A few months ago, a friend handed me the "a cappella" versions of a few tracks from Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and a whole world opened up to me: the world of David Minnick, who, looking at his photos, seems like the classic nice guy next door and who, with The 180 Gs project, is also a tireless investigator of the voice's ability to transfigure some of the most oblique and ingenious albums in rock history.
Hi David and thank you for being here with us. Before we start, satisfy my curiosity: The 180Gs is a band or is a solo project of yours?
Yes, the 180Gs is just 100 to 300 tracks of my voice. However, I really like the mystique of having a “band” even though it’s not a closely guarded secret…
What is your musical background? How did you approach music?
When I was 5 years old, I set up a room with pots, pans, buckets, pieces of wood and metal and various other objects and I would spend hours walking around the room with pencils playing these objects. A year later, I started experimenting with piano and guitar; just seeing what sounds they made without training. My parents got me a cheap drum set when I was 8 and I played constantly (usually along with rock records). When I was 9, I discovered that I could make multi track recordings with 2 cassette tape decks: recording the drums, playing back the drums and playing acoustic guitar at the same time and recording on a 2nd tape deck, adding piano or organ and vocals the same way. It sounded rather primitive, but I was able to record my own songs this way and spent every free moment doing this. I still have these recordings.
When I was 1was 13 (in 1981) I met Josh Silverstein (whom I still work with..he’s designed the album covers for nearly all of the albums I’ve put out). He took notice of what I was doing and managed to get a hold of a 4 track reel to reel tape deck and some other equipment. We set up in his uncle’s garage and started recording every chance we got, inviting a couple other friends from school to join. Over the next several years we kept recording, the studio moved to Josh’s basement, new equipment was gradually added and the 4-track was replaced with an 8-track. By 1988, we had recorded at least 15 hours of original music. I would usually write the songs and play most of the instruments and he would engineer and mix. I had taken 7 years of drum/percussion lessons and 3 years of piano lessons by the time I finished high school and I decided I wanted to study music. I went to the Indiana University School of Music as a percussion performance major but switched to music composition halfway through. I then went to Wayne State University and earned a Masters degree in music composition.
I was playing guitar and keyboards and writing a lot of songs for the Detroit ska band “Gangster Fun” throughout this time. Josh and a couple other friends of mine were founding members and they asked me to join when they needed a permanent guitarist. Between 1986 and 2000, we released 4 albums and played a LOT of live shows all over the United States.
In the mid 90s In bought a 4-track cassette recorder and started recording music on my own without having to go to someone else’s house or to a studio. I continued experimenting with different musical forms and ideas. In 2001, I finally got a computer and began to learn how to record digitally. Oven Mitt Johnson, The Sursiks, The 180Gs, Zermos and the “Reverse Engineering” remixes were born during this time.
David in Bloomington, Indiana (around 1986)
Browsing through your Bandcamp page, I saw that you have done other tribute albums, again a cappella: "Commercial Album" by The Residents and "Sing To God" by The Cardiacs. I bet these are also two of your favourite albums….
The 180Gs formed when I visited my brother Chris in Austin Texas in 2000. He had an early DAW on his computer but no musical instruments. All he had was a cheap microphone. I came up with the idea of trying to record an a cappella version of a Negativland piece. It was a completely ridiculous idea, given the nature of Negativland’s music, but we tried it anyway. I arranged some parts and sang, and my brother recorded it. It came out better then we thought it would so we sent it to Negativland and over the next couple moths, came up with the idea of recording an album of a cappella versions of Negativland “songs” which Negativland would release on their label.
I kept the group a cappella because I was just learning how to record and edit digitally and wanted to keep the studio setup as simple as possible. All that was plugged in for the duration of recording the album was a $50 V-Tech microphone. I finished the album in 2002 and it was finally released as a bonus CD with Negativland’s “Our Favorite Things” video collection in 2008. I came up with the name “The 180Gs” because it was a reference from a Negativland piece called “A Big 10-8 Place”. My idea for the group was modeled after doo-wop groups of the 1950s. However, THIS group had different musical tastes and saw nothing strange about what they were doing. Negativland came up with the visual image of the 180Gs for the album cover. Noel Storey collected the dolls of the 180Gs and graciously sent them to me in 2023.
The album of Negativland pieces is called “180d’Gs to the Future” a reference to reversing Negativland’s process of turning music and mass media material into their frequently chaotic sounding collages. The Gs took these complex soundscapes and turned them back into music by singing them. “180dGs to the Future” was intended at that time to be the 180Gs’ only album and I concentrated on other projects from 2002-2009.
I had never heard of Cardiacs before 2009. I had been entering remix contests on a site called Indaba Music. I met a guy (Peter Dahl Collins of Slunq) through Indaba who sent me a link to Cardiacs’ video for RES saying “You, of all the people I know, would love this!”. I instantly fell in love with this band and got a copy of Sing to God. I became so obsessed with this music that I decided to resurrect the 180Gs and try to record an a cappella version of the song “Bell Clinks” just to find out how this music worked. It took a lot of time and work to record this cover version so I put it up on Soundcloud and let Cardiacs’ fans know about it. In spite of my feeling that I was stomping on sacred ground by covering Cardiacs in this way, Cardiacs’ fans were extremely supportive. I was still so fascinated by this music that I had to keep going. After I had finished 8 or 9 covers from “Sing to God”, I received an indirect message from Tim Smith himself suggesting that I do the entire double album. I finished recording and mixing in 2013 and waited a few years in the hope that ABC (Cardiacs’ label) would release it. That never worked out so I decided to release it myself on Bandcamp.
Cardiacs’ music struck me instantly and I found myself wishing I had heard of them in the early 80s when I was in high school. Today, however, they are without a doubt one of my very few favorite bands and Sing to God is one of my favorite albums.
I decided to try the Residents’ “Commercial Album” next. I had grown attached to this album in the early 1980s when it was new. I listened to it every day for months, thrilled that someone had made a record like this. Every song is exactly a minute long and every song on the 40 song record is unique. It was so different from what I was used to hearing (instrumentation, harmony, structure) that I really grew to love it.
My primary reason for recording the “Commercial Album” after releasing “Singin’ to God” was precisely that the songs were only a minute long and that the instrumentation for a lot of songs was sparse. Each song from “Sing to God” took several months to record. I was ready for some songs that I could finish in a couple days. The Commercial Album provided that…of course there were 40 songs so the entire album still took 18 months to record.
How did you come up with the idea of 'revisiting' "Trout Mask Replica" which, incidentally, is my favourite rock album of all time?
After recording a cappella cover albums of Negativland, Cardiacs and the Residents, “Trout Mask Replica” seemed to be the next logical step on the “impossibility scale”. Even I thought it might not be possible when I started. In addition,“Trout Mask Replica” is more well known than the other albums the Gs have covered. It’s a cultural icon and an album unlike any other. The true attraction to this project for me, however, is that TMR is the center of much debate around the question: “What is music?”. People either love it or hate it. I knew that a cover version of this album would have the same effect. I also knew before starting work on TMR that the music on it is not random or atonal. I was excited to take it apart and put it back together to discover some of its secrets.
How did you tackle the difficulties inherent in deconstructing and reconstructing a record whose structure is intricate to say the least? I know you have been working on it for about six years!
When I began working on TMRR, I had no idea how it could be done. From the ground up, “Trout Mask Replica” has its own set of musical logic and structural conventions. It is completely different than any other album at the cellular level. For many songs, there are no steady tempos, no clear chord progressions, no baselines which support the other instruments and no rhythmic coherence between the different instruments. I had to adopt an entirely new way of thinking about it. My only option was to simply trace the sounds that are present without worrying about their musical significance. After finishing a few songs, I started to develop some methods for covering this kind of material but every song was still full of brand new challenges.
I think is very interesting when you write: “My only option was to simply trace the sounds that are present without worrying about their musical significance”….
When making a cappella arrangements of Cardiacs or the Residents (for the most part) the music was largely based on specific chords happening at specific times. This means I can change the texture or add layers without losing the “soul” of the song as long as I follow the chord progression. Also in this music, the bass lines also usually outline the harmony (no matter how complicated they get) For example: A 2 measure sustained E chord can be arranged as a single block of notes or arranged as interlocking 8th notes, or inversions of the chord sliding up and down in canon…any number of possibilities. And other layers can be added as long as they are primarily made of notes in an E chord.
"Trout Mask Replica", however, doesn’t play by those rules. Every note in every instrument is unique and one cannot count on anything being in sync or the instruments together forming any cohesive harmony. The only way to cover the album in a way deeply recognizable to fans who know it well is to copy every note, right where it happens to be. Even if the notes don’t make sense in terms of music theory, they are audible. Even things that sound like mistakes are an integral part of the album.
What process did you use to turn each sound tile of "Trout Mask Replica" into its own vocal doppelgänger? I read that you did not use Artificial Intelligence.
I knew two things at the outset:
1.For this album to be successful (in my mind) it could NOT be paraphrased. I had to recreate what was actually there, including intentional and unintentional tempo changes, “wrong notes” extra noises, sections where the instruments or vocals were out of sync with each other and whatever else was audible. In my opinion, these “uncontrolled” elements constitute the soul of the album. If I were to consciously start “fixing” things, I would be going against what I intended to do.
2.I had to do this project without the use of AI (I was already halfway done with the album before AI was widespread enough for me to hear about it) I wanted to cover this album with human ears interpreting it as accurately as possible and human voices singing these parts as accurately as possible.
The method I developed after working on it for about a year is as follows:
1.Beat mapping: I would drop the original song into a LogicProX project and manually beat map it as accurately as possible while adding time signature changes when necessary. This process lines up beats in the project with events in the original music. The projects for a lot of these songs can have over 100 tempo changes for a 2-minute song (with tempos like 121.0469!). After finishing this task, the metronome of my project would match the original song.
2. Record MIDI reference tracks: I would record reference tracks on a MIDI keyboard copying each of the instruments in the song (bass, left guitar, right guitar, drums and wind instruments when applicable). To hear the bass lines well enough to transcribe them, I frequently had to eq the original track so that the low end was booming and the high end was nearly inaudible. Thankfully the guitars on the original album are panned hard left and hard right; this made it possible to detangle the overlapping guitar lines. If the guitars weren’t separated, I doubt I would have gotten very far on this project.
All of the instrumental lines had to be transcribed just a few seconds at a time. I would usually have to do a couple small rhythmic edits for each short segment (for each instrument) before moving on to the next few seconds. It was a very time consuming process, but worth it.
3. Begin recording voices for instrumental tracks: Once the reference tracks were as accurate as I could get them, I’d begin recording voices. While I was recording the bass and guitar tracks, I would only listen to the MIDI reference tracks I had recorded. When recording the primary lead vocal part, I would sing along to the original Captain Beefheart song. Every bass, guitar and vocal melody was overlapped between 4 and 10 times. For example: the 4 note guitar chords on the right at the beginning of Ella Guru are not sung by 4 voices, but 32 voices (8 voices for each note of the chord). I made up the syllables for the instrumental parts as I went; trying a few different things before settling on what sounded the most natural and interesting.
Some tracks (particularly the free-improv sax sections) were too fast for me to sing so I would mute every other note of the reference track and sing what was left. Then I’d switch to the notes that were muted in the first track and sing along with those. Once they were both recorded the melody usually matched the original rather closely.
The lead vocals were recorded along with the original song from TMR so that I could get the timing and the phrasing right. I added harmonies to the lead vocals on some songs and a few other subtle instrumental additions to smooth out transitions or add a bit more depth.
Which tracks on the album were the most difficult to revisit?
They were all challenging in their own way and for different reasons. The tracks I had the most difficulty with, however, were “Hair Pie Bake 1”, “Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish” and “When Big Joan Sets Up”. These were the 3 that took the longest to finish.
Working only with the voice, you will certainly have become interested, perhaps even on a philosophical level, in this instrument that is the most powerful of all. What do you have to say about this?
The initial reason that I started recording a cappella covers was more practical than philosophical. I wanted to keep my recording inputs simple (only a microphone) so that I could focus on learning how to record digitally. I had recorded music on tape from 1977 to 2001 and it was a steep learning curve to jump to digital recording. By only allowing myself to record through a single input, I was able to keep part of the process simple while I slowly learned a brand new skill. It also gave me a chance to expand what I can do with my voice. I am a classically trained composer, percussionist and pianist but I have absolutely no formal training in voice.
There are some interesting philosophical implications of what the Gs have done, but those things weren’t necessarily pre-meditated. While recording the 180Gs’ debut album, I was suddenly struck by the fact that I was reversing Negaitvland’s creative process by taking mass-media and music collages and recreating them using only the human voice. All the technologically-accomplished cutting up of music and speech in Negativland’s work was being put back together into live vocal performances. No point was being made by this, I just found it interesting.
I brought the 180Gs back in 2010 simply because I had heard recently Cardiacs for the first time and was completely spellbound by the music. It was impossible for me to resist the urge to get inside some of it and recreate it. Cardiacs’ “Sing to God” and the Residents’ “Commercial Album were albums which seemed impossible to cover, especially a cappella. I found the idea that the Gs were creating and releasing seemingly impossible albums very appealing. This appeal ultimately led to “Trout Mask Replica”.
Some of those who previewed 'covers' of the album commented that "Trout Mask Replica Replica" could function as a 'translation' of the original album. How do you see this interpretation?
“Trout Mask Replica” is a notoriously difficult album for many people to listen to. It sounds jagged and chaotic when one first hears it and it lacks many elements that many people take for granted in rock-based music. Even many people who love this album can have difficulty listening to the entire thing.
I suppose that the a cappella versions are somewhat softer and less “scattered” sounding than the original. I mixed many of the lines which were difficult to pick out on the original album a little louder. I discovered some structural aspects of the songs which I had never noticed before and highlighted them as best as I could. I added harmonies to many of the lead vocal lines to make them integrate more closely with the instruments behind them. The effect (hopefully) is that more of the brilliant musical ideas and innovations from the original album are easier to hear in the 180Gs’ versions of these songs.
Covering a song (and even more so doing it a cappella!!) is always difficult, especially when dealing with legendary albums as revolutionary as 'Trout Mask Replica'. How, in your opinion, does the cover tool come in handy for the music lover?
I enjoy that a cover version of a song can bring in a new perspective on the meaning of the song. It can make a serious song funny or a funny song serious. It can allow us to hear a song we know with new ears; as if we were hearing it for the first time again. In this case, an a cappella version of “Trout Mask Replica” is such an unlikely idea that it’s a bit of a curiosity.
What was the first song on the album that you redid?
“Frownland”. “Trout Mask Replica” and “Commercial album” were the only 2 albums the 180Gs have recorded where the intent to cover the entire album before starting work. I knew that if I were able to complete “Trout Mask Replica Replica” at all, that it was going to take several years. I planned ahead and recorded that album from the outside in. I started with “Frownland” (track 1), then “Veteran’s Day Poppy” (track 28), then “The Dust Blows Forward” (track 2), then “Old Fart at Play (track 27) until 5 years later when the halves met in the middle with “Pena” (track 15). This was to insure a more consistent sound throughout the album as my methods evolved and my voice changed.
Since you are deeply immersed in Captain Beefheart's masterpiece, can you tell us what, in your opinion, is that 'quid' that makes his music so unique and recognisable?
“Trout Mask Replica” in particular abandons all of the rules of rock music from the start but preserves the rock band instrumentation. It is structured in a similar way as pieces of avant grade composers of the 20th century such as John Cage or Morton Feldman. Different melodic and harmonic fragments are played by each instrument a few times before switching to a new fragment. There seems to be little concern for having the fragments in different instruments sync up with each other. The ‘quid’ that makes Trout Mask Replica so unique is that this avant grade compositional process is played with passion and reckless abandon by a rock band with earth shaking blues-influenced vocals on top. Of course, the lyrics are also quite unique.
I have always been convinced that, at his best, Beefheart can compete with the most important rock lyricists, starting with Bob Dylan... Take, for instance, the lyrics of "Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish", which is a dizzying poetic fresco balanced on Language, to show that Language and Nature are, after all, the same thing. In your opinion, what makes "Trout Mask Replica" lyrics so unique?
My primary interest is music and didn’t feel qualified to comment meaningfully on the lyrics at first. What I find interesting about them is their unpredictable use of language. Like beat poetry or some modern poets in general the lyrics evoke surreal imagery rooted in the time they were written. They sometimes give me dream-like flashbacks to early childhood in the late 60s and early 70s. The (possible) intent of the lyrics remind me of dada art and poetry (which I enjoy very much). Tristan Tzara wrote in his “Dada Manifesto 1918” that “Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrust toward unity,” recognizing “no theory … (or) [laboratories] of formal ideas.”This speaks of the music just as much as it does the lyrics. The lyrics suit this music perfectly.
Lucid tentacles test and sleeved
And joined, and jointed, jade pointed diamond back patterns
Neon meate dream of a octafish
Artifact on rose petals
And flesh petals in pots
Fact and feast, in tubes, tubs, bulbs
In jest, incest, in jest, in just, in feast, incest
And specks, and speckled, speckled
Speckled speculation
Fedlocks waddlin' feast
Archaic faces frenzy
Ceramic fists, artificial deceased
In cysts, rancid buds burst
Dank drum and dung dust
Meate rose and hairs
Meaty meate rose and hairs
Meaty dream wet meate
Limp damp rows
Peeled and felt fields and belts
Impaled on in daemon
Mucus mules
Twat trot, tra-la tra-la, tra-la tra-la tra-la
Whale bone fields 'n' belts
Whale bone farmhouse
Cavorts girdled in letters alight
Cavorts girdled in letters alight
A dipped amidst
Squirmin' serum in semen
In syrup in semen, in serum
Stirrupped in syrup
Neon meate dream of a octafish
For each track on the album, you are also making videos, which feature these little men (by the way, all Afro-Americans, it seems to me) representing the band in which you have dismembered your musical personality. In short, the project is embracing different media. What more can we expect?
The visual image of the 180Gs was invented by Negativland for the album cover of their first album. It was based on my idea of the 180Gs as a legitimate doo-wop, gospel, a cappella group with misguided musical tastes.The plan is to finish videos for all of the songs on “Trout Mask Replica Replica”. Some of them will feature the guys singing and some will simply be a picture of the album cover or other static visual images. It’s just helpful to have the entire album playlist up on YouTube.
Besides The 180Gs, do you have any other musical projects?
I’ve been in a few bands since the 1980s, the most notable of which is the Detroit ska band Gangster Fun. I played guitar for live shows, guitar and keyboards in the studio and was the lead singer from 1995-2000. We released 4 albums and played a LOT of shows across the United States from 1986-2000.
My other studio projects are:The Sursiks, with whom I create music out of non musical material. I play most of the instruments and write the music. I have professional musician friends come in to play strings, woodwinds and brass. Their first album “I Didn’t Know I Was Singing vol 1” is a collection of songs based on the pitches and rhythms of spoken voice mail messages.Their 2nd album “Lydia Grace” uses the random musings of a 3-year-old girl as the vocals around which the music was written. Their 3rd album “Christmas in March” uses various spoken voices from television, movies, self-help recordings, religious recordings and a variety of other sources as the vocals around which the music is written. Their 4th album “Suave Side of the Moon” is a space-age bachelor pad cover of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album.
Oven Mitt Johnson is the legendary (fictional) blues guitarist whose guitar gets so “hot” when he plays that he has to wear an Oven Mitt on his left hand. Oven Mitt Johnson’s album “Hot Guitar” WAS recorded this way.
“Reverse Engineering Volumes One and Two” are 2 albums of remixes I made for remix contests from 2009-2012. The remixes on this collection usually only use the lead vocals of the track being remixed. The music is completely redone and changed. For example, there’s a sea-shanty version of a Snoop Dogg song, a klezmer version of “Shine 4U” by mall-pop sensations Carmen and Camille and a version of Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers” with the music entirely created on found objects (pots and pans, large pieces of broken glass, metal pipes, cardboard tubes…etc).
Zermos was a free-improv trio of alto sax (Gary Robertson), acoustic bass (Ryan Enderle) and piano (me). We recorded 1 album in 3 hours in the dark.
David (top, centre) in the Gangster Fun's days
What do you do in life apart from music?
I am married and have 3 daughters. I enjoy spending time with them.
I’ve been a professional musician since 1999. Most of what I do is music. I am a church music director and a music professor at a local 2-year college. I teach piano lessons and write and record music for production libraries (which provide background music for television and films). Whenever I have an hour or 2 of spare time, I work on independent musical projects like the 180Gs.
Have you already chosen the album to work on in the near future?
The next album will be “Guns” by Cardiacs. 2 songs from the album were finished a few years ago, so we’re planning on getting back to work on it soon. Some other ideas have been Devo's “Duty Now for the Future”, Wall of Voodoo's “Dark Continent” and Mr Bungle's “Disco Volante”.
