ZOLO PROBE

WHAT IS ZOLO?

"Got a feeling that I know/ Is a sudden capriccio/ My bodies jostled by the joy of instant change/ In my mind and on my brow/ I think that everythings deviant now/ I'm hoisted to felicity in life, amain"

"Time In Eversion"- Terry Sharkie 1990

Maybe you have seen the flyers around town. You might have caught the word by someone passing by. If you have been twisting around the dials on the radio in Portland, Oregon, than maybe you have landed upon that hyper voice, those snappy sounds and those wobbly tunes on Thursdays between 5:00 and 6:00 PM on KPSU 1450 AM. The show is called The Zany Zolo Muzik Hour and the man behind it is Terry Sharkie- musician, stylist, and connoisseur-who has culled together obscure music from different time periods that have fit no preconceived categories, yet bear certain similarities, and assembled it all into a new genre called Zolo.

The music, characterized by hyper jerky rhythms and cacophonous/ harmonious bleeps and boings, is the sound track to the world of dazzling colours and sparkling abstraction the Zolo individual inhabits. The sharp, colourful, eccentric clothes and hairdooz reflect the bold assertiveness of the attitudes, voiced through astute, chipper words and phrases, while the rollicking motions and gestures animate the lustrous vagaries of the attendant music.

The Zany Zolo Muzik Hour first premiered on Sunday, June 25, 1995 at 5:00 PM, playing a variety of Zolo classics by the likes of Perrey and Kingsley, Godley and Creme, the Residents, XTC, Stump, Split Enz, Pere Ubu, Gentle Giant, Bill Nelson, Fred Frith, and Albert Marcoeur, selections of which have most certainly never been aired before, and few of which have even been heard beyond the ears of a small number of cultists and aficionados of a certain bizarre. These tracks, as well as many others, represent the fresh and relatively untapped realm of musical capriccioso that Sharkie has termed, in homage to a set of toys marked by like minded characteristics to the subject at hand, *Zolo.

The zealous banter of the all so calculated Sharkie may have stammered at first as his mondo exotic disc spins perplexed and befuddled many of those lucky enough to have tooned in that evening. The show quickly garnered a cross section of fans, some relating to these sounds as a way of life, some intrigued by the music's sheer novelties, others simply yearning for a bright and challenging diversion as they flip through the dials. After three months on the air, the show moved, amid notorious transmission deficiencies, from Sundays to its current Thursday at 5:00 PM time slot. For the converted, the show remains a treasure trove of cosmic musical discovery, while for the uninitiated who stumble upon Mr. Sharkie and his stack of mutant vinyl for the first time each week, the show is a startling revelation.

Sharkie does believe that erecting Zolo from it's hidden catacombs could change the future of post war cult pop culture. Shunning philosophical prose for personally subjective discretion, Sharkie defines the fruition of Zolo personification- that in which the artistically apt individual (of a particular persuasion) frames their submodalities of fantasy and creation and projects those onto their external reality. However true that may be for the man himself, and perhaps a few others, Zolo will certainly spring to greater numbers from acclimation to the doyens shining model rather than internal evolution. Such phenomenon could justly redress the outcome of post boom pop assimilation, for if time merged Punk and Metal into Grunge (think of Seattle sound as Lester Bangs scholarship and "classic rock" retention) then likewise Zolo would answer from the multitude sprung from the bridge betwixt Prog and Romo/ Wavo.

Turn tails to the generation coin; the latter makes for a comelier head.

*Zolo culture was named after the Zolo toy, but the word goes back to earlier in the century when "Zolo-go" was a little used term for Zydeco. Zolo is also a name in the Italian language.

WHAT IS ZOLO'S PLACE IN HISTORY?

Erudite in the historical and sociological implications in music, Terry Sharkie declares Zolo music to be the latest manifestation along the theatrical/ art rock/ cabaret genealogy over the last century. This establishes a small yet significant branch along the tree of post contemporary music that, Sharkie says, has been all but bereft of an artistic approach in the last ten years. "There are two prevailing methods in today's existing musical styles. At the center there's the basic, streamlined approach that would account for all the musical forms given to mass acceptance, be they current or vintage, from rock to country to folk to jazz to classical to disco, with all their various permutations included. To the side of this there is the deconstructivist approach, which would encompass everything from improvisation, bruitism, ambient, industrial, gloom, hoax, and all other unscripted musical forms. The missing link in today's musical world is an arty approach, one that works on lifting, embellishing, and re-upholstering, as opposed to minimizing and mutilating, music from it's stale and tired basics."

The arty approach to music would apply, just as it's deconstructivist counterpart, to certain musical genres which have manifested during the twentieth century, before which musical experimentation was slow and rigid. From vaudeville burlesque to space age bachelor pad, epic grandiosity and quirky sprinklings have augmented conventional forms of jazz, pop, and classical to newer pastures. The developments of synthetic sounds through the use of electronics have, over the second half of the century, unveiled an alternate dimension in aural tapestry, starting in the realm of avant garde classical music.

Certain mutations began to be applied to the instruments traditional in rock as that music fragmented from its initial burst of invention. Instrumental bands forged new sounds and methods for the guitar in the early sixties. By mid decade certain innovators of the British Beatboom began shuffling around orchestration roles and applying cacophonous musings (shattered glass, feedback) where they had never been. But it was with the breakdown of genre restrictions in the adventurous late sixties underground, where elements from all styles of music were altered and combined, that the arty approach to music making truly began.

And thus, from Psychedelia to progressive rock, Post Punk to Cold Wave, there was a constant strain of of creative embellishment to the musical basics, be they the grandiose theatricality and metric complexity of progressive rock or the mutated atmospherics of Cold Wave. The role of the synthesizer in creating new and uncharted sounds was the holy grail of musical experimentation in the late seventies and early eighties.

But as the fast paced consumerism of the Reagan/ Thatcher years pumped into high gear, the new synthetic musical technology was harnessed by the corporations and dished back via slick, stale pre-sets of the digital/ midi implosion. The original proponents of synthetic invention either charted to the discos or fell by the wayside, evaporating as suddenly and thoroughly as the progressive rock brigade had done before in the face of the New Wave. With no new melieu of creative visionaries to forge ahead from where their elders had left off, the arty musical universe fell into a lull at the same time that nostalgia became the central media fixation. The underground continued to offer an appealing array of musical eclecticism, and the college charts were weighed out heavily by obscure and cerebral tendencies. But the overall impact of all that was going on, in terms of innovation and abstraction, seemed a bit frozen, if not ossified.

Any hopes for a breakthrough were, without warning, dashed at the turn of the nineties when, as a result of economic slumbers, sociological crippling, sexual panics and a nostalgia frenzy, the world succumbed unanimously into a state of regression. Self assertion and futility dwindled into self pity and ambiguity, and thus grunge music was born, which wiped out virtually all forms of musical flamboyancy and creativity along its path of destruction. The freaks went into hiding and the arty approach to music fell off the face of the Earth. The only cutting edge during this period was the isolated European strain of avant rock that existed on small, obscure labels like ReR and Cuneiform, but this genres lack of visual identity made it a somewhat drab and colourless affair. This seems no different from the faceless jungle of the current pop brigade, whose insistence on PC moralizing and anti-style has an eerie communist ring to it- an anachronism in and of itself.

So now, as the calendar dips into the late nineties, the times are starving for a new direction. One where the music combines with style and motion to form the sound track to a way of life. One where the music builds and embellishes from it's basic essentials and forges a fresh and new outlook.

Terry Sharkie-"Having traveled through many different genres of music in my relatively young life, I have developed a wide array of music tastes with an over riding predilection towards the Anglo/ Euro arty variety. If I can break it all down, the music I love the most tends to be escapist, either into the past or the future."

The arty approach to music has given more diversity and eclecticism to the nostalgic musings in progressive rock, be it baroque (King Crimson, Genesis) or vaudeville (Sparks, Sailor.) It has also lent more newfangled invention to the future, as in the Cold Wave of Bill Nelson and Ultravox. The seventies were the pinnacle in the arty approach , for it was during this decade that the majority of styles within this realm manifested.

Unfortunately, the two great genres from that decade, progressive rock and New Wave, remained unharmoniously divided do to the fact that one was a self conscious reaction against the other. It is here that a missing link is formed, with the potential for greatness in the cards if the best elements from both worlds were to be combined- the theatrics and shifting formats of Prog and the twisted sounds and textures of Wave.

Bands like Magazine, Gloria Mundi, and Random Hold were maverick in their championing of this concept, but others didn't merely proceed with an adherence to the rules of construction. Extracting metaphor in lieu of hybrid, there was an unconnected group of musical oddballs who forged a style of musical art that encompassed both theatrical complexity and mutant sonority into a style that seemed to take more inspiration from avant garde art and films than it did in modifying the past or present, making it virtually timeless.

Artists like Gentle Giant, Albert Marcoeur, XTC, and Godley and Creme forged a wholly new sound, all bouncing springs and twinkling lights, that remained undiscovered and ahead of the times- defying any preconceived categories and symbolizing no documented eras. The music layed out by these pioneers has dispersed, either consciously or not, over the years through bands as diverse as the Bombay Ducks, Debile Menthol, Fibonaccis, Stump, and many more, all of them as boldly bizarre as they are elusively obscure.

But from the eccentrics of the New Wave to the aliens that landed on Ralph to the impenetrable quirks of the European RIO movement, this music has proliferated around the world and through a number of decades, with the oldest sounding as undatable as the newest. This music , now called Zolo, stands for sentiments of timeless relevance- that of fantasia and autonomy.

WHERE IS ZOLO HEADING?

Now, as the end of the nineties draws near, with the glut of angst and self pity and ambiguity spinning in a cul-de-sac, the time is right for this hidden music called Zolo to break out into the open at last! Such a phenomenon would make perfect sense! For Zolo, standing for a thoroughly positive and creative set of sensibilities, so diametrically opposite to the post grunge mood, could be the most powerful and effective breakaway from the detritus of the current dead culture!

When you toon into the Zany Zolo Muzik Hour, you are unearthing the sounds of a future era. I cannot say for sure just when or where, but it will happen. Something so exciting and ideally sound cannot go by untapped forever. For whereas genres like Psychedelia, Punk, Ska, Rockabilly, and lounge have all seen their times come and go - their inspiration gone, their energies spent- Zolo hasn't ever seen it's potentials spoiled. Having never harnessed any time or era, Zolo remains as fresh as the day it was conceived- the music pointing perpetually towards the future.

Copyright Tyrant Tula 1997

Just whEre are All thOse BleEps BliPs and BuBbleS cOmiNg FrOm?
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