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The scat came back >> Conditions are good for beatboxing bohemian EJ Brulé by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
"It's Basque for bearded. The Basques were among the first to successfully make steel. For them, shaving became a status symbol. Only crazy people wore beards." For the record, Brulé shaved his trademark goatee off not long ago. He also shaved off one sideburn. So shaving can be bizarre... therein lies a contradiction, which pleases Brulé to no end. "I thrive on something that satisfies a contradiction. For example, what I do, I think, is really, really, really smart... and really, really stupid at the same time. If you get both, you get the act." Get this, then. An anglo-experience mouthpiece with a French nom de plume; a troubadour in the folk tradition whose instrumentation is entirely digital; a DIY subterranean who numbers the autographs he signs as collector's items; a rock 'n' roll comedian who poo-poos the standup circuit and sneers at rock's restrictive parameters. "'Hip hop Jack Benny' is one of my visions," muses Brulé. Armed with a snow shovel faux-guitar, two mics (one throat, one headset) and a bank of fancypants loop-dee-loop machines, Brulé improvs beats and basslines to back his wry rants. Call it beatboxing, call it postmodern scat, call it a fat guy making fart sounds with his lips. Because that's what it is. "My instrument has its greatest legitimacy in hip hop. But I can't pretend I'm young, black or criminally ignorant about sex. The paradox is that I think they're more ready to accept what I'm doing than the generation between us." It seems like a whole other generation, the proverbial good ol' days when Brulé was a regular fixture at events like the Deja Voodoo BBQs of the '80s, the prototype of the lo-fi aesthetic of the '90s. But then he vanished, disappeared to Calgary for the longest time. Upon his return, he got the loops rolling again... until a 17-car pileup last March planted him in the ER. "My knee was totally shattered. I'm just happy I can walk again. My physio guy's bragging about it, I'm his star patient." Contradictions, again: the hospital stay was a good thing, focusing a mind that is scattered and unpredictable at the best of times. Cane in hand, Brulé realized that he had more in common with our peg-legged premier ministre than just gimp chic. Bouchard's referen-dumb catchphrase caught, and Brulé laid out his own winning conditions, for his show, his imminent CD, his post-courier career. "I disagree with [the PQ's] agenda--although I respect Parizeau for going down in flames--but those are the rules: don't step in unless you win. I said, 'Jeez, if I'm ever gonna do my thing, I want to do it under winning conditions.' And besides, I realized that most of the material I had saved up was about living here, surviving here, being an anglo here. This sounded like the right theme to hang it all off, anyway." EJ Brulé's Winning Conditions at Geordie Theatre, March 24 to 27 (call 574-1241 for showtimes). All ages, $8 ($5 students)
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You learn something new every day. For instance, when I joined self-styled "alternative scat-singer" EJ Brulé on one of his early morning courier runs, he laid the origin of the word "bizarre" on me.