Tav Falco's Panther Burns is a band best known for having been part of a set of bands emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the New York and Los Angeles music scenes who helped nationally popularize the blending of blues, country and other American traditional music styles among groups playing in alternative music venues of the time. The earliest and most renowned of these groups were The Cramps, largely influenced by rockabilly music; Panther Burns and The Gun Club followed, drawing partly on obscure blues-roots songs for inspiration. The three groups were frequently mentioned in the same sentence in early 1980s rock journalism because of source music influences they shared in common. Scores of groups in subsequent years sparked by the early trails blazed by The Cramps, The Gun Club, and Panther Burns have since gone on to create variant styles like cowpunk, rockabilly revival, psychobilly, and other alternative rock genres springing from American traditional music forms.
The Cramps, along with their first producer, Alex Chilton, were the catalysts inspiring some of the young musicians who eventually helped launch Panther Burns to first start performing in public. Chilton had initiated the development of a blues-roots and country-tinged alternative rock music scene in Memphis beginning with his off-kilter Like Flies on Sherbert album produced there in the late 1970s, following a mid-1970s period working in New York's early CBGB's punk scene as a solo artist following the breakup of Big Star.
Tav Falco's Panther Burns group was formed in 1979 in Memphis by Tav Falco (vocals, guitar) with Alex Chilton (lead guitar/drums/backing vocals), Ross Johnson (drums), Jim Duckworth (guitar/drums), Jim Sclavunos (drums), Ron Miller (bass), and Eric Hill (synthesizer) playing important roles at the beginning. The group soon evolved as a rotating crew of additional musicians hailing mostly from Memphis, New York, and New Orleans. In the late 1990s, Tav Falco moved to Vienna and later, Paris; at that time he began working more with European musicians.
According to the band, Panther Burns is "a Southern Gothic, psychedelic country 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. Reactions to the cacophonous, disjointed, amateurish side of the group's performances over the years varied from enthusiasm to derisive ridicule.
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 1950s/60s pop standards like Frank Sinatra's "The World We Knew," among others. The production styles of the band have included painstakingly mixed albums produced by Alex Chilton and Jim Dickinson as well as lo-fi noise explorations engineered by Doug Easley of Easley McCain Recording. Set lists included originals and mutated covers of songs originally performed by such diverse artists as J. Blackfoot, Doc Pomus, Bobby Lee Trammell, 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.
The early live, happening-styled performances at downtown Memphis cotton lofts sometimes included projected images trained on the vocalist to create what the group calls a "psychotropic atmosphere." A screen-print artist and videographer since the 1970s, Tav Falco promoted many of the early live shows in the 1980s using hand-screen-printed posters that band members and friends helped him create and paste around midtown Memphis. With his signature Hofner fuzz-tone guitar and an offbeat stage presence characterized by his Argentine pompadour, Conrad Veidt-like mustache, smoking jacket, and urbane manner, Falco infused his shows with wacky visual theatrics, raucous feedback, 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 infamous American murderer Charles Starkweather, motorcycle imagery, denizens of Memphis neighborhoods, tango imagery, and playful introspection, among other themes.
Behind the Magnolia Curtain, the first album by the group, was released on the British Rough Trade label in 1982. The album featured on some tracks an appearance by a rural Mississippi drum corps that included blues artist Jessie Mae Hemphill, whose family had long played in area fife and drums corps. The contrast between the powerful, military beats of a drum corps dueling with Falco's occasionally off-tempo vocals resulted in the wild, blues-rock chaos of songs on the album like the frenetic "Bourgeois Blues." A number of recordings for the group were released in years to follow 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 group continues recording and touring today.
The group occasionally opened for major punk rock acts like The Clash and The Cramps 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 they've played at have ranged from a no-wave club in the East Village to New Jersey hardcore punk pits, music heritage festivals, alternative rock clubs, the Ottawa Bluesfest, and others, though in the early 2000s, the group began to play mostly in Europe due to Falco's relocation there.
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 "unglorious, fundamental fact," Falco has said, is that the group is "essentially nothing more than a stripped-down rock-and-roll band." 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."
Over the years, the group has presented different lineups featuring a mix of energetic, undisciplined musicians working alongside seasoned rock-and-roll, soul, and jazz veterans to create its howling sounds, always centered around the presence of vocalist Falco.
Personnel (alphabetical list)
- Perry Michael Allen: keyboards, backing vocals: 1995
- David Berger - drums: 2002
- Roy Brewer - violin: 1980s and 1990s
- Benny Carter - drums; 1994
- Tall Cash - drums: early 2000s
- Gregoire Cat - lead guitar: early 2000s onwards
- Ben Cauley (of The Bar-Kays ) - trumpet: 1990s
- Alex Chilton - lead guitar: 1979 through early 1980s and occasional appearances thereafter; produced several of the albums
- Rene Coman (of The Iguanas, New Orleans) - bass: early to mid-1980s and occasionally thereafter
- Peter Dark - guitar: early 2000s
- Jim Dickinson - producer and keyboardist: occasionally 1980s and 1990s
- Jim Duckworth (of The Gun Club) - drums: 1981, lead guitar: early 1980s & 1989
- Doug Easley - bass: occasionally; recording engineer: 1980s and thereafter
- Ron Easley (of the Country Rockers) - lead guitar: 1980s and 1990s sporadically; producer: 1989
- Kai Eric (aka Red West) - bass: mid-1980s through 2000 on most tours except some in the South U.S.
- Jeff Evans - producer: 2000
- Tav Falco - band leader, lead vocals, guitar: since 1979
- Kitty Fires - occasional appearance
- Doug Garrison (of The Iguanas, New Orleans) - drums: 1996
- Alex Greene (of Big Ass Truck and Reigning Sound) - organ: 1994
- Eric Hill - synthesizer: 1979, 1989
- Doug Hodges - drums: 2001-2002
- Teenie Hodges - lead guitar: 1990s
- Rick Ivy - trumpet: 1979
- Ross Johnson - drums: since 1979 on a number of albums
- Amanda Jones - occasional appearance
- Kye Kennedy - lead guitar: mid-1980s touring; engineer 1985
- Laurent Lo - bass: early 2000s onwards
- Michael Lo - bass: early 2000s
- Andrew Love (of The Memphis Horns) - saxophone: 1990s
- Tammo Luers - guitar: 1995
- Olivier Manoury - bandoneon: 1995
- Bob Marbach - piano: 1995
- Lisa McGaughran - backing vocals: mid-1980s through 1990; bass: on southern tours, same period
- Ron Miller - bass: early 1980s
- Jack Oblivian - bass, organ: 2000
- Robert Palmer - clarinet: 1989
- Giovanna Pizzorno - drums: early 2000s onwards; also briefly in mid-1980s southern live shows
- Jon Ramos - bass: 2002
- George Reinecke (of Busted Flush) - lead guitar: 1980s and 1990s
- Roland Robinson - bass, 1992
- Jim Sclavunos - drums: since about 1982 on a few albums, beginning with Blow Your Top
- Jim Spake - saxophone: 1980s to current
- Brendan Lee Spengler - keyboards: 2000
- Nokie Taylor - trumpet: 1995
- Lorette Velvette - backing vocals, tambourine: mid-1980s through 1990; guitar: 1985 on a few shows
Discography
- Behind the Magnolia Curtain, 1981
- Blow Your Top EP, 1983
- Now, 1984
- Shake Rag, 1985
- Sugar Ditch Revisited EP, 1985
- The World We Knew, 1987
- Red Devil, 1988
- Live Atlanta Metroplex 10-3-87, 1988
- Midnight in Memphis (live), 1989
- Return of the Blue Panther, 1990
- Life Sentence in the Cathouse, 1992
- 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
References
- Deming, Mark. Tav Falco biography. All Music Guide online. Accessed Dec. 9, 2004.
- Duckworth, Jim. Jim Duckworth: Gun Club Days (notes on Panther Burns). The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee Pierce website. Accessed Dec. 9, 2004.
- Jordan, Mark (Feb. 11, 1999). Midnight in Memphis. Memphis Flyer online.
- O'Brien, Glenn (Aug. 1988). Memphis blues again; Tennessee's most evasive r&b man — Tav Falco of Panther Burns. Interview magazine, pp. 50–51.
- Palmer, Robert (Jan. 15, 1982). Beat generation lives in a night of rock and poetry. The New York Times, p. C6.
- Fan site biography
External links
Last updated: 08-02-2005 14:44:28
