SUMMER RE-UP: Coast to Coast

Originally posted 24 March 2007

HIT SINGLE
GHOST PLANET NATIONAL ANTHEM
FEAR OF A GHOST PLANET
Sonny Sharrock
Space Ghost
Cartoon Network : 1996

SS, guitar; Lance Carter, drums; Alfrieda Garcia, vocals (“Hit Single” only); Eddie Horst, everything else.

“Was that too melodic?”
- Sonny Sharrock

Final recordings usually carry a whiff of the morbid. If the musician is old or in failing health, there’s the idea that you can hear him facing down his own mortality in the music. And if the demise was completely unexpected, there’s a temptation to read premonition and pathos into those last waxed grooves.

The last pieces Sonny Sharrock recorded, six months before his untimely, fatal heart attack in May 1994, may have been for a show about a ghost, but the music is full of life. In a seriously strange meeting of the minds, he was supplying the theme song and cues for Space Ghost Coast to Coast, the Cartoon Network’s bizarro and deadpan satirical show featuring the Hanna-Barbera superhero as a late night talk show host. So much for pathos.

These tunelets are pure rip-snorting, ear-shredding fun. Sharrock was in a serious upswing at the time. His excellent Ask the Ages album was reaping critical hosannas, he played a high profile concert in Central Park, and was on the verge of signing with a major label. The music reflects a buoyant frame of mind.

You might think Sharrock doing cartoon music means he’s offering some watered down and slicked-up version of his usual sonic assault. And you’d be wrong. (Or perhaps you knew better.) The Space Ghost EP is actually more untethered, abrasive, free-wheeling, and unrelenting than some of his previous LPs on Enemy – we’re mostly looking at you, Highlife - which were marred by excessively soupy keyboards and too few caustic solos. But this is heavy metal cartoon music, y’all.

Sadly, this music never officially hit the shelves. The Cartoon Network mainly gave the EP away as a radio promo and it quickly became a collector’s item. If they didn’t have the good sense to market copies to stores, at least they showed the good taste to get Sharrock involved in the first place. Here are some details about how the unlikely collaboration came to be:

Sonny Sharrock agreed to provide the theme music for Space Ghost Coast to Coast after listening to producer Keith Crofford’s description of the show. According to Crofford, Sharrock thought the show sounded “cute.” On Friday, Nov. 19, 1993, Sharrock and Lance Carter, his drummer of choice, met at Quantum Sound Studio, a recording studio in Jersey City, N.J., to improvise over a guide track created by Atlanta musician Eddie Horst. Horst fondly recalls Sharrock looking up after a particularly blistering take and asking, “Was that too melodic?”

Unlike many electric players who had radical ideas in the 60s and then abandoned them, Sharrock took his and kept refining and pushing them throughout his life until he was doing some of his best and most extremely brutal and beautiful playing in his last years. What remains unclear is why Sharrock was never fully welcomed into the jazz pantheon–and who carries on his legacy in the here and now? Perhaps his influence is felt more strongly outside of jazz, with noise merchants such as Sonic Youth and those of similar ilk. Regardless, this is jazz, and it is alive.

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There is a very good Sharrock site here, which includes a full assortment of interviews, articles, obits, and a discography. It’s all solid, but check in particular this transcript of a detailed radio interview with WPKN’s Ed Flynn, from June 1993. See also the “unreleased” section of the discography. Colbeck and Sharrock in ’66?

And if the tracks above aren’t enough, more music from the show can be found at this Cartoon Network show site.