HIMMELMANIC PROGRESSION
Peter Himmelman Brings Faith and Chaos to the Saint

by Joe Harvard

FAITH: A healer in the Philippines reaches into a woman's body and removes a parasite - without cutting her skin. A yogi in India is cut without bleeding, then hung by his skin on hooks without apparent pain. A Sicilian farmer is marked by Stigmata, as though she had actually been hung on the cross. An American man confounds doctors when his "incurable" condition disappears. The common force behind all of these apparent miracles? Faith.

CHAOS: A stray bull wanders into a stream, displacing a few stones in it's path. The miniscule difference in the streambed causes turbulence, and that in turn slightly reroutes the flow of the stream - a difference compounded by distance, until many miles beyond one farmer's crops flourish, another's wilts and dies. The successful farmer builds on his good fortune, eventually ending up a rich man who develops a cocaine habit and dies at 45 of alcohol poisoning. The unfortunate farmer gives up farming, takes a crappy job in the city, and meets the girl of his dreams there. Scientists have studied the process by which seemingly insignificant changes in a system (whether in nature or in the human body) can lead to profound changes. The amazing things they discovered - for instance, that complex systems in nature often have underlying, repetitive patterns, even though on the surface they appear unpredictable or random -- led to the creation of a new field: Chaos theory.

When Minnesota-native Peter Himmelman mounted the stage at the Saint to begin his set on Monday, June 7, he told the crowd that he felt this night was going to be so extraordinary, so magical, that afterward we would all measure our lives in terms of "before the (upcoming) set", and "after it". Sort of like AD and BC, but with a rock show replacing the birth of Jesus as the watershed event. As in: 'my life, AS' and 'my life, BS'. Coincidentally, BS is the term most of us might apply to such a pronouncement, especially one coming from the stage of a rock club. But with Peter Himmelman, you find you are forced to totally recalibrate your bullshit meter - if not discard it completely. Because however much tongue this brilliant songwriter may have inserted in his cheek when he announces to the audience that an evening's musical entertainment can change their entire lives, he lives, and plays, like he believes it.

Peter Himmelman clearly trusts in the magic of music. He is a Believer. And from such true faith radiates power. Like a Shotokan expert cracking a block of ice with his head, the result is determined inside the skull, not outside it, by the conviction that struck properly the ice will break. You might say that the Monday, June 7th set began in the van on the way to the show. Or, more accurately, about three hours before the band faced the audience, for it was clear from the moment that Himmelman's group walked into the Saint for sound check that this was to be no ordinary night. The Flying Baby, an accomplished Israeli outfit that opens for and then backs Himmelman these days, wasted no time in pronouncing the Saint "the coolest club we've been in anyplace in America".

When the club, the soundman and the band establish the sort of immediate rapport that makes even the sound check fun for all concerned, it usually translates into a great show for the audience. A club? It happens sometimes - a band, or a performer, and a room just click. But unless someone is listening for it, it's a click in the forest. Peter Himmelman is obviously listening. Perhaps one reason he chose the Flying Baby as his band - beyond their skill as players, which is considerable - is that they are listeners, too.

Himmelman seems to rock as though hyper-aware of the Chaos maxim that seemingly insignificant changes in a system can lead to profound changes - whether that system is a song, a set, or your life as lived from day to day. And he seems determined to initiate as many of those profound changes as possible by being completely spontaneous. In Chaos terms, the pattern that emerges from his "random" behavior is clear: he is consistently entertaining, ever unpredictable, and always testing the wind for that breeze from a butterfly's wings that will change the weather on whatever stage he happens to be playing on.

THE SET

Peter Himmelman has become well known for his children's records, My Best Friend Is a Salamander, and the self-released follow-up My Fabulous Plum. Himmelman is a writer who encloses his lessons for kids in bizarre situations and unexpected contexts; titles like "A World Where You Only Eat Candy", "Scherm the Worm" and "Bucky the Talking Miniature Horse" should give you some idea. The All-Music Guide calls My Fabulous Plum "ambitiously produced … once again, Himmelman taps into his formidable comic and improvisational abilities, bouncing from track to track with an ebullient, silly energy that is certain to sentence his young listeners to 40 minutes of helpless cackling." The previous quote makes a pretty good capsule description of Himmelman's Saint set as well.

Picture this: a longtime pro with nine albums under his belt announces that the $17 ticket price was so high he will make every effort to provide value for dollar. He then stops the show and demands that his whole band abandon their instruments and get off the stage. Then he invites only non-musicians up (when an actual drummer ends up on the drum kit, Himmelman throws him off again), asks the soundman to play a track from the band's latest CD over the stage monitors, and while said sound guy runs around gathering up the cables and adapters needed to re-route the CD player to the monitors, said bandleader is simultaneously shouting praise and encouragement to the engineer and rapidly dictating instructions to the "actors" and Keith, the band's cameraman. Finally, everything in place, Himmelman juggles roles as lip-synching lead singer, choreographer and director of an instant, spontaneous rock video. Brilliant.

Himmelman's rendition of "Scherm the Worm" was another high point of the evening. "Let's see, how much are we up to, now, about $12.50 a ticket … we have to do better!" Peter plays a droning guitar intro while telling a story of studying with mystics in Tanzania (noone seems to notice that in an intro earlier in the evening he placed this event in Morocco). How he'd fasted, chanted for 20 hours a day and dropped to 117 pounds, and he then described how in this near death state he had composed a handful of songs that reflect his deepest feelings about the meaning of life. He then says that in order to get the show's value up to the $17 ticket price he will now perform, for the first time in public, one of those songs. He has our attention. We await some pearls of mystical wisdom, and … he launches into "Scherm the Worm" from his latest children's record My Fabulous Plum. There was some truth in the build up, though - the song is clearly unrehearsed, as evidenced by a split personality performance that finds Himmelman alternating between singing the lyrics and calling out the chord changes to the band.

During a dramatic interlude, at a point in the narrative when the song's hero has been torn from the earth, placed onto a fishing hook and cast into the waves, Himmelman asks for a glass of water and a straw. He asks Joe Harvard the Saint's soundman, to put heavy "underwater" effects on the mic, and blows into the straw. Satisfied the effect will work, he enlists an audience member, and once onstage engages in a rapid fire three way conversation with the recruit, the band, and Joe, the soundman - remember, the song is still in progress, and recruit, band, and soundman are all shouting responses from five different locations, in addition to helpful audience suggestions. Himmelman is fielding them like he's standing in front of a tennis-ball hurler designed for an octupus.

"Okay, keep blowing … no, too much water. We need more air. Dump some out, NO! Don't dump it there. Where can we put it … don't go to the 'A' just stay on the big 'E' for this part … now, what? No, don't drink it! Can you do it, Joe? Good … just pour some out … let's see, we need … no, don't drink it, empty it … no, don't drink it!… Stay on the big 'E', do the line thing … Is that -- NO! Don't drink it! Okay! Drink it! More! Joe are you getting that? No, drink more, it's hitting the mic … more, you'll ruin that … Joe? Are you getting that? It's still hitting the mic - drink it more, more, chug it, make it go down to one-third, YES! Put tons of reverb on it, Joe, I want it to be - yeah, perfect! Now you, keep blowing, don't stop! Guys, bring it down, really low … more dramatic, that's good, just the hi-hat."

Finally the preparations are complete, and the conductor says "on my signal, Joe, make it huge." Peter backtracks a bit and picks up the story, in case we forgot poor Scherm and his buddy were impaled and awaiting imminent ingestion from a threatening fish. He gives the signal, and on cue, the band drops out, and for a minute or so we are all transported to the briny deep. The club is hushed except for the gurgling blub-blub of the water, and Himmelman sounds like he's coming to us from 20,000 leagues under the sea as he recites the miraculous rescue of Scherm and his worm companion. Then, as though they'd rehearsed it a hundred times, Peter gestures to the sound board, Joe cuts the bubbles and removes the aquatic effect from the vocal, and we're all back on the surface as the band kicks back in for the song's final refrains.

The crowd is going nuts. "Whoa. I think we may have overshot the $17 mark, we're up around $22.50, maybe even $25 now. We're going to have to scale it back." The audience shouts their approval, and their agreement, and the band is standing a bit taller, you can tell they're proud of the job they've done. Keith, the cameraman, comes back to the board, and I ask how the shooting is going.
"I have over a hundred hours already, and we've still got loads of dates left"
"Wow, that's a lot of footage. I don't envy you when you get into the editing room."
"The thing is , every night something happens. Always different. So you have to keep shooting."

This news comes as no surprise.

HISTORIC HIMMELMAN

Peter Himmelman's almost evangelical embrace of rock music may have roots in his experience with post-punk Midwest icons Sussman Lawrence -- the five-man pop-rock outfit that Himmelman led in the early '80s. "Those seven years … were so full of life-so much joy, rage, and endless creative possibility. They loom so large now-more so than the chronological seven years. It's an experience a lot of people never had. We were 17, with no adult supervision-very young people working together in a very intimate and volatile relationship, expressing our creativity." Both '80's Hail to the Modern Hero and '84's Pop Cities (both re-released) are still held in high critical regard. Credited with paving the way for bands such as Husker Du and the Replacements, Sussman Lawrence were not as fortunate in terms of recognition and commercial success as those outfits, but it's members have all subsequently enjoyed successful careers in music.

On his '86 debut album, This Father's Day Himmelman used his Sussman Lawrence colleagues as his band. The results were impressive enough to garner the attention of Island Records, who subsequently signed Himmelman. He followed up with Gematria ('87) and Synesthesia ('89), moving to Epic for '91's Strength to Strength '92's Flown This Acid World and '94's Skin. Stage Diving appeared on the Plump label in '96, and in '98 Himmelman signed with Island sub Six Degrees and put out Love Thinketh No Evil, sticking with them for '04's Unstoppable Forces.

For 05's Imperfect World the impressive guest roster includes Sheldon Gomberg, whose bass playing can be heard with Rickie Lee Jones, Beck, and Ryan Adams; Jeff Young, B3 organ ace for Jackson Browne, Donald Fagan, and Sting; and Attractions drummer Pete Thomas. Given the prominence of acoustic guitar for a hefty chunk of Himmelman's post-Sussman career, the biggest surprise for some fans was the caliber of his electric guitar performance on Imperfect World. But given Himmelman's early influences - Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley - his chunky rhythm and burn-down-the-house soloing prowess makes perfect sense. For those of us at the Saint unfamiliar with his mid-80's folk-rock incarnation, all we saw was a natural on the electric, a great live guitarist. And an amazing entertainer.

One of the coolest things about Peter Himmelman's Saint show on June 7, I think, and one that tells you a lot about the man, is that when he told the crowd that he felt this night was going to be so amazing we would all measure our lives in terms of "before and after it", he said "we". And meant it. Not "I am here to change your life", but "we are here and it will change us". That's Faith in the power of music, and that's also about as Chaotic as you can get.