Goldfingered

>> Pornodelic perversions of John Barry's Bond themes, courtesy of Sex Mob

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

NYC's Sex Mob already have a solid rep for sexy, psychedelic jazz action, well-schooled and unpredictable yet funky and refreshingly unpretentious. Of course, between them, these guys have worked with John Lurie's Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Tom Waits and more--so you know there's some stunning talent here. Their latest record sees them taking John Barry's classic James Bond movie music for a rich, sleazy spin (with pal John Medeski in a startling cameo role!). Band leader/slide trumpeteer Steven Bernstein declassified the plans for us.

Mirror: For Sex Mob Does Bond, you decided to stick strictly with the Bond music by composer John Barry, who created the original theme.

Steven Bernstein: Originally, it was a Barry-themed record. Then I decided to focus on the Bond material, even though Barry did lots of music outside that, and it was all stuff from the early Bond films--there was a track from Moonraker that almost made the cut but, to me, and this is all subjective, it just wasn't strong enough.

M: The thing about John Barry, be it his music for Beat Girl, Zulu, whatever, is that he had an understanding of that old expression, that, often, the most obvious answer is the right one. Moreover, he could take something really obvious and make it seem fresh and new. It never sounds pat or corny or cliché.

SB: One of the reasons is that he's such a good arranger. Arranging is very much a lost art that not many people know about. There aren't many arrangers anymore, but at one point there were thousands of them, because there were only studio bands. Barry was of course very influential, because he was one of the first to arrange for electric guitar. There was him and Mancini. He really understood--he could do jazz, he could do the rock of the time and he could do classical. There's a real sound to a guitar player reading music, and he'd always do that thing with the guitar written real low (hums a bit of that famous, twangy Bond riff). There's a lot to Barry that's great--as you said, the fact that he gets right to the essence of things. It's not that much information, but it's the right information. That's why I can take an orchestral piece and arrange it for four melodic instruments and a drummer, and not miss anything.



Porno Bond

M: A friend once told me a shaggy-dog story about how, when they show Star Trek on Italian TV, they edit porno inserts into the love scenes. When Kirk meets the sexy green chick, they have other actors in similar costumes fucking, shot on video with bad porn music. Then they go back to the original show. Was that the idea behind Sex Mob Does Bond?

SB: Originally, when I'd come up with this music, those sections were kind of free improv. To me, free improv sections work one time, live, not necessarily for repeated listenings. So what was I gonna do? These grooves we'd been playing with live, they're called the porno beat. I said, lemme take some of this thematic material, create a bassline around it, put the porno beat on it--we'll do it that way. It wasn't as if I planned that. I just wanted a place for improvisation, within the vernacular of Sex Mob, which is really pornographic. My saxophone player of six years said to me recently, after listening to the record, that all my music was pickled in this brine of THC and porno. I mean, it's a bit of a simplification, but there's some truth to that.



The real Bond, James Bond

M: Let's go back to the Bond character. There's the musical aspect, but there's also the idea of Bond himself, the way that figure resonates with people. Connecting that to Barry, he did the music for The Ipcress File as well, the movie with Michael Caine. The idea of Caine's character Harry Palmer, as Len Deighton created him, was a parody of Bond. The idea was that if a secret agent actually conducted himself like Bond, he'd come off as the biggest asshole, an arrogant, sexist jerk.

SB: Have you read Ian Fleming's Bond novels?

M: No, but I'm told he's more of a thug, a ruffian in a nice suit.

SB: And he has a drinking problem! And a gambling problem! He shows up to work and he's told he's unhealthy, he's staying up all night drinking and smoking, he's not even able to do his job. I read one where the whole thing starts with him being berated for being out of shape. "Look, you're destroying yourself, you can't even run around like secret agents are supposed to." In the movies, of course, they made him a superhero. What if you could stay up all night, drink, smoke, gamble, screw two women and then chase bad guys, and still look good? It's like a comic book. :

At Cabaret on Friday, Nov. 16, 8:30PM, $16.50