of his unschooled musical background, he represented "the possibility of anyone performing who wants to". Though confounding the expectations of some listeners, these musicians considered restoring a sense of unbridled enthusiasm to creative work to be more important than conforming to sterile, rigid industry standards, as reflected in the name choice for the small recording label moniker Falco soon adopted to release and co-release the group's future recordings: Frenzi.
Performance and recording notes
As interest in the band grew, Panther Burns soon played early gigs in Memphis and other cities, horrifying the host of a Memphis morning television talk show on which they performed. During the talk show performance, Lyon simultaneously encoded and transmitted an experimental, live, slow-scan feedSlow-scan television
Slow-scan television is a picture transmission method used mainly by amateur radio operators, to transmit and receive static pictures via radio in monochrome or color.A technical term for SSTV is narrowband television...
to experimental artist groups OPEN SPACE in Victoria, Center for New Art Activities in New York, and RELAY in San Francisco. Falco explained to the disgusted host that the group was merely a "neo-rumorist orchestra" for a TeleVista experiment, creating what he termed an "anti-environment” to make visible cultural treasures and older, local performers overlooked in the daily environment by mainstream society and the establishment.
Happening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
-styled, so-called "art-action" performances at downtown Memphis cotton lofts at the time frequently included waggish projected
Slide projector
A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device to view photographic slides. Slide projectors were common in the 1950s to the 1970s as a form of entertainment; family members and friends would gather to view slide shows...
images, like the group's trademark burning panther image, trained on the musicians, harking back to Velvet Underground-era, psychedelic days of the 1960s. A screen-print
Screen-printing
Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate...
artist since the 1970s, Falco promoted many of the early 1980s local live shows by using hand-screen-printed posters which band members and friends helped him create and paste around midtown Memphis. They performed many of these Memphis concerts at local new music dive The Well (later called Antenna Club) with other area bands of the period. They also opened for The Cramps and played double bills with The Gun Club during this period in cities including New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles. In the early 1980s they performed in an anti-nuclear rally with Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
at The Peppermint Lounge in New York. Reactions to the cacophonous, disjointed, amateurish side of the group's early performances varied from enthusiasm to disparaging ridicule. In 1980, New Orleans writer Bunny Matthews, explaining that he enjoyed the group's ability to put its audience "through changes", drolly summed up the experience: "No one is ever going to attend a Panther Burns recital and leave with mixed feelings".
Behind the Magnolia Curtain, the group's first album, was recorded in 1981 and released on the British Rough Trade Records
Rough Trade Records
Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London. It was formed in 1978 by Geoff Travis who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove...
label in 1982. The album featured on some tracks, including "Bourgeois Blues", an appearance by a small, marching drum corps that included blues artist Jessie Mae Hemphill, who had participated in her grandfather's Northern Mississippi fife-and-drums groups as a child. The contrast between the strong, military beats of the drum corps dueling with Falco's occasionally out-of-sync vocals resulted in the wild, blues-rock chaos of songs on the album like the frenetic "Bourgeois Blues".
"We were thrown off quite a few stages during that period", wrote Johnson. "Though we initially enjoyed the effect we had on club audiences, somewhere along the way we tried to clean up our sound". The recording was followed by the slicker rockabilly revival style of Blow Your Top, without Chilton's participation, and in 1984, the Jim Dickinson-produced Sugar Ditch Revisited album was recorded, featuring a more subdued playing style by Chilton along with New Orleans bassist René Coman. That year, following a brief tour opening for The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
before irritable college audiences impatient for the main act, Chilton stopped touring regularly with the group to resume his increasingly minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
solo touring and recording career. Chilton's restrained, evolving solo style was beginning to diverge from his previously fiery, strident Panther Burns guitar style that had often featured reverb and feedback
Audio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
; however, he continued to produce several of their later albums.
Transition to less primitive performance style
Since the more refined productions of Sugar Ditch Revisited and 1987's The World We Knew, the band has concentrated less on raw, primitive sounds than in its early years. The group has developed into a combo working more with the feel and subtleties of the genres it explores, including tango and roots-oriented styles, with occasional forays into deranged, garage blues, as heard in Panther Phobia or in the frenzied guitar work performed in some of the 1980s and 1990s live shows by New Orleans musician George Reinecke, as also heard on Red Devil. The main constant in the varied work remains Falco's provocative vocals and wordplay.
Venues the group has played at during its career have ranged from no-wave
No Wave
No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...
clubs in the East Village to New Jersey hardcore punk
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
pits, music heritage festivals, alternative rock clubs, the Ottawa Bluesfest
Ottawa Bluesfest
The Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest is an annual outdoor music festival that takes place each July in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. While ostensibly focused on blues, the festival has increasingly showcased mainstream pop and rock acts in recent years...
, Central Park Conservatory, and many others. In the early 2000s, the group began to play mostly in Europe due to Falco's relocation there. A 2006 minitour of Europe and the United States featured the main lineup from the previous several years performing with Falco: Roman drummer Giovanna Pizzorno with Parisians Grégoire Cat on guitar and Laurent Lo on bass.
Panther Burns have released a number of recordings through the years on indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
labels like New Rose Records (France), In the Red, Au Go Go Records (Australia), Last Call Records (France), Triple X, Upstart, and Sympathy for the Record Industry
Sympathy for the Record Industry
Sympathy for the Record Industry is a mainly independent garage rock and punk label formed in 1988 by record industry anti-mogul Long Gone John...
. The band's recordings have included raucous, yet controlled studio albums produced by Chilton and sometimes Dickinson; a live 10th anniversary show album was produced in 1989 by longtime group guitarist Ron Easley, followed the next year by a studio album, Return of the Blue Panther, produced by former group bassist Coman. Coman, a jazz musician who leads The Iguanas rock group of New Orleans, recorded the album with guitarist Reinecke at the mixing board. The group has also recorded a tango-oriented album, a live concert mini-album, and a lo-fi studio album with Doug Easley of Easley McCain Recording
Easley McCain Recording
Easley McCain Recording is an American recording studio, based in Memphis, Tennessee, notable for recording musicians such as Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Grifters, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Come, White Stripes, Townes Van Zandt, Pezz, Jeff Buckley, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Guided by Voices, Lydia...
. Among the group's early recording engineers were Ardent Studios'
Ardent Studios
Ardent Studios is a recording studio located in Memphis, Tennessee. Ardent Records/Ardent Music is the in-house label.- History :Ardent Studios was founded by John Fry and was initially a studio in his family's garage, where he recorded his first Ardent Records 45's. In 1966 the operation moved...
John Hampton, as well as former Sun Records
Sun Records
Sun Records is a record label founded in Memphis, Tennessee, starting operations on March 27, 1952.Founded by Sam Phillips, Sun Records was known for giving notable musicians such as Elvis Presley , Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash...
session musicians Stan Kessler and Roland Janes of Phillips Recording
Phillips Recording
Phillips Recording is the short name widely used to refer to the Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio opened at 639 Madison Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee by Sam Phillips in 1960...
.
Band description and music styles
According to the band, Panther Burns is "a Southern Gothic, psychedelic countryCountry music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
band influenced by Memphis music styles". The original band lineup featured two guitars, synthesizer, and drums, later usually omitting keyboards or synthesizers at live shows. The group's somewhat experimental recordings have embraced and deconstructed
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
a number of influences and genres.
With his signature Höfner
Höfner
Karl Höfner GmbH & Co. KG is a German manufacturer of musical instruments, with one division that manufactures guitars and basses, and another that manufactures other string instruments....
fuzz-tone guitar and a stage presence characterized by his Argentine-styled pompadour
Pompadour (hairstyle)
Pompadour is a tall style of men's haircut which takes its name from Madame de Pompadour.There are Latin variants of the hair style more associated with European and Argentine tango fashion trends and occasionally with late 20th century musical genres such as rockabilly and country.The pompadour...
, pencil moustache, smoking jacket, and urbane manner, Falco infused his shows with theatrical antics and a reverence for the originators of country blues and rockabilly. The band's assorted song subjects and album photography themes have included Memphis scenery, Carroll Cloar
Carroll Cloar
Carroll Cloar was a nationally known 20th century painter born in Earle, Arkansas, who focused his work on surreal views of Southern U.S...
's Panther Bourne painting, the occasional reference to historical figures like American rampage murderer Charles Starkweather
Charles Starkweather
Charles Raymond Starkweather was an American teenaged spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming during a two-month road trip with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. The couple was captured on January 29, 1958...
, motorcycle imagery, denizens of Memphis neighborhoods, tango imagery, and blithe introspection, among other themes.
Falco's treatment of the blues classic "Bourgeois Blues" adds a line from Ginsberg's famous beat poem "Howl".
Howl
"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch...
In a 1984 interview discussing his anti-environment concept and music, he said that many outstanding, but lesser known blues and rockabilly artists were "treated like the idiot wind". Similarly, he continued, "the beat writers and theorists like Antonin Artaud were treated like they were crazy. It wasn't until he died that everyone realized he was a genius". Two of his originals, "Agitator Blues" and "Panther Phobia Manifesto", evinced playful humor and a left-leaning, Utopian anarchist political stance. In "Panther Phobia Manifesto", Falco referenced lines from influences as disparate as William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Jalacy Hawkins , best known as Screamin' Jay Hawkins was an American musician, singer, and actor...
, Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
, Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...
, French psychedelic band The Dum Dum Boys, and Dadaist poet Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
, in wishing a "huge firedamp explosion" to closed-minded members of society who blindly follow the dictates of the establishment. Proclaiming that everywhere the Panther Burns go, they are greeted with derision, he riffed from Aragon, "Laugh your fill, the Panther Burns are the ones who always hold out a hand to the enemy".
The group's wide-ranging styles have included Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
tango music
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
, country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, rockabilly, r&b, soul music
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, novelty tunes, early rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
, country blues, and pop
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
standards of the 1950s and 1960s like Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
's "The World We Knew", among others. Set lists have included mutated covers of songs originally performed by such diverse artists as J. Blackfoot, Doc Pomus
Doc Pomus
Jerome Solon Felder, better known as Doc Pomus , was a twentieth-century American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lyricist of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category of non-performer in 1992. He was also inducted into...
, Bobby Lee Trammell, Gene Pitney
Gene Pitney
Eugene Francis Alan Pitney, known as Gene Pitney , was an American singer-songwriter, musician and sound engineer. Through the mid-1960s, he enjoyed success as a recording artist on both sides of the Atlantic and was among the group of early 1960s American acts who continued to enjoy hits after the...
, Reverend Horton Heat, Jessie Mae Hemphill, R. L. Burnside, Mack Rice
Mack Rice
Mack Rice , is a American songwriter, whose compositions have been performed by many well-known artists, including The Staple Singers, Ike and Tina Turner, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Shirley Brown, Rufus Thomas, Etta James, Billy Eckstine, Eddie Floyd, Buddy Guy, The Rascals, Wilson Pickett,...
, and Allen Page (of the small 1950s Moon Records label helmed by early rock-and-roll producer/songwriter Cordell Jackson), among others.
Terms the band says have been inaccurately "foisted upon" the group by media include "rockabilly, wreckabilly, psychobilly
Psychobilly
Psychobilly is a fusion genre of rock music that mixes elements of punk rock, rockabilly, and other genres. It is one of several subgenres of rockabilly which also include thrashabilly, trashabilly, punkabilly, surfabilly and gothabilly...
, punk, post punk, post-modern, garage
Garage rock
Garage rock is a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967. During the 1960s, it was not recognized as a separate music genre and had no specific name...
, bluesabilly, roots
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
, and permanent wave". The earliest description the band gave itself on a concert poster read simply: "Rock'n'Roll". Media confusion in categorizing led the band to eventually invent its own self-descriptive terms, such as "panther music" and "backwoods ballroom", also at times calling its tumultuous performance style "art damage".
Personnel (alphabetical list)
- Perry Michael Allen: keyboards, backing vocals: 1995
- David Berger — drums: 2002
- Barri Bob — percusson, rhythm guitar: some 1980s gigs
- Orazio Brando — guest guitarist: 2005
- Roy Brewer — violin: 1980s and 1990s
- Benny Carter — drums: 1994
- Grégoire Cat (real name: Grégoire Garrigues) — lead guitar: early 2000s onwards
- Ben Cauley (also of The Bar-Kays) — trumpet: 1990s
- Raymond Cavaioli — lead guitar: some 1980s gigs
- Alex ChiltonAlex ChiltonWilliam Alexander "Alex" Chilton was an American songwriter, guitarist, singer and producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star...
(aka L X Chilton) — lead guitar: 1979–early 1980s and occasional appearances thereafter; produced several of the albums - Rene Coman (also of The Iguanas/New Orleans) — bass: early to mid-1980s and occasionally thereafter
- Peter Dark (also of Bellmer DollsBellmer Dolls-Biography:Bellmer Dolls is a New York-based post-punk band. Named after the life-sized mannequins of German Surrealist Hans Bellmer, the group was founded in 2003 by Peter Mavrogeorgis after finishing a 3-year stint as guitarist for Tav Falco's Panther Burns. The band's earliest incarnation...
, real name: Peter Mavrogeorgis) — guitar: early 2000s - Jim DickinsonJim DickinsonJames Luther "Jim" Dickinson was an American record producer, pianist, and singer who fronted, among others, the Memphis based band, Mudboy & The Neutrons.- Biography :...
— producer and keyboardist: occasionally 1980s and 1990s - Peter Dopita — singing saw: 1991
- Jim Duckworth (also of The Gun Club) — drums: 1981, lead guitar: early 1980s & 1989
- Doug Easley — bass: occasionally
- Ron Easley (aka Durand Mysterion; also of the Country Rockers) — lead guitar: 1980s and 1990s sporadically; producer: 1989
- James Enck (later of Linda Heck and the Train Wreck) — lead guitar: 1984, 1991 (appears on bass on "Cuban Rebel Girl" from the "1984" cassette release)
- Kai Eric (aka Red West) — bass: mid-1980s–2000 on most tours except some in the South U.S.
- Tav FalcoTav FalcoTav Falco is an American-born musical performer, performance artist, actor, filmmaker, and photographer. He has led the psychedelic rock-and-roll group Tav Falco's Panther Burns since 1979...
— band leader, lead vocals, guitar: since 1979 - Cyd Fenwick — backing vocals, dancing: 1979– 1981
- Kitty Fires 1 (real name: Sue Easley) — backing vocals: 1984; Kitty Fires 2 (different woman) — guitar: 2000
- Bob Fordyce (also of the Odd Jobs) — drums: 1989
- Doug Garrison (also of The Iguanas/New Orleans) — drums: 1996
- Diane Green (also of The Hellcats/Memphis and the Odd Jobs) — theatrics, tambourine, dancing: occasional 1980s appearances
- Alex Greene (also of Big Ass Truck and Reigning Sound) — organ: 1989–1990
- Jim Harper — snare drum: 1981
- Mark Harrison — guitar: 1984–1985
- Linda Heck (later of Linda Heck and the Train Wreck) — bass: 1984
- Jessie Mae Hemphill — snare drum: 1981
- Eric Hill — synthesizer: 1979–1980; 1989
- Douglas Hodges (aka Tall Cash) — drums: 2001–2002
- Teenie HodgesTeenie HodgesMabon Lewis "Teenie" Hodges is a Memphis, Tennessee musician, best known for his work as rhythm and lead guitarist and songwriter on many of Al Green's popular soul hits, and those of other artists such as Ann Peebles and Syl Johnson, on Hi Records in the 1970s.Born in Memphis, "Teenie" began...
— lead guitar: 1990s - Michael Hurt (also of The Royal Pendletons) — bass: 1999
- Rick Ivy — trumpet: 1979
- Cathy Johnson — backing vocals, dancing: 1979–1981
- Ross Johnson — drums: since 1979 on a number of albums
- Amanda Jones — backing vocals: 1984
- Jules Jones -artistic collaborator for publicity flyers and costumes, Backing vocals in studio and live shows 1979
- Via Kali — tango dancer at live shows: 2006 onwards
- Kye Kennedy — lead guitar: mid-1980s touring
- Gabriele Kepplinger — backing vocals: 1991
- Little Victor — guitar, harmonica: 2005
- Laurent Lanouzière — bass: 2002 onwards
- Michael Lo (real name: Michael Rafalowitch) — bass: early 2000s
- Andrew Love (also of The Memphis HornsThe Memphis HornsThe Memphis Horns are an American horn section made famous by their many appearances on Stax Records. They have been called "arguably the greatest soul horn section ever." Originally a sextet, the Memphis Horns gradually slimmed down to a duo, Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Andrew Love on tenor...
) — saxophone: 1990s - Vickie Loveland — backing vocals: 1991
- Tammo Lüers — guitar: 1995
- Randall Lyon — theremin: 1991
- Olivier Manoury — bandoneon: 1995
- Bob Marbach — piano: 1991, 1995
- Lisa McGaughran (aka Lisa Burnette on one compilation; also of The Hellcats/Memphis) — backing vocals, bass: 1984–1990
- Ron Miller — bass: early 1980s
- Jack Oblivian — bass, organ: 2000
- Robert PalmerRobert Palmer (author/producer)Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. was a 20th century American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer...
— clarinet: 1989 - Giovanna Pizzorno (also of The Hellcats/Memphis) — drums: first sporadic tours began 1986; steady member since early 2000s
- Jon Ramos — bass: 2002
- George Reinecke (also of Busted Flush) — lead guitar: 1980s and 1990s
- Will Rigby (also of The dB'sThe dB'sThe dB's are a jangle pop/power pop group who came into prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s. The bandmembers were Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey, Will Rigby and Gene Holder, all of whom were from Winston-Salem, North Carolina...
, Steve EarleSteve EarleStephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....
) — drums: 1980, 1999 - Jimmy RippJimmy RippJimmy Rip is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer, who is known for his work with Jerry Lee Lewis, Mick Jagger, Michael Monroe and the former Television band leader Tom Verlaine.Rip began playing guitar at the age of six....
— guitar: 1983 - Roland Robinson — bass: 1992
- Kurt Ruleman — drums: 1984–1989
- Raffaele Santoro — keyboards: 2010 onwards
- Harris Scheuner — drums: 1989
- Jim SclavunosJim SclavunosJim Sclavunos is an American rock music drummer, percussionist and producer.Sclavunos, a half-Greek and half-Italian from Brooklyn, New York , is well-known for his exceptional height at 6'7". Sclavunos has performed with Sonic Youth, Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Lydia Lunch and was a member of 8...
— drums: since about 1982 on a few albums, beginning with Blow Your Top - Jim Spake — saxophone: 1991
- Brendan Lee Spengler — keyboards: 2000
- Ken StringfellowKen StringfellowKenneth Stuart Stringfellow is an American musician, best known for his work with The Posies, R.E.M., and the re-formed Big Star.-Musical career:...
— bass: 2011 - Nokie Taylor — trumpet: 1991, 1995
- Nina Tischler — backing vocals: 1991
- Lorette Velvette (real name: Lori Greene; also of The Hellcats/Memphis and The Kropotkins) — backing vocals: 1984–1990; guitar: 1984 briefly
- Misty White (also of The Hellcats/Memphis and Alluring Strange) — drums: 1988
- Vincent Wrenn — synthesizer: 1979–1980
- Abe Young — bass drum: 1981
Discography
- Behind the Magnolia Curtain, 1981 (re-released 1994 and 2011)
- Blow Your Top EP, 1983 (re-released 1994 and 2011)
- Now, 1984
- Shake Rag, 1985
- Sugar Ditch Revisited EP, 1985 (re-released 1994)
- Swamp Surfing in Memphis (various artists), 1986
- The World We Knew, 1987
- Play New Rose for Me (various artists), 1987
- Red Devil, 1988 (re-released 1994)
- Live Atlanta Metroplex 10-3-87, 1988
- Midnight in Memphis (live), 1989
- Return of the Blue Panther, 1990
- Life Sentence in the Cathouse, 1992
- Unreleased Sessions, 1994 (recorded 1980)
- Deep in the Shadows, 1994
- Shadow Dancer, 1995
- Disappearing Angels, 1996
- 2 Sides of Tav Falco, 1996
- Love's Last Warning, 1996 (best of collection)
- Shadow Angels & Disappearing Dancers, 1997
- Panther Phobia, 2000
- Live at Subsonic, 2002
- CONJURATIONS: Séance for Deranged Lovers, 2010
External links
- Tav Falco/Panther Burns fan site
- Tav Falco and Panther Burns site at Myspace
- [ Panther Burns overview and discography, Allmusic]
- Tav Falco Biography at Trümmer Booking and Promotion