Album Notes

In 1983, the new music combo Headless Household was formed in Santa Barbara, as a vehicle through by which four curious musicians might explore common grounds and uncommon sounds. Late in 1996, along comes their third feature-length album, entitled ITEMS, a further statement-of-purpose in an eclectic style which might now be dubbed itemism. That is: the band touches down in various genres without ever settling down roots. They pluck items from the known musical universe and reassemble them into new, mutant forms. By now, the recipe’s ingredients are somewhat constant, if always changing: jazz, improv, c & w, polka, kitsch, atonal asides, semi-sweet pop strategies can be detected.
The debut LP (still available on collectible vinyl) came out in 1987. 1994’s Inside/Outside USA was ostensibly a concept album on the theme of shuffled-up Americana. ITEMS makes no pretense of cohesion or linear logic. It is simply this: 14 tracks and 70-ish minutes of music and sound; sundry tracks nabbed out of the air, various studio recordings, and sonic forms nurtured inside Dick Dunlap’s sampler. With luck, the center holds.
The core group was and is: keyboardist Dick Dunlap, drummer Tom Lackner, bassist Chris Symer, and guitarist Joe Woodard. Special guests this time around are: violinist Gilles Apap (“Three A.M. Western (All the Whiskey in China”), New York saxist David Binney (on “Expectators” and “For What Ails You”), saxist Tom Buckner (“(Open Letter to) Manfred Eicher”), singer Jennifer Terran (“News Flash (Toronto Blues Society)”), Jeff Kaiser (“Ernesta,” “Hypothyroid Dough Boy”), trumpeter Nate Birkey (“Hefty Darlin’”—apologies to Neal Hefti) and Ellen Turner (“Pig in a Polka”).
Let this be the first chapter in what will hopefully be the ongoing manifesto of Itemism.