Nick is never the same place twice and you don't know what the hell, where is he?
What's happened?
what, what, what?
There's no rhyme or reason.
It's gonna be different every night.
Hello and welcome to the Keyboard Chronicles, a podcast for keyboard players.
I'm your host David Holloway and I'm super pumped to be here with you.
Welcome to part two of our interview with Larry Mullins.
If you've listened to part one, there's a reason why you're back and that's because Larry has some absolutely fascinating stories.
In this second part, we dig again deeper into his work with Nick Cave, some of the most innovative and diverse desert island dish you'll get.
and a massive amount in between.
So you do enjoy part two and I'll see you at the end of the show.
Great to speak to you.
Thank you, Larry.
so just going back to the chronology a little bit.
it was not long after you, please correct me if I'm wrong.
When you were playing with Iggy and Sonja, you then went on to meet Lou Adler and stuff.
Tell us about that phase and where perhaps keyboard started to creep into things in your career a bit.
Well, one of the big regrets of my lifetime is that I never took piano lessons as a child.
No one ever
pointed me in that direction.
You know, my instructor had me so focused on percussion and God bless him.
I very good at playing xylophone and marimba and vibraphone and sight reading and learning how to play even modern classical music.
So I understood a 12-tone scale and the keyboard.
But I grew up with
I can play with four mallets on vibraphone and all that kind of stuff.
I have that technique, but I never learned the ten finger piano.
I never did that.
And God, I wish I had.
But I do understand, I studied music theory and I understand designing chords and scales.
of course I'd studied all my scales and all that stuff.
I understand harmony and
but I just didn't have that technique, that muscle memory technique.
And I never needed it in my career, really.
Once I started playing with Michael and Swans, I suddenly opened that door back again with, you know, I owned a vibraphone and I got a xylophone and a marimba.
And so we started using all that stuff in Swans.
And Michael didn't really understand any of that theory in terms of how to build harmony, harmonic structures and weird chords and stuff like that.
And he understood that I did.
And so we started really combining like what he imagined, but what I knew how to do.
And I can translate.
You mean this and you're talking about things like that.
And let's get into Steve Wright kind of stuff.
And he kind of opened the door for that stuff.
then we eventually got into, we made this other band called Angels of Light.
And then I used keyboards, like full on, like organs and stuff like that.
And then the whole can of worms was open at that point for me.
Nick knew, I knew all the Bad Seats guys for the last 35 years.
I toured with them.
a lot with Iggy.
We did lots of shows together.
don't know how, probably 30 or 40 shows we played together.
And from the first time we played together, I met all the guys in that band and became very close friends with everybody, particularly Thomas, the drummer.
And so I knew them.
I've known them all this time.
At one point, Thomas was having some health problems and they all wanted me to come in and fill in for him.
And he had said,
you gotta get me to do, he wanted me to do it, to fill in for him at that time.
And so they were all asking and I couldn't do it because I'd come back to working with Iggy and I was playing in the Stooges.
And so we were kind of, the whole Stooges thing was also kind of a, it was also a sort of relationship healing thing for me and Iggy because we had had sort of an unpleasant split
up, breakup.
And so him asking me to come back in with the Stooges was 50 % sort of relationship healing, friendship healing, and 50 % just get the job done and playing.
But it was also a lot about us.
It was on stage.
We were literally apologizing to each other and fixing our relationship.
It was awesome.
And so I had to tell the Bad Seeds, no, can't, under no circumstances can I.
interrupt what's happening right now.
but, you know, Steve McKay passed away, the saxophone player, and that pretty much that was the last straw with the Stooges, like we knew it couldn't continue as a group without
him.
And so Iggy closed the, he shut the whole thing down.
So that was more or less the end of our working relationship and a natural end.
and it was all fine.
But right after that, Nick had come to me asking if I could come in and play.
But at that time, Thomas had come back and was physically all right.
He was playing drums.
But Nick wanted me in the band as a character or something, just as a friend or something like that.
He wanted somebody in and he knew that I could play keyboards and vibraphone and stuff and sing.
And he was looking for that specific.
And so he asked me to do it.
And so I came in and I'm still doing it now.
been nine years.
I've been nine years with him.
Which is amazing.
And I'm really fascinated.
So for the sake of our listeners, I can't imagine there are many listeners out there that aren't aware of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
But for those that are our Australian listeners, they particularly understand how iconic Nick is to the music history here and so on.
But I'm fascinated as a first question.
Larry, I don't believe you could get two more different bandleaders than Iggy Pop and Nick Cave.
What different approaches do they take as bandleaders that you have learned from?
Well, Iggy is a bit more like he is like he he doesn't involve himself so like he never comes to sound checks or things like that.
He keeps himself secluded a lot, which I think is a good thing.
And he knows it's a good thing.
It helps him.
focus and incubate his whole being.
So when he comes out of his chamber, he is ready to go, ready to explode, and he is really super focused, and he's just a, he's a bolt of lightning, you know?
And he tends to keep it that way.
I mean, there were times, there were some times where we...
where we worked and chiseled on things a bit together as a unit of the band with him.
But for the most part, I always felt like he really, really strictly limited his time and his involvement in spending too much time working on things.
He really, really cherishes spontaneity and the moment, and he tries to preserve his energy just for this kind of stuff.
Whereas Nick is a great, he's a bit more of a musician, believe it or not.
He's a really good musician and he plays piano and stuff like that.
He's gotten much, much, much better over the years and he's worked really hard at playing piano.
But he has a great harmonic sense and he can sing falsetto and he has a wide vocal range.
I think he's a
way much more complex musician than people imagine.
And he's really smart musically.
I think he has really great intuition about arranging.
But when he's on stage, it's different story.
He is in that same vortex that I was talking about with Iggy, because the moment he comes out on stage, is, if anything, a
He's actually a bit more out of control.
He's a bit more wild, feral entity.
Because Iggy is, over the years, Iggy had, the thing that I'd learned from him was that he had kind of mastered this adrenaline zone over the years that he actually, as wild as he
always was on stage and carnal.
He had a choreography in his shows, a basic choreography that he had internalized and memorized.
So like from song to song, we would do the same set every night.
And from song to song, he knew he needed to be from there to there.
He would always be in roughly the same positions on stage, the same locations maybe.
And possibly even making
similar moves as wild as it all seemed, but he had a pattern that he, a choreographed pattern that he had somehow memorized in his adrenaline, adrenalinized state.
was incredible that he was able to do this.
Whereas Nick doesn't do that.
Nick is never the same place twice and you don't know what the hell, where is he?
What's happened?
Like what, what, what's
He's never, there's no rhyme or reason.
It's going to be different every night.
He'll come in the wrong place in a different way on every song, every night.
And it's just, you better be seriously paying attention.
Like at first I thought, he's, you know, I'd seen him play 50 times.
I'd seen the show 50 times.
I know what he does, but I didn't realize it was like that at first.
I just figured, he's,
I get it, I know what this is gonna be.
And boy, I was wrong.
It's like, it's never the same.
So you have to watch him like a hawk all the time, all the time.
You can never take your eyes off of him in a show.
And I realized that as a keyboard, I was the organist, the keyboard player for many years.
And then at a certain point, Thomas's health situation came back.
And Thomas made the big decision that he didn't want a tour anymore.
And so, and then, you know, we had a big meeting about this and the day that this went down, Nick came to me and said, you have to move to drums now.
And I'm like, God, okay.
And I didn't really realize what a responsible, what a,
flip-flop of responsibility this was going to be because as a keyboard player, well, I was best friends with Thomas and so I could, and I'm a drummer, so my timing was super locked
in and good and natural with Thomas.
But I didn't really have to pay so much.
I didn't feel like I was carrying much responsibility.
I could just play organ, you know, wild and just keep an eye on Nick and have fun with it and go crazy, you know.
But playing drums, it can't be like that.
playing drums, it's like, I'm running, I'm running the show and I feel the weight of everybody.
Like we've got 10 musicians on stage.
We're 10 people on stage and the shows are big now.
And it's like, if we've got a 25,000 seat arena with 10 musicians on stage and Nick is all over the place.
I have to steer the boat.
I have to steer the ship and
And boy, feel that.
I feel that.
And I assume this current tour, Larry, you're on drums still?
I'm on drums.
Yeah.
So you've got, think Carly's playing keyboards, is it?
Yeah.
Carly Caradis.
So let's go back to those, if you don't mind, just to those Nick Cave tours where you were playing organ and so on.
Again, for those that are aware of Nick's work, it is incredibly diverse and it's
can be dramatic, cinematic, dark.
What different approach did you need to take as a keyboard player when you joined him?
Well, I mean, as you probably know, technically with the Bad Seeds, technically the music is not complicated.
There are never any key changes in the songs.
The chords are relatively simple.
It's not overly complex.
voicings and things like that.
It's like fairly straight up simple songwriting.
It's more about the lyrics and his character and of course on stage it's going to be his performance as a character.
People can't take their eyes off of him and that's what it is.
So the music is like structurally fairly basic and traditional.
So it's not complicated.
And that was good because like I said, I never took piano lessons.
So, it was not, it was still a challenge for me to even expand my poor little pea brain of knowledge to start using my 10 fingers and things like that.
But, sometimes even playing two keyboards at once, like the Mellotron here and the organ with my right hand.
But, but a lot of it was, I realized it's not about
technique or it's not about talent, it's about dynamics and watching him, keeping your eye on him and playing, responding to what he's doing because he's never gonna do it the same
way twice.
Well, he was really wild and crazy at that section last night, but tonight he's really strangely quiet and he's bringing everything down.
it's like, so you have to have command of your
of what you're, you know, the thing you have to have, have to be comfortable and not, you just keep your eye on him and ride his naturally conducted dynamics.
And it will be different every night.
And you have to get fluid with that.
And maybe, maybe skip that whole section and don't, and go from there to there, you know, or something.
But yeah, you have to be really liquid and kind of fluid with him and connect.
And just briefly Larry, what was your keyboard rig when you were on the Keys duties with him?
I know the Mellotron and the Organ.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, like when he first called me to talk about joining the band, you know, we talked a bit about, you know, about the planning and stuff like that.
And then the next, the last question was like, yeah, and one other thing.
Do you have a Mellotron?
I'm like, whoa, you know, whoa.
And I'm like, I...
I don't, I said I don't own one, but oddly enough, I had been really close friends with Marcus, who owns Melitron in Stockholm.
Marcus has been a really great friend of mine, I guess at that time for 10 years or something, I'd known him.
And he was always, we'd always been talking.
One day I want to buy a Melitron, I'll get one one day, but we used to always hang out and stuff and go to.
go to dinner and stuff and hang out.
were good friends.
And so I said, I don't own one to Nick.
said, but as soon as I hang up the phone, I'm going to call Marcus and tell him that I want that I have to have one now.
So I did, I called Marcus and ordered one.
made me a custom, a custom one.
yeah.
So, and now I have two from Marcus, both custom.
Yeah.
I've gotten.
pretty far down the rabbit hole with Mellotrons now and Marcus.
But yeah, I had a Mellotron and I got a Korg BX3, like an organ, which is something that the Bad Seeds have used BX3 a lot, or CX3 in the records, McHarvey told me.
So that's really, it has a really particular growly
tone wheel sound, those corgs, the first models, the ones from the late 70s, early 80s.
So had one of those and then I had, and I, and you know, with the record that the Batsies had come out with at that time, that Skeleton Tree record and the, and even the Push the
Sky Away record, you know, with a lot of Warren's sort of synth stuff, I, I had had some omni chords, I had
several of these OM27 Omnicords.
And I'm old friends with Daniel L'Enroi.
I've known Daniel since the mid-80s, actually.
And so I met Daniel and the guys working with him at that time, all of his engineers, Malcolm Byrne.
And the first time I saw Daniel play in the mid-80s, he had this guy Malcolm Byrne with him, who was one of his engineers.
and those guys were all into this Omnicord thing.
And they had it all happening and they were running Omnicords through a crazy series of effects to give it this sort of otherworldly galactic harp thing.
And I got way into that even then.
And so I owned several Omnicords.
And so I decided, I set that whole thing up.
I got the Mellotron I got was the big one that had enough cabinet space on the top to put the Omni Chord there.
And I was running it through, I first did, the stack was like a compressor and then through a ring modulator and then into two different analog delays where I could really
expand this thing into this never-ending galactic.
And you know, and I have a technique where I can play the chords
with my pinky or my left two, you know, these two fingers and reach over and play the harp, you know, the glissando harp thing with my thumb.
I can do that with one hand and play the, the Mellotron, the chords on the Mellotron, my right hand and, sort of simultaneously.
It's a really weird technique, but it's a technique that doesn't require any piano technique.
I could do all that without having
piano lessons, you know, and that got me through a lot of those, the newer songs and stuff like that.
I did all that and Nick loved it, you know, so everyone was just like, what the hell are you doing?
What is that shit?
know, and pardon my French, yeah, I, and that's, that's what I'm using on this camisonia record.
That's what all that stuff.
Yeah.
So, mean, you hear the deep, super low bass stuff.
That's the Moog obviously.
And the more synthesizer-y kind of chord stuff, that's that Casio running through.
I'm manipulating that Casio through a million things too.
all that strange, weird sounding stuff, that's the Omni chord.
I sent the record to Adrian Utley and Adrian from Portishead.
And he's a friend of mine.
We've made a few records together.
Adrian is this incredible guitar player.
mean, I guess you know.
And he's an incredible musician.
And I sent it to him, just curious what he would say.
And his first question was like, what the F are you using?
What am I listening to?
It's like, what is this?
And so he didn't know what I was playing.
And I'm like, it's it's the Omni chord, highly manipulated Omni chord.
it sounds timeless, Larry.
It's absolutely amazing.
And I can see how it would work in both the context of your solo work, but also the stuff with Nick.
And you've alluded to, mean, you've mentioned, you mentioned Daniel little while, you've mentioned Porter's Head.
What for the sake of our listeners and viewers, we will be linking to Larry's bio.
It's impossible.
would take us eight or nine hours to cover everything, but I just wanted to do a bit of a scattershot chat with you on a couple of amazing other parts of your career, if that's
okay.
So just tell us about your philosophy around the importance of.
doing things yourself and making it a way to have a viable career.
You know, it's funny that you say that because I just met up with Nigel House here in London two days ago, the guy who started Rough Trade Records.
And we sat down and we, cause I dropped off some records for him and we were talking a bit over some coffee and he, I think he asked me the same question because he was, he read
like on the back of the record there, says that he was like,
I don't think he realized everyone that I'd worked with, but it mentions the residents there.
And he's a big residents fan.
so we got to talking and he knew Michael Girard from back in the day and stuff like that.
like, it's like when I first started working with the cryptic corporation, with the residents and like the, it's like I spent many years working with those guys and work.
They were, they were like some of the hardest working people in the music business I've ever encountered in my life.
mean, that of course, you, if you know anything about them, you know that they started their own record company very early on and they still run it today.
It's like, you know, they've been going for over 50 years, completely independent, you know, and they have chiseled out, you know, a hard earned career and they've
They've created genres, you know, throughout their career.
But between working with them for years and seeing how they tour and conduct merchandise and business and stuff like that.
And then working with Michael from Swans, who also has done the same thing.
He's run Young God Records since he started, I guess in 1980, 81, 82, more or less.
I mean, he was doing things before, even in late seventies, but
he's still pushing young God records today successfully.
you know, today he's more successful now than he's ever been in his life.
And he just turned 70 and he's still going strong.
And, I also have worked for many, many years with a, with a producer in Paris named Bertrand Berguelot, who has his own record has from the beginning.
He started his own record company called trickle.
And he produced my first record, which was released on Trick-A-Tel.
And he's also still going strong today.
He started Trick-A-Tel, I guess, in the early nineties.
So he's looking at 35 years running that label on his own.
He's completely independent in Paris for 35 years, still going.
And it's like, you work with these people and it's just...
I mean, those people inspired me to start my own label.
In fact, my label partner, Guido Ranzio, I met him through the residence, Euro Ralph.
He owned Euro Ralph.
So he was financing and producing, executive producing all of the residence projects from the late 80s, all through the 90s and the end 2000.
So I've known him all that time.
So when he offered to start a record label with me under the umbrella of Euro Ralph, because they had a successful structure with that label.
So he had all of the conduit.
He could just plug in another label title.
You know, they had a staff, had warehouse, they had distribution.
contracts, he could just plug in another label and have a second label.
And he knew that I was a big record collector and really into records and had great contacts with other people around the world.
And he was like, we can make a label, a no brainer.
We could make another label and immediately have something going.
And so he's released this Camisonia record with me.
So yeah, that's
From all those, mean, that's where I've learned like it is possible to, I've helped other people start their own labels.
You know, it's not impossible to do it.
know, it's just a bit of business.
need to learn, there's a little bit of business to learn about it.
But of course these days it's easier and easier.
There's almost no reason to sign away like half of your ownership or percentage to somebody else if you just
figure out how to do it yourself.
It's a matter of you have to take on a little bit more responsibility and work harder at it, but at least you'll own everything.
That's right.
can sell it all to somebody later if you want, but for the time being you can do it yourself.
Exactly.
No, it's great perspective.
And I do want to ask you one question, and again apologies if you've had to tell this story a few times, but I know
Back when you first formed Hit Thing, you re-released some albums, including an amazing 1950s album from Georges Montalba, Hi-Fi Fantasy and Pipe Organ and Percussion.
I just love you to tell the story and it's sort of tragic in some ways about the people behind that album and essentially getting the history of it from someone as they were
dying.
I would just love to hear that story if that's possible.
Yeah.
I mean, with that label, first thing, what we really wanted to do was we were mostly just going to do reissues and things like that.
And I had pillaged a friend of mine who had about 7,000 records in his living room.
I had gone through his entire record collection one Christmas when I was watching his cats and Larry Seven in New York City.
And I had sort of chiseled it down to a few records that I'd
definitely obscure ones that I definitely wanted to do and and he and I were both into pipe organ records organ records and So I knew I wanted that to be kind of an aspect of
our label was going to be organ records and I had found these George Montalba Montalba records and And he came back.
He's like, so what'd you pick?
What would you get?
I'm like, well the main thing I want to put out are these two records
He's like, whoa, you know, you know who that is, right?
I'm like, it's George Montalbaugh, right?
He's like, no, that's just a pseudonym.
Everybody knows that that that's actually Anton LaVey from the Church of Satan that made those records.
I'm like, what?
No, no way.
That's not possible.
I mean, I knew some things about LaVey and the Church of Satan.
used to live in San Francisco and I'm like, there is no way that that is Anton LaVey.
And when you listen to those records, I don't know if you know those records, but if you listen to those records, the level of playing is like triple A, you know, a gene, you
know, an absolute master organist, you know, I'm like, that's not Anton Leveille, who said that?
And then he's like, well, he did.
He said it was him.
like, well, that's a lie.
You know, he's lying.
Anyway, you do, you start to do, I,
So I, you know, I smelled a rat from the beginning.
So I started doing massive amounts of research digging into this and, and I spent a year researching that project.
And I eventually got connected with his daughter, Zena, and met her in Berlin.
And she agreed to do the, booklet with me 50 50.
We would, she would sort of tell her side from the being the child of the church of Satan.
raised in the Church of Satan, but she got a chance to sort of tell her whole side of it and I also but I actually ended up really eventually finding the person who it really was
and I spoke to him on the phone Robert Hunter rest his soul but I found him in the last month of his life and Boy, he was boy.
Did he have some stories his his life was fascinating, but I had I had found
everything about his life prior to finding him.
Finding him was the last piece of the puzzle.
And I found him in a retirement home and he had just been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and was dying.
But it was fascinating.
I met his family.
I went to his wake after he died with his family and it was a very emotional project.
I still have dreams now that we've
resurrected the label of doing like a box set of all of his organ records.
And I've talked to his family about doing it.
just not, we're not back up to speed yet to take on the financial cost of something like that.
But maybe we will do it one day, but he's his life is a massive inspiration.
It's what an adventure he had.
through his life, all kind of in the background, but yeah, somehow I got entangled in the church of Satan.
Thank you for retelling that because it is an amazing story.
I'm going to jump totally somewhere different.
Your alter ego, Toby Dammit, Mark Mothersbaugh from Virmdevo, I love his quote, the asses are masses who need to wear dammit glasses.
Tell us about the origin of that.
Yeah, well, it was actually Bertrand Bergeloff, the French producer that deemed me to be Toby Dammit.
Cause when, when Bertrand started his label, Trick-A-Tale, he didn't have any money or he didn't have any artists on his label yet.
It was just sort of a dream, you know, he was trying, but he really had a fantasy of kind of having this Motown kind of label that would have all these different French singers
and, but have like a master.
Tricotel band that just backed all these different singers.
So you'd have one of these sort of Motown Revue kind of things where he wanted to be able to do these shows with a Kraken soul band and just have these different singers come on
and do one song or two songs and leave.
And that was sort of the dream he had.
But he didn't have the people, but he started, he's really a film buff.
He's really into all...
obscure old cinema and stuff like that.
And he started registering and trademarking a lot of like weird old actor, like weird movie character names.
And one of the names he had registered was Toby Dammit, you know, from the Fellini film.
And he had loads of other weird names, but he was, he and I were old friends already at that point.
And we were out to dinner one night and he was like, look, I've got an idea.
I want to produce a record for you.
And you have to be Toby, damn it.
And I'm like, and it's just going to be percussion.
Like weird, we'll make it like a psychedelic, bizarre percussion record with effects.
But it'll just be all symphonic and electronic percussion.
And that's what we did in Paris.
But so I became Toby, damn it.
And, it just kind of stuck.
I'm still trying to get away from it now.
In France, I'm really.
I'm on a lot of records in France and that they call I'm listed as Toby Dammit.
And so what's the Mark Mothersbo relationship there to that?
He just loves your work or?
Yeah, I knew Mark.
I knew Mark from years ago also.
I had met him.
Actually, I met him the first time when I was living in Los Angeles.
I was working at a job working with Dave Catching from Eagles of Death Metal.
We worked at an Italian restaurant delivering food for an Italian restaurant.
in Laurel Canyon.
And one night I was delivering some pasta to the guy that it was Mark Mothersbaugh.
He opened the door like, wow, I mean, it's hard not to recognize.
And I'm like, wow.
And, you know, so anyway, we became kind of friends.
I probably delivered food to him a few times I knew him.
And, and then I saw him around town a few places.
And then, boy, when I started working with the residents, he freaked out because he was a massive residence.
He was also old friends with Iggy, but he would come to residence shows and stuff, you know, I would get him into all this stuff here.
So we became really close friends.
And yeah, when we put out that Toby Dammit record, I asked him if he would make a little blurb about it.
That's what he came up with, like that.
He's really funny, of course, know, and witty and he's great.
I love him.
He's fascinating.
I love it.
Thank you.
And look, just being aware of Tom, we're going to move on to the dreaded Desert Island Discs question in a second, Larry, but just for the sake of our listeners and viewers,
there's so much we haven't covered.
And I'll mention this probably in the outro as well.
I we haven't talked about your work with Luther Hawkins recording, you know, the Carney Suchre album, the Applejack work, Jesse Evans.
Maybe just briefly talk about Jessie Evans.
mean, that was 251 shows in 25 countries.
That's not an insignificant part of anyone's career.
Just maybe talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, I mean, she, you she's from California and she'd moved to Berlin and I was already living there and I met her at a barbecue and we, you know, we got involved.
We had a relationship for seven years.
And we, but one of the first questions she'd asked me was like, what do you really miss about living in the United States?
And I thought for a minute and I'm like, Mexican food.
And she, and she agreed.
And we were like, we had both been through a winter in Berlin and we had both been like, we were talking like, never going to do that again.
Never going to stay in Berlin for another winter.
And
And she was like, well, why don't we go to Mexico next winter and we can make a record or something.
And I'm like, wow, great idea.
So that's exactly what we did.
We tracked the basics on her first record in Berlin, but then we immediately went to Mexico and we stayed in Mexico for three months, finishing up that first record.
then, and she was
Well, we really went there because her previous band, which was called The Vanishing, was really popular in Mexico.
And they're kind of, they're like a goth, like a real hard edged goth synth band, really great band and several records.
and she had a big following in Mexico.
And so we went down there and she started booking shows in Mexico and she got a massive reaction.
Like we, we started touring around Mexico with no agent or any, no record or anything like that.
And every show is sold out.
And I don't, can't remember how many we did.
We did a lot.
And she was also selling a ton of merch and we were scrambling.
day and night trying to organize merch for shows that were coming up every week or whatever.
mean, she was doing the business.
so we, I think we toured Mexico really like four times.
played all over the place.
We had a blast.
And we mixed that record with Pepe Monct from the Nortek Collective, which is one of the biggest electronic band.
They're like the craft work of Mexico.
And we mixed that record with him in Tijuana.
And then we made a second record.
But man, she is very, very hardworking woman.
she's an amazing performer on stage.
She's a great dancer.
And when I say that, I do not underestimate she is a tremendous dancer.
And that's why we were doing 50 shows a year in France.
You know, she became very popular in France.
played all over Russia, Turkey, Spain, Mexico.
We hardly played in the United States at all.
We didn't play in Germany, but we toured in England.
We worked really, really hard.
We worked, I think we wore ourselves out.
We just worked ourselves to death.
But yeah, the records, we made two records and we're really proud of them.
Very, very good records.
No, and we'll definitely link to those as well.
So, and again, just, I mean, that just is one tiny component of your career.
So we will finish off Larry with the dreaded desert islands this question.
So if you had to name five albums that are the all time influences for you, what would they be?
That is the dreaded question of all time.
My God, man.
I mean, you warned me about that a little bit and I have to be honest, I didn't really put too much
thought of this.
mean, I just decided to quickly just start throwing some stuff down and they may not necessarily be my favorite albums of all time, but they are definitely things that I've
listened to a lot.
So I'm just going to start really out of left field here.
And I would say number one, William Bosinski, The Disintegration Loops.
There are four volumes of these.
Do you know that stuff?
No, I don't.
Okay, William Basinski.
He's been around for a long time, but he did a series of sort of electronic records.
They're called the Disintegration Loops, one through four.
They've been released as a collection, but he did them from 2002 to 2004.
They're like sound, they're very long sound loop pieces, and they're incredible.
So I'm going to sell all four of those.
Then, you probably know Harold Budd.
Yes.
Okay.
So of course there's a long career there of beautiful records.
have maybe all of his records.
So it's kind of hard to go down to one, but maybe the first one that I bought that I just, when I discovered him was a record called Lovely Thunder.
It's from 1986.
And I still love that record.
Again, like with his stuff, he started before, I think just before he met Daniel Lanoy, but once he connected with Lanoy, Lanoy and Brian Eno, they kind of converted him into,
they kind of took what he was doing on piano and brought him into that world, that thing, that's the same world that I try to get into with.
the Omnicord.
So Harold Budd is a huge, huge influence on the center of my brain these days.
So I would say that lovely Thunder record.
Then I would say, let's say a John Carpenter record.
And of course, you know, there's also a there's a long list of great John Carpenter.
Of course, you know, he scored
almost all of his films, not all of them, but one of the greats is Escape from New York.
Yeah.
And you might hear some influence of that soundtrack in this Camisonia record.
I was listening to a lot of John Carpenter when I tried to make this record.
And there's definitely something, I've met John and had a great time hanging out with him.
he's a big
fantastic, loud guy from Kentucky.
I'm from Tennessee, so we connected.
I know his son, Cody, who also makes records, Cody Carpenter.
He's an awesome keyboard player.
for your keyboard fans out there, if you don't know about what Cody, Cody is doing like a bit more like prog.
He's actually making like prog synthesizer records.
Cody has an amazing group of musicians.
working with him, killer drummer and bass player and that, and, they, have a band that they back John as his dad.
They back him as a band.
Have you seen that?
No, I haven't.
No, that's amazing.
I'll be checking that out.
That's fantastic.
So John Carpenter, he is recently in the last five years or six or seven years, John's been releasing records called John Carpenter lost tapes.
Wow.
think there's William.
maybe three or four volumes that's done.
There are lost themes.
It's called lost themes.
And there are these heavy iconic John Carpenter themes, which he's a master at, with a four-piece band behind him, like a rock band behind him.
It's like killer.
Yeah, I'll be checking that out.
It's John and his son on keyboards and a drummer and a bass player.
And it's like,
Wow, it's so good.
And they tour.
They tour.
I've seen the show.
It's just killer.
know, got a big screen behind them.
They don't sync with stuff from his films, but it's all stuff from John Carpenter movies.
And it's all the movies, The Fog and, know, The State of New York, The Albegrates.
And they do pieces of music from those films.
It's just, it's, I loved it.
I love John.
So let's say escape from New York, John Carpenter.
There's three.
I'll throw in another wild one here.
There's a Japanese female jazz singer named Maki Asakawa.
you know her?
No, I don't, but I'll look her up.
So also a long career.
She's no longer alive.
She's a jazz singer.
She's called, she's often
referenced or called like the Billie Holiday of Japan.
Her first record is from 1970.
It's fantastic.
And all her records are just called Maki Asakawa.
And it's a long career.
They're all called that, but they're just called one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
But it's always, it's Maki Asakawa.
And she was like really a fantastic jazz singer, but ultra decadent like
Ultra dark, really like super goth dark, really.
She's really a dark, you know, always with sunglasses and in the shadows and kind of a Dracula type character.
And the records are great.
She has these incredible me always some records are just with piano and her singing and they are just.
ultra dark, smoky, know, in the corner, shades down jazz.
And she was just awesome.
I love her.
And that first record is a masterpiece.
I'll see.
Maki Asakawa.
If you like those kinds of moods.
And I'm going to say another great electronic composer who died recently was a Russian guy, Edward...
Artemyev.
can't, I'm sure I'm not saying his last name right.
Edward Artemyev.
Do you know that guy?
No, I apologize.
I don't either, but again, we'll make sure I look him up and link to the right person.
Yeah.
Like he scored, the stalker.
Do you know the film?
The Stalker?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
He did that.
He did.
He did all of Tarkovsky's films.
Although Tarkovsky just used a lot of classical music.
for the most part.
He's like way into classical music and he used like massive, you know, like great classic pieces.
But he also used this guy, Artemyev, Edward Artemyev to do a lot of sort of synthesizer, the weird synthesizer stuff in those films.
But he also worked for some other film composers and he made solo records too that are only, you can only find them in Russia.
But there's a great record that he made called
The English title is called Warmth of the Earth.
It's great.
It's all analog synthesizer.
I mean, all that's, he was an analog synthesizer guy and you see pictures of his studio and it's like an analog synthesizer paradise.
You he had really cool stuff.
A lot of Russian, weird Russian patch based synthesizers.
The guy was really, really, really great.
And he's not really well known outside of Russia.
People know about Stalker.
And they know about, well, they know him from the people that know Tchaikovsky's films.
They know.
But, and some of that stuff has come out on vinyl now in the West, but you can find those records online now.
All those Russian records, can find them.
Great.
They are amazing.
They are amazing picks, Larry.
I love the diversity of it.
And I think
It's probably a testament to the diversity of your own career.
I mean, I cannot thank you enough for spending the time.
I know you've mentioned you wish you'd taken piano lessons, but I'd argue your unique style and just the huge breadth of what you've achieved is probably because you have a
unique approach to music.
And maybe the piano lessons might've beaten that out of you too early and we wouldn't be sitting here talking today.
So hugely appreciate your talent and your time.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for inviting me there.
And thanks for working with the time zone scenario.
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe my jet lag helps me.
I might as well be in Australia right now, really.
And there we have it.
I hope you enjoyed those two parts as much as I did chatting with Larry.
I mean, it's a real stereotype on this show.
We say we barely scratched the surface, but I spoke with Larry briefly after the show and sort of nearly outright apologized.
Not that he was fazed at all.
He was incredibly generous with his time, but there was so much we didn't cover.
He's worked with Rufus Wainwright, his actual solo albums with Thomas that he mentioned.
the drummer from the Bad Seeds.
We didn't even do things like train wrecks and the quick fight in because there was just not time.
So that's a testament to his amazing career.
But I hope you do enjoy it.
And yeah, we certainly had a ball.
I had a ball.
So thank you again for joining us.
Quick shout out to our Silver and Gold supporters, Mr.
Dewey Evans, who's about to join us on a live stream in the next few weeks.
Thank you, Dewey, for your ongoing support.
Tammy Katcher from Tammy's Musical Stew.
Again, thank you Tammy, has been a very long-term supporter of the show.
Mike from Midnight Mastering, if you need high quality mixing and mastering of your tracks, Mike is the guy, midnightmastering.com.
And last but definitely not least, Dave and the team at the musicplayer.com forums and the keyboard corner in particular.
Proud member of more than 20 years, lots of interesting discussion.
Just as an example, in the last couple of weeks has been some deep.
discussions and threads on the new Moog release.
I've had a mental blank on what it's called.
The latest Arturia releases and lots, lots in between.
So yeah, do jump in there if you're interested.
Again, thank you for listening.
We'll be back in a couple of weeks.
Do keep in touch if you'd like to via all our social media channels.
Just look for the Keyboard Chronicles and you'll find us.
And in the meantime, keep on playing.