Scoring a Strike

The return of the Alloy Orchestra

by Brett Milano

Few admirers of the Alloy Orchestra were expecting to see the band perform again in this lifetime. The suicide last June of keyboardist/composer Caleb Sampson didn't just shake up the local music community, it also put an end to one of the area's more inventive trios. The group performed live soundtracks for famous and obscure silent films, with the musical boundaries defined only by the film itself. Replacing Sampson wasn't necessarily impossible, but it would be damn difficult -- he was a brilliantly eclectic keyboardist and writer, and there was a lot to match in terms of stylistic ideas and musical compatibility. There was only one musician in town who could really pull it off.

That would be Roger Miller. Miller's avant-rock résumé, from Mission of Burma to the current Binary System, is well known in these parts. He's also done his share of soundtrack work, and he's even collaborated with the two remaining Alloy members in the past (percussionist Ken Winokur and percussion/accordion player Terry Donahue were both in his early-'90s rock outfit, No Man's Band). Miller joined the Alloy Orchestra in July, in time to help write a set's worth of material and play a Telluride Film Festival appearance and a European tour that were scheduled before Sampson left this world. The new Alloy make their local debut this Saturday (December 5) at the Somerville Theatre, performing their score for Russian director Sergei Eisenstein's first feature, the labor-themed 1925 film Strike. Expect a more-aggressive-than-usual score, to match the film's scenes of workers' upheaval.

"It's a ripper," Miller promises. "It's about the strike that caused the Russian revolution, so it has certain propagandistic qualities. There are a lot of funny sequences as well as sardonic, sinister ones. It's almost designed for the Alloy Orchestra -- lots of epic battle scenes." Adds Winokur in a separate interview, "It's a perfect one for us to bring in Roger, since it's a dynamic film and we've become a bit of a bolder ensemble. It's almost too easy for us to be doing these kinds of films."

Of course, nobody would fault the group for taking it a little easy after the kind of year they've had. The September show in Telluride, their first without Sampson, will likely go down in the members' individual histories as the hardest show they ever played. "Oh, God -- that was unnecessarily rough for us," recalls Winokur. "The show was dedicated to Caleb, and it was preceded by a number of 10-to-20-minute speeches. Then they turned out the lights and we had to start playing, while we were bawling our eyes out. But we'd played this thing over and over again in our studios, so we knew we could get through it and do a show." Adds Miller, "It was pretty intense. I knew Caleb and knew what people thought of him and felt bad enough because of what happened. But while I totally sympathize with the situation, that didn't make it any easier for me to replace this guy in front of 700 people. All the myriads of conflicting emotions were involved. But once that show was a success, all the other performances have been easy."

Miller's style and Sampson's aren't necessarily that similar -- for one thing, Sampson had never played guitar in a rock band. Sampson drew from culturally diverse styles, including klezmer and Viennese waltzes. Still, Winokur says that the Alloy sound has changed remarkably little. "That's the odd thing, it feels surprisingly similar. Roger knew what had to be done. It's like we turned on a switch and he spit out another soundtrack with us. We worked together the way we always did in the past -- the three of us working with a videotape, cobbling ideas together scene by scene. Frankly, we were unbelievably lucky when he joined."

"It's interesting, because there are some places where Caleb and I are really close," Miller notes. "His two favorite classical composers are Béla Bartók and Johann Bach; mine are Bartók and John Cage. So we meet in the Bartók area and I go off in this other direction -- I'm more of an avant-gardist. But at the same time, nobody will be confused that this is the Alloy Orchestra. When I joined, just to make the transition easy, I looked at what the band had done in the past and tried to draw on that to give it some continuity. And there are still plenty of things with my stamp on them. I've never been in a band that does this kind of collective improvisation before -- with Binary System we may make up an entire set on the spot, but Alloy Orchestra improvises to get the composition."

On their next round of performances they plan to dust off some of the old Alloy soundtracks, including the acclaimed score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis. And the band will continue full-time, with Miller maintaining a dual commitment to the piano/drum duo the Binary System (who are shopping for a new label now that Miller's ended his 10-year association with the California indie SST). "Some of these things are hard to express without sounding morose or callous," Miller says. "It's obviously a tragedy. But I'm glad I've helped them continue without missing a step."

RESPOND COMP

When a few handfuls of female songwriters join forces on a compilation to benefit Respond, a local organization that aids battered women, the first thing you'd hope for is a lot of righteous anger in the songwriting -- the same fighting-back spirit that powered 1996's Safe and Sound compilation. You get that on about half of Respond (out this week on Signature), which features 27 female artists over two CDs. At worst it's a pretty good introduction to local singers working in a folk/soft-rock vein. But the best tracks deal at least indirectly with the subject at hand, at times showing a harder-than-usual side of the writers who contribute.

The most explicitly topical songs here are Deb Pasternak's "One Regret" and Pamela Means's "Uncle," which work because the details feel messy and honest -- in Pasternak's song, the heroine is still blaming herself for the abusive relationship she was in. The comp generally steers clear of the loud-rock side of things, but there's some suitably edgy pop from Jen Trynin (her first new song released in a year) and a scrappy failed-love song by the tough-voiced Mary Gauthier. Jules Verdone tends to put her best songs on benefits, and the new "Turnaround" is no exception -- the tune is gorgeous and she's an expert at emotional gallows humor ("I think I want my old problems back, forgive me if I get graphic/I want to memorize the look on her face before I walk into traffic"). It's surprising that Melissa Ferrick contributed one of her few happy songs -- an acoustic remake of her last album's title track, "Everything I Need" -- rather than one of her trademark throat-wrenchers. But she likely intended her song to sound empowering, and it does.

Unlike Safe and Sound, which was done in response to the Brookline clinic shootings, Respond didn't come out of a crisis. "It started with 10 women sitting in my living room eating banana poundcake," notes singer Charan Devereaux, who put together the set and appears on it. "The idea was to benefit something in our own community. We decided that we didn't want every song on the album to be about domestic violence, because then nobody would want to listen to it. But most of the songs wind up being about relationships."

Devereaux says she intended a simple, one-disc set but the project kept growing. Major-label singers Jennifer Kimball and Patty Larkin contributed tracks from their albums, and everyone from attorney Dave Herlihy to mastering engineer Jonathan Wyner worked free. Devereaux admits, "You don't sound like a mighty hipster when you say, `Gosh, this feels good.' But it really does."

A Respond CD release show is being held this Friday, December 4, at the Somerville Theatre. Merrie Amsterburg, Catie Curtis, Melissa Ferrick, Laurie Geltman, and Deb Pasternak are slated to perform. Tickets range from $14 to $20 and are available from the Somerville Theatre. Call 625-4088.

O POSITIVE

You gotta love it when a band get back together for a one-time reunion show, then play another one a month later. In all fairness, O Positive did hint last month that they'd do one more gig after the T.T. the Bear's Place benefit, where they wound up playing a shorter set than they wanted and didn't have any copies of the live album they were plugging. With the O Positive Live disc (on their own Smashing label) off the presses, they're back to celebrate at Mama Kin this Saturday. You'll probably hear the band's hits ("With You," "Talk About Love," "Back of My Mind") at the show, but you won't hear them on the live disc. It comes from the last phase of their career, in March/April 1994, when they were playing only the Home Sweet Head album and unrecorded material. This was their darkest phase -- the songs were more jaggedly funky and less obviously hooky. The results were pretentious at worst -- Dave Herlihy can't get away with the oblique half-sung song introductions, but neither can Michael Stipe -- and more resonant at their best (notably the big screamers, "Save Me," "Unhappy" and "Groovy Street"). This band were never afraid to go for the big moment: they get there on the disc, and they'll likely get there once again at Mama Kin.

ROLAND ALPHONSO

In the spookiest coincidence of the week, the Skatalites' founding saxophonist, Roland Alphonso, passed away at midnight November 20, at which time the rest of the band were on stage at the Middle East. One of the original architects of ska, Alphonso, who was 67, played his last show with the Skatalites in West Hollywood November 2. The band, who have already survived the loss of original leader Don Drummond, are expected to continue.

COMING UP

A Pink Floyd tribute band at the Middle East? Sure enough, the Machine are there tonight (Thursday). The Nova Scotia-based Celtic singer Mary Jane Lamond is at Johnny D's, and Great Big Sea are at the Paradise . . . Fuzzy and Tugboat Annie are at the Middle East tomorrow (Friday), Combustible Edison do a two-set night at the Paradise, Orbit, Ultrabreakfast, and the Sheila Devine are at T.T.'s, neo-glamsters Lifestyle are at Jacques, and the Grits are at Toad . . . Back to rocque after a year away, the Upper Crust are at the Middle East with Cherry 2000 on Saturday. The Figgs, the Gravy, and Chick Graning are at T.T.'s. And the band the Joshua Tree didn't dig, Chapter in Verse, are at Bill's Bar . . . Jim Fitting's band the Coots are at the Linwood for free on Sunday, and Athens garage rockers the Woggles are at the Middle East . . . With a killer line-up that now includes Big Star's Jody Stephens along with the usual Soul Asylum and Wilco folk, Golden Smog play the Paradise Tuesday . . . And don't look now, but the Bosstones' Hometown Throwdown starts Wednesday at the Middle East.