Old Time Relijun- Testimonials



Three versions by Bryce Panic (first drummer for Old Time Relijun, 1995-1997, Bryce's work is featured on the ultra-rare Songbook Vol. I and the collection of rareties, "Varieties of Religious Experience".

..1

I first met "Arrington" de Dionyso in a saloon deep in central Mongolia, where I was working playing classic rock covers for tips and an unlimited supply of the local fire water. He was doing some "research" or something, and around there we all knew what that meant- you were either running from some trouble back home, a common enough tale out in the wide open plains, or incredulously, you were actually doing research. He had just finished a few months studying with a throatsinging master, secretly recording the old guy the whole time. The band I was working with, we were getting pretty fucking bored of faithfully reproducing Hotel California every night to a singalong crowd of drunk nomadic smugglers, and so we had started to insert some fusion into the mix. Well, one night we had just finished a set with a 37 minute version of "Going for the One" by Yes, and I was sitting down to a horse bladder full of brew, and this guy Arrington starts talking to me. After all that throat singing, I guess his voice was shot, and he could either whisper or yell, nothing in between. So, he yelled a 30 minute interpretation of our version of the song, citing everything from the digital lithographic revelations discovered through the fractalization of the Aleister Crowley tarot deck to Kabbalic phonetic practices designed to seduce forth the Atman hidden within Lutheran Sunday school calisthenic movements as they were taught by a mysterious moustachioed Armenian missionary in Uganda at the turn of the century. I wish I could have understood him, but at the time I didn't speak a word of English, having grown up in the Mekong delta. But I could tell this guy had ideas, which around there typically meant you were either crazy or had a bounty on your head or both. Anyway, I guess he liked my drumming, and I agreed on the spot to move with him to Olympia, marrying his sister so I could stay in the country. The tensions started right away. We started playing with this bassist, Aaron Hartman, who had left (to wither and die without him) an ass-ripping rockabilly band in Babylon, Mississippi to move to L.A. and play with all the Avant Garders, East and West Coast, in the sixties. How to contain a group of opinionated mystics and shamans? After our third practice space burned to the ground around us, we took to rehearsing outside. It ultimately proved to be too much energy to wrangle with, but before that raw energy tore us apart we united in the sacred mission of making people dance.

..2

When I first met Arrington he was driving around the country in a VW bus following Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. I declined his offer for a sloppy joe tempeh sandwich on rice flour bread with mung bean sprouts, which he was selling to fund his tour as a Fleckhead. I gave him an incomprehensible cassette which I had found on the side of the highway, I think it was sun damaged, and made my way to my car. When I looked back he had his walkman on, and I literally watched his brain melt in the rest stop. He collapsed onto the grass, drooling from a wide smile on his face, rocking back and forth and humming to himself, eyes rolled back into his head. Not wanting to get into trouble with the authorities, I quickly drove off. I think the tape was called "The Shuggs" or something like that. A couple years later that motherfucker wouldn't pay me so I threw my whole drumset at him.

..3

Arrington had and has his solo work, very accomplished presence and bass clarinet/guitar/howling and mythic imagery which is well chronicled. I in my way come from a tradition of melodic drumming, serving the song, having co-created the mythical band Mu and humbly attempting to pay homage to the musical relationships between Richmond and Mingus, Hurley and Watt, Shelley and Youth. But, if Old Time Relijun ever had a coalescent power that transcended the sum of its parts, that power was driven by the tenacious, intelligent and infinitely suave upright bass playing of Aaron Hartman. If we were capable of small moments of the ferocious groove which we so desperately tried to unearth, it was only due to the fundamental structure that he created. He was the sex in the sound. A glance from him would let me know that we were about to take the raw frenzied ejaculations of Arrington's noise-making and, like a powerful stallion carrying a lunatic warrior into battle, scoop underneath them to transform them into potency, into efficacy- into Music. The people danced because of that ass-grinding bass. Ouch.

Bryce Panic
Buenos Aires, Rio de la Plata
January, 2003