THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409230103
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE SMALLWOOD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
EACH ALBUM, Mark Griffin, a k a MC 900 Ft. Jesus, does a little reinvention. Early work found him toying with the rap delivery, tape loops and beatbox rhythms of hip-hop; his latest album, the striking ``One Step Ahead Of The Spider,'' sees him melding spoken word and jazz-ish forms with a band of able players.
``I get bored with things,'' Griffin mused from his home in Dallas, days before embarking on a U.S. tour, which brings him to Hampton's Nsect Club Monday. His first album, 1990's ``Hell With The Lid Off,'' ``was my different takes on different dance music trends that were going on at that time.
``You get to the point where you've been there and done that, and I wanted to move on to something else. I was kind of tired of being a slave to a sequencer in a live show. I wanted to see if I could orient my record more around a live band.''
To give life to the improv-laden, experimentation-laced ``Spider,'' Griffin, who plays trumpet, guitar and keyboards on the album, recruited a full ensemble. ``Spider's'' rich instrumentation includes woodwinds and diverse percussion and exotic touches like tablas and tambouras.
``I found myself with the opportunity to work with some really good players, so I decided to go with that as much as possible,'' Griffin explained. ``That's how come the album has that kind of (jazz) thing going on, particularly the big, seven-piece sort of jam session things.''
Along with Griffin's familiar lyric terrain - deadpan tales of typically off-kilter characters with paranoiac tendencies - the 900 Ft. Jesus (named for evangelist Oral Roberts' vision of a towering Christ) also works in some socio-political commentary with a cover of Curtis Mayfield's ``Stare And Stare.'' The surprisingly fresh-sounding cut features guitar work from Vernon Reid of Living Colour, who was suggested by Griffin's A&R man at American Recordings.
``I knew that I wasn't going to do a Living Colour-type thing,'' Griffin said, ``but I also knew that Vernon was a really great player because he's done a lot of stuff besides that. I figured we'd try to pick out a tune where he could play some melodies.
``Somehow it occurred to me that that Curtis Mayfield tune would be really good, because it's a real striking tune in that it's real atypical for Curtis - he hardly ever does anything that's that morose. I've had this record since high school, and it's always been one of my favorites. We do it pretty much exactly the way it is on the original record.''
``Spider's'' most intriguing cuts are those on which Griffin gets truly bizarre with his techno-tools: the gorgeous sample-filled subterranean meltdown ``Rhubarb'' and the shimmering ``Gracias Pepe,'' featuring a sampled kalimba and odd, electronically altered Spanish vocal.
Griffin works up his offbeat music beds long before his storytelling lyrics are complete. ``I'm a huge procrastinator anyway,'' he confessed, ``but the lyrics are the hardest, so they get put off the longest. It takes a willingness to stay at it long enough to get rid of all the stupid parts. Most of the tunes go through several pages of scratched-out lyrics before they start to get to where they're really effective.''
The printed page would seem another natural outlet for Griffin's psychotic, neurotic tale-spinning, and the musician does admit to some literary aspirations.
``I just don't know if I have the ambition to do it,'' he admitted, laughing. ``I'm so lazy and such a procrastinator that I kind of think that if I started to set aside time for something like that I wouldn't follow up on it. But I'd love to do something like that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
M.C. 900 Ft. Jesus' recent album is ``One Step Ahead of the Spider.
The band will perform Monday at The Nsect Club.''
by CNB