Sympathy For The Devils:
Stockholm Syndrome
by Dean “Mmmmm, Swedish” Bonzani
9.3.04
A tall glass of sweet, funky reggae spiked with a liberal dash of bitter hard rock, stirred with an expensive stiletto.
That’s Holy Happy Hour, the debut album by supergroup Stockholm Syndrome. While there is the occasional reflective, folky moment, it’s just a rest stop on a manic highway of big sound.
The brainchild of Jerry Joseph (Little Women, The Jack Mormons) and Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, Stockholm Syndrome is a conjunction of the groovy laid-backedness of Schools and the “God-help-us-if-that-thing-gets-over-the-fence” rebel roots rock of Joseph, with plenty of the latter’s trademark derelict romanticism. (Few can tie such a pretty bow around a package of pure, seething malcontent like Joseph.)
Schools produced the Jack Mormons’ 2002 album, Conscious Contact, and after hitting it off at a soul level with Joseph, he and Jerry toured Europe as an acoustic duo. They named themselves after the term given to the psychological phenomenon where a hostage bonds with their captor(s), coined after an incident in Stockholm, Sweden in 1976, where, after a week-long standoff with bank robbers who had taken hostages, the captives refused to press charges, actually mounting a defense for the criminals. (Heinsius, 2004.)
The duo decided to form a full band, and the first three musicians on their wish list accepted the offer immediately; guitarist Eric McFadden (Keb Mo’, Les Claypool, George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars), keyboardist Danny Dziuk (a Deutchlander who collaborated with Joseph on a European release), and drummer Wally Ingram (Jackson Brown, Sheryl Crow, Timbuk 3, Art Garfunkel, Tracy Chapman, and the incomparable David Lindley.)
Wally Ingram, who traded sleeping in a Toyota with David Lindley for sleeping in a bunk in a tour bus with Stockholm Syndrome, compares and contrasts the two projects.
“They’re kind of opposites,” Ingram says. “The Lindley shows are ‘no smoking.’ Stockholm Syndrome shows are ‘smoking required,’ basically. These guys don’t breathe air, they breathe nicotine. When we play venues that don’t allow smoking, these guys are twitching.”
The two tours also have different views of taping.
“Lindley is THE anti-taper of the universe. And Stockholm Syndrome, ya know— ‘C’mon! Just rape our souls! Bring all the gear you want! Set it right up!”
And then, there’s the amplitude.
“The other thing is volume. (With Lindley) I’m playing with chopsticks and brushes and hand drums, keeping things way down. It still sounds big and powerful. Stockholm Syndrome is playing on 12. Big sticks and the big kit and hitting hard.”
It’s not all bombast, though. Joseph’s band, Little Women was famous for its white boy reggae.
“Jerry has a lot of great reggae songs. And I love reggae. When we bust into a reggae portion of the night, I’m really in heaven. And we like to do some dub style stuff. Schools is really getting the reggae bass thing down, and Eric’s got it, and Danny is our official German Bubble Machine. He’s probably the best reggae bubbler to come out of Berlin.”
Stockholm Syndrome is Fallujah’n beach party music. Slurping a margarita, toes dug into the warm sand, Jerry Joseph singing about cocaine monkeys and porn stars while F-18’s bomb the town into pea-sized granules... life is good.
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Stockholm Syndrome at The Orpheum Theater, Wed., Sept. 15th.
©2005 by Dean Bonzani, All Rights Reserved