Marcel Proost: Last Drunk Standing

My neighbor Marcel Proost was over to visit this morning.

Marcel lives up on Buckshot Creek Road, where he used to grow marijuana until he got busted last month. He makes his living doing odd jobs like driving a backhoe, felling trees and keeping our dirt road from collapsing into the creek. Recently he’s also begun a column on contemporary music for the Independent Coast Observer in Gualala. You can find it on the same page as the sheriff’s log.

Marcel drives an old Toyota truck, but this morning he’s on his Harley, a chopper he likes to ride with his motorcycle club, The Twelve Horsemen of the Apocalypse, on weekends.

Anyway, Marcel tells me he has big news: he has been named “Last man standing” by his biker club.

I say “Marcel, that is so baloney… The only time you could win a ‘last man standing’ contest would be if everyone else passed out blotto on the floor while you cling upright to the bar.” (In truth I had heard the Horsemen had had quite a serious bender last Saturday at the Chainsaw Club in Anchor Bay, ending when the sheriff had to come over to close it down and free Arnie Hansen from where they’d had him locked in the men’s room as a joke.)

“On the contrary, John. My placement at the top of the list has been confirmed by none other than Norman Lebrecht, the distinguished classical music aficionado from London. He posted the results on his blog. We’re presuming that at least this time he got his facts right.

“It was an unscientific poll, of course, conducted only among classical music dweebs in both the UK and the good ole USA. Of course if he’d conducted the poll in French or German the list would have been completely different.

Lebrecht threw out all hanging chads, and he personally disqualified all erroneously marked ballots. That meant that out of about 1200 people who responded, only a couple hundred were smart enough to get their ballots right. Not a great commentary on us folks who read classical music blogs, wouldn’t you say?”

So with Marcel getting all this attention I’m wondering if he’s going to be especially hard on me in his next column.

“Hey Marcel,” I say, “how’d you like those Zappa pieces we did down south in LA? You at the concert?”

“I missed the concert, John, but that doesn’t prevent me from having an opinion on it. If you ask me, Zappa is fine, but frankly the goofy stuff—you know Uncle Meat, Dog Breath, G-Spot Tornado—is what I prefer. Those are the pieces with true originality, and the arrangements by Ali Askin are pure piss and vinegar.

But when Frank does the make-believe Boulez stuff like ‘Girl in the Magnesium Dress’—I dunno. If it weren’t for the fact a famous rock star had composed it I do wonder if anyone would ever program it.”

“Ah, Marcel,” I sigh, “you’re such a hardball, but I might possibly be inclined to agree with you this one time.

But what did you think of Harry Partch’s ‘US Highball.’”

Partch? Crusty curmudgeon. American maverick. Recovering hobo. Intonation freak. Curious sui generis instrument builder. Not sure about him as a composer. ‘US Highball’ nice idea, but too much geezer blather. You know—sittin’ in a boxcar, shivering my nuts off while I eat a can of cold soup.”

I tell Marcel that nonethless I did like the sounds coming outta Kronos on the stage, although I don’t know how much they really have to do with old Harry’s super-specific intonation schemes….and by the way too bad he wasn’t there to check out the shoes on that Kronos cellist, Jeff Zeigler. Extragalactic.

“So Marcel,” I ask, “have you really and truly read Partch’s book, ‘The Genesis of a Music?’”

“Ah, very tough sledding, that book. Never gotten very far. But I am careful to make my readers think I’ve read it. I would never admit that I find that book so goddam confusing and prolix I would rather trade it in for a used Mandarin grammar. You know of course if I told the truth, the Just Intonation Mafia would send their goons out to bust my kneecaps.”

As Marcel kicks his Harley into gear, he says he regrets having missed Ingram Marshall’s “Fog Tropes” for brass and pre-recorded fog horn sounds.

“’Fog Tropes’ makes me nostalgic for the old Haight Ashbury days in San Francisco. You never hear fog horns anymore. The ships I guess don’t need them. Computers do everything. I miss that sound.”

I am surprised to see Marcel suddenly so wistful and almost downright melancholy, but Ingram Marshall brings that out in you.

“Gotta go,” says Marcel. “We’re barbecuing that pig that wandered into my vineyard. I’m providing dessert.”

“Yeah right. Don’t tell me. Brownies?” I say.

“You got it, pal. I’m outta here.”