Photo courtesy of www.galacticfunk.com
By Chris Brown, Jayplay writer
Blending old-school funk, à la The Meters and James Brown, with extended live improvisation that appeals to jazz-fusion and pop sentimentalities, New Orleans-based Galactic is a fresh melding of the old with the new. Check out the band's down-home-funky-New Orleans sound when they pass through Lawrence to play at the Granada on April 10.
The Band:
The Band:
Robert Mercurio - bass
Jeff Raines - guitar
Stanton Moore - drums
Ben Ellman - saxophone
Rich Vogel - keyboards
How did you all originally meet?
It was a five-way car accident actually. Stanton got pissed off because his drums were in the back of his car. We all exchanged names and
insurance information. No, actually we met during college. Rob and Jeff grew up in D.C., I grew up in the Midwest. We all came to New Orleans to go to school but we actually were there more for the music. We all played around town and met each other that way.
How did you come up with the name "Galactic?"
Where does "Manuel's Galactic Prophylactic" come from?
We decided it was better than the name "Galactic Prophylactic" and "Manuel's Galactic Prophylactic" which were past names of the band. We recorded a track called "Black-Eyed Pea" for the San Francisco acid-jazz label Ubiquity in '94 under the name "Galactic" for the first time. In 1994 we also hooked up with Dan Presaro with Funk-City Records and at that point we got serious about the music and changed our name permanently to Galactic.
I think it was a Saturday Night Live skit about a guy who always carried an old condom in his back pocket. I'm not sure though, that was before my time in the band.
Who are your influences?
Growing up in the Midwest I listened to classic rock, Van Halen, Zeppelin, that stuff. In high school I started looking for new sounds and really got into Miles Davis' 70s stuff — Jack Johnson, On the Corner — those albums were all really great. I also really got into old school funk and groove, like the Meters, James Brown and P-Funk. I have a Deep Purple song as my ringtone so it's all come full circle.
What are you listening to right now?
What are you listening to right now? I'm listening to hip-hop right now. We're touring with Media Darling, a hip-hop group out of New Orleans. We look around for artists doing something different and like to incorporate what they are doing with our shows.
Do you have any pet peeves when you are on the road?
I really can't think of anything that pisses me off right now. Ever since we've got out of a van and into a bus life has been good.
We all do. There's 10 of us on the bus. Tour buses have 12 bunks. When we have 12 people on the bus there's bags everywhere and there's no place to sit down. We just had the longest break we've had in our band history—two months—and everyone is ready to be out on the road, so
Fill in the blank: Nothing's quite as good as ___.
A hotel room. I just got finished talking about how nice it is to have a bus to travel on but after you've been on the road with ten guys for a while it's nice to have a place to stay away from the bus.
If you were locked in room and forced to watch old rums of either Family Ties or Charles in Charge, which one would you watch and why?
Family Ties only because I think Justine Bateman was kind of hot back then.
Do you have any new partnerships with other bands planned for this year or anything new for 2005?
We're going to have a late night set at Bonnaroo with the Dirty Dozen Brass Horns and I think Leo Nocentelli, founding member of The Meters, will be come up on stage with us, which will be really cool. We're doing some up-coming shows with Toots and the Maytalls and Maceo Parker. We've been at festivals with these guys before but we've never been on the same bill so we're really looking forward to that. We're also pretty seriously going to work on getting a record out sometime in the late fall.