The unpublished Ray Shulman article, killed by Bass Player as "yesterday's news." It was on a floppy disk written in Apple OS 2.0! I had to go into my closet to find an ancient external floppy drive, hook it up to my iMac, download the article, open it with Simple Text, copy and paste it to Pages, export it to Word, and then spend half an hour removing all these weird symbols and correcting the formatting.
I did the same thing with the unpublished article on women bassists, but it's too long to post here. I realize now, reading this for the first time since 1997, why I was demoted and shunted off to the side: My writing was too opinionated, in the sense that I wasn't marching in lockstep with the editor who killed this article. I wrote it as an homage to my hero and to introduce him to readers who had never heard of him, and in doing so I committed the mortal sin of not sharing the corporate culture that took over the magazine.
I once read a sci-fi book about a futuristic totalitarian society that had posters everywhere reading "WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT!"
That's me. I've always been a mutant. Here's to you, Ray! My fellow mutant.
Ray Shulman - Gentle Giant
If you love something, let it go. This is one of the hardest things to do in life, especially for fans of groups like Gentle Giant. From 1970 to 1980, this adventurous, fiercely idiosyncratic British band released fifteen albums of experimental music usually called “progressive” for convenience. It’s tough to describe Giant’s sound, an amalgam of intricate, arpeggiated melodies, dissonant instrumentation, complex vocal arrangements, and diabolically difficult rhythms. Though not as well-known as Genesis or Yes, Gentle Giant were usually one step ahead artistically. Their best work is warmer, more organic, and much funkier, abounding with wicked bass-heavy grooves. Quality alone is never enough, however, and the band eventually called it quits because they were sick of fighting record companies over their non-commercial approach.
Since 1980, Ray Shulman has written music for TV commercials, including Nike Air Jordan shoes, and he’s produced successful records for the Sugarcubes, the Sundays, and Ian McCulloch, among others. Currently, he heads his own London production company, Orinoco Sound Source, where he composes soundtracks for CD ROMs. The one thing Ray hasn’t done lately is play the bass. Since his is one of the most original voices ever expressed through the instrument, his style characterized by eccentric patterns, unique phrasing and prodigious technical skill, this is disappointing. “I know, I know, I know,” Shulman laughs ruefully. “People give me sh*t for it. But it wasn’t a conscious decision. Things happen by accident. You’re playing keyboards or programming, learning a whole different bunch of skills, and suddenly you realize the bass has been in the closet for years. After the band finished, my interests went back to composition, which was more attractive to me than that single instrument. Bass was meant to be played in an ensemble, and it’s been years since I’ve been in one.”
The sons of a professional trumpet player, Ray and his brothers Phil and Derek had their first success with Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, a ‘60s R&B/psychedelic band that later mutated into Gentle Giant. Having studied trumpet, guitar, and violin since childhood, Ray had intended to become a classical musician, but “... once rock and roll came into my life, that idea went out the window.” Yes, despite the medieval and avant-garde influences brought in by keyboardist Kerry Minnear, Shulman does consider GG’s music rock. He rejects the title of bass virtuoso, and the slight rawness of his work keeps it from being overly cerebral. “There was never a conscious desire to write perverse bass lines,” he insists. “The violin had developed dexterity and technique, and the bass parts themselves were often just Kerry’s or my own left hand on the keyboard. The bass was never an anchor, it was just another piece of the whole.”
This is a rather low-key description of a style that’s impossible to categorize. A superficial overview would be that Ray relies heavily on complicated, highly melodic ostinatos and classical-sounding arpeggios, as well as near-funk riffs, huge and dirty heavy-rock licks, and mutated takes on the blues scale. A pick-wielder, he likes to experiment with his sound, producing an amazing range of tones from his Fender Precision and applying a wah-wah pedal and distortion on occasion. Finally, there’s the speed and clarity with which he tackles his many double stops and upper-register fills, a skill necessary for doubling the fast, often odd-time keyboard, guitar, or vocal lines. A purely subjective opinion is that his finest work is found on records up to and including 1977’s Playing the Fool [Capitol], the best of these being Acquiring the Taste [Polydor], Three Friends, Octopus, In a Glass House [all on Columbia], The Power and the Glory [Capitol], Free Hand [One Way], and Interview [Capitol]. Most are now available on CD.
So how does Shulman feel about the undying dedication of Gentle Giant’s more hard-core followers? “It’s flattering in only one way: People remember the band. The rest of the time, it sort of inhibits what I do. Once, a fan even called me and asked, ‘What's it feel like to have your best work behind you?’ Well, I like change, and I can’t write music now like I did then, because it’s all about environment. I’m living a different life now. I wouldn’t even want to make music like that again. For me, it would be a lie. It’s easy to be rosy and say, ‘We made this lovely music together and it was great,’ but sometimes it wasn’t. Things were very tense and there was a lot of friction toward the end. The fans can’t see how things really were. We were told to be less experimental, to write songs instead of pieces, but the more the music was compromised, the more it suffered. Everything became very serious and life-threatening, a matter of survival.”
Ray has indeed survived--even flourished--but on his own terms and with a perspective upsetting for some of us to hear. “One of the things about having a fan base is that they put pressure on you to make the kind of music they want, yet they forget that we always ignored such pressure. We never listened to people who said, ‘Why don't you make another record like the one I liked?’ We had to trust ourselves. I’m very flattered by the continuing interest, but it doesn’t determine what I do. It wasn’t sad when we ended; it was right. We did one last tour, and that was it. We didn’t just fizzle out. I really loved all of it, touring and playing live, and I’d never deny it. But I haven’t done either since, and I haven’t missed it a bit. Music changes, and you can’t go backward." TW
