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MP3 Hal Cragin - Immaculate Contraption

They Might Be Giants/Iggy Pop bass player creates 70s funkjazz featuring the electricbassguitar.

12 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Free Jazz, JAZZ: Jazz Fusion



Details:
Bass player Hal Cragin began in Boston with Grammy nominated Polygram Records group, Rubber Rodeo.

Also worked with artists including Jennifer Trynin, and The Walkers as well as producer Jon Brion in the group The Worlds Fair. He also began the group Too Happy with Tom Dube and Reeves Gabrels


Moved to NYC to work on various recording projects also began what became a 7 year tenure with Iggy Pop. He did three records with Iggy, American Caesar, Naughty Little Doggie, and Avenue B, which was recorded in Hal''s subterranean studio at 262 Mott street with producer Don Was.

Involved in the genesis of John Flansburgh''s Monopuff and subsequently played for They Might Be Giants. Hal also worked with Marianne Faithfull, Rufus Wainwright, and Freedy Johnson among others. During the mid 90s he started the jazz funk Hal Cragin Trio which was an East Village mainstay and recorded many of the tracks on IMMACULATE CONTRAPTION. The Trio was a weekly top pick in TIMEOUT magazine.

Relocating to Los Angeles Hal continued to compose and record and play with various artists such as Vic Chestnut, Victoria Williams and Sarah McLachlan, and live under the naked light bulb of the California sun.


About Immaculate Contraption
NYC-to LA
by Hal Cragin
It started innocently enough. I had time off from working with Iggy Pop or They Might Be Giants, or some other gainful musical enterprise when longtime friend/ producer William Garrett (whom I had met with a band called Rubber Rodeo, many hair styles before), proposed we record some funky 70''s style music. Since he was running one of the myriad Sony music studios in NYC we could, in the midnight hour, record our covert stealth funk. That collaboration yielded three tracks and was the beginning of this CD.


Having begun a project in such a jocular spirit it then seemed easy to record some more music -- on my own. Finding a practice space used by at least one hundred and one bands, in a sub-sub-basement [go down,watch your head! then go down again] in Manhattan''s Little Italy at 262 Mott Street, I attempted to record myself. Using some dubious recording gear, and freezing [winter] or gasping for air [summer], some very fine musicians and myself got inspired performances in that hole. These ended up on Imac.

Actually the squalid conditions proved inspirational for some demos I produced for Iggy Pop. These so impressed a very big Hollywood record producer that he insisted we record Iggy''s album AVENUE B there.


The Beneath the Planet of the Apes conditions finally got to me and I moved some gear into my apartment on the 12th floor in the East Village, but not before recording Dan Simonis''s solo record... as well as having Marianne Faithfull demo some things down there.


In my apartment, the set-up/take-down/live/work situation was like constantly twiddling a Rubic''s Cube. The apartment overlooked a grade school on 3rd Street. Some of the white noise of the happy children can be heard on Iggy''s monologue, "No Sh*t" on Avenue B. I also recorded some jazz covers [unreleased] of Iggy. I recorded "Creepy" and "Taste the Bass" for Monopuff''''s Its Fun to Steal record there. And of course more Immaculate Contraption tracks.

Since I was writing all the time, I needed a showcase for the material. So I convinced a twitchy vegan restaurant on 6th street to hire a "type of guitar" and began performing, unbeknownst to my peers. You see, I was scared they would figure out I was a bass player and then fire me on my first break, so on the first evening, I played for 2 hours straight.

I played a few more clubs of dubious distinction. One evening, I actually was shot at while on break in front of the club [they missed and it was a good excuse to pack it in early anyway]. These were gigs I played with whomever I could find - I tried not to mention the occasional gunfire.

Finally, I got a residency at a club on Avenue B called...the Ave B Social Club run by guitarist Eric Ambel and the Hound of WFMU. So this Immaculate Collection continued to grow but finally had a good public forum. As the weeks passed, I could count on some regulars, most notably one feisty alcoholic urban poet. That gig lasted the better part of a year.

We were consistently a top pick in TimeOut magazine! My name was up in - Chalk! Meanwhile these tracks or recordings or songs are trailing behind me like toilet paper stuck to my shoe. And I was still touring. As the 20th century drew to a close, and I completed shows with Rufus Wainwright I finally left for LA. There was no purpose to this move except to quiet the thought that lives in the back of every musician''s mind:"Should I move to LA?"

With my recordings, 17 basses,and a folding chair [daily bass practice], I arrived in Hollywood. There, I found a room in a very generous recording studio called Blue Music. In the true LA project studio tradition, my meager recording gear grew like weeds over the septic system. More recording ensued, and between tours and sessions the collection finally became a Contraption. Here it is.

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