From the PUPPETRY JOURNAL 2007
MYSTERY AT SQUIRREL RANCH Puppet Rampage 2007 Reveiwed by Diane Koszarski In a festival full of "rich and strange" puppet shows, Miss Pussycat's Mystery At Squirrel Ranch was, for me, one of the most gratifying. An artist from New Orleans' beleagered Ninth Ward, Panacea Theriac is one of a handful of performers integrating puppetry with the club scene. She has partnered with Dionysian one-man-band performer Quintron for over a decade now, opening or closing his alternate rock "swamp tech" music sets with her puppet fables. They are shows beautifully crafted for success in the intimate venues of an indie-rock dance club: tactile, idiosyncratic puppet characters, pithy dialogue, an electronically pixilated soundtrack and charming black light effects create a visual and engaging overture/finale to their music sets. Quintron aids in puppet manipulation and voicing. Miss Pussycat, in turn, sings back-up with a steady maraca beat during Quintron's performances. Launched with a line or two of dialogue, her quirky melodramas invite the audience to join in. Right off Mystery at Squirrel Ranch establishes trouble with rustlers at Picky Squirrel's horse ranch. When the skeletal, evil Wolf Skeleton first appears, coaxing and luring a little "Japanese miniature magic horse" off the property, we are terrified for the hapless critter, and boo aloud this villain. At the plot climax, Picky and Wolf Skeleton challenge each other to a guitar duel to settle the score; we cheer when, in striving to out-strum Picky, Wolf Skeleton's head explodes! ((The puppet's boxy skull actually pops off a neck-rod; no gore necessary to make the point). And we cheer even more when Picky, in a right-angle plot turn, calls Wolf Skeleton back to the party, welcoming him with his new green head Ð provided he stops rustling! Miss Pussycat and Quintron have also created three "fully cinematic" versions of her puppet oeuvre. (An episode from their latest epic, Trixie and the Treetrunks, was also screened at the festival, in Heather Henson's almanac, Handmade Puppet Dreams, v. III). These movies are clearly labors of love, with detailed sets, multiple camera positions, professional editing and a puppet cast of dozens. Charming, and true to Miss Pussycat's vision, but second, in my opinion, to the jolt of energy, the sheer surprise and joy one experiences at her live dance club show. Her puppets have a singular look, a cross between Steiff plush toys and South Park simplicity, a fantastic melding of vent-mouth rod puppets (the rather lumpen version so popular with youth ministry puppetry) to the outrageous Technicolor aesthetic of a Mardi Gras krew. Miss Pussycat (who in fact adopted her nom de theatre from Pussycat Caverns, the underground music club she hosted in the mid-90s) commends her experiences as a youth group puppeteer in Antlers, Oklahoma for solid training in puppetry skills, and readily cites Nancy Renfrow and Art Clokey as design inspirations. She applies her own funky retro seamstress sensibility to an ever-growing entourage of puppet troupers, some thirty strong at this point. This sense of style applies to her own wardrobe; Miss Pussycat dresses on and off stage in homemade costumes that echo a fifth-grader's school dress, topped with a signature pop-pom hair band atop her blonde pageboy. It's clear that Miss Pussycat and her puppets are kissin' cousins, which is all to the good. She uses her puppet tales, however laid-back and whimsical, to process a great deal of the world's evil, and while her animal characters satirize the alternate rock club scene where she and Quintron tour, they carry a deeper message. Spunky heroines like Picky Squirrel (and Miss Pussycat) always defy Death, and will triumph through art, one as a musician, the other as a puppeteer.
FOLLOWING QUOTE FROM OFFICIAL NEWS ARTICLE - MIAMI HERALD, 2004:
"Mr. QUINTRON is a very eccentric concert and nightclub organist from New Orleans, Louisianna. He
plays music on a custom made Hammond / Rhodes combo synthesizer / organ (which he's got all built up to look like a car with real working headlights) backed by raw simple drum machine beats (think 808 boom chika boom through one BIG speaker with all the treble turned down) and his own patented invention THE DRUM BUDDY - a rotating,
light-activated analog synthesizer which is played much in the same way that
a DJ spins and scratches records. Of course lets not forget about
MISS PUSSYCAT who plays maracas and sings backup as well as entertaining all
age groups with her highly amusing technicolor puppet shows. The
Quintron / Miss Pussycat experience is one of barely controlled electronic chaos, "Swamp-Tech" beats,
small explosions, incredible clothes, and entertaining puppet stories. You
can see them perform regularly at the Spellcaster Lodge in New Orleans, Louisiana
or on one of their many tours around the world. This act somehow has
equal relevance in sleazy nightclubs, pizza restaurants, and university lecture
halls."
Miami New Times Article Dec 7, 2006
These past few years, the term garage rock has been bandied about in the mainstream press and on music channels in a way that could make one think there's some sort of revival going on. You know the names and the videos, but if you think a couple of Stooges and (Mick Taylor-era) Rolling Stones clones make for a real garage-rock experience, you're in for a surprise Thursday Ñ because Mr. Quintron is one of the artists who actually gets it right.
Quintron and Miss Pussycat perform with Mr. Entertainment and his Pookiesmackers, the Fabulous Shuttle Lounge featuring Ravelstein and the Rocketts, and Terry Schiavo and the Hyper- Crystal Suicide Cult at 8:00 p.m. Thursday, December 7, at Churchill's, 5501 NE 2nd Ave, Miami. Admission is $10. Call 305-757-1807 or click www.churchillspub.com for more information.
At first glance, Quintron's high-energy, organ-heavy music might be mistaken for the psychotronic ravings of a calliope operator at a defunct circus, or something you would expect to hear pouring out of the Munsters home on Saturday night. No doubt he's an eccentric artist Ñ the guy plays an organ built into the front end of a car Ñ but all the electronic gadgetry he has handcrafted into his almost one-man band demonstrates there's a real vision at work behind the madness.
The New Orleans resident and Miss Pussycat, his partner in crimes of art and love, have been the toasts of indie-rock circles for more than a decade Ñ he for cranking out his music and she for often bringing along her delightful puppet theater (which sadly will not be appearing this time). Witnessing them is like tromping through the psyche of your inner child Ñ after huffing a heavy dose of voodoo-laced swamp gas. Together they cast a colorful shade of spooky-natural across the entertainment landscape.
Much of Quintron's music is driving, hypnotic Sixties dance music ˆ la the Seeds or Standells, complete with visions of go-go dancers from the Cramps-ed-out corners of the mind. However, don't mistake Quintron for being totally squaresville retro. He has benefited from 40 extra years of music history to develop his own richer style and borrowed from a number of other genres to become ... well ... Quintron. But he has faithfully retained that Sixties garage essence, a precarious balance between wholesomeness and worldliness that fell apart after the Summer of Love. Most important, though: He's loads of fun. Ñ Margaret Griffis
from POP MATTERS by Liam Cole - 2006
Swamp Tech is a joyous affair of grime dance minimalism. Along with Miss Pussycat, Quintron churns out kick-ass grooves that are something like the crunk of the underground rock 'n' soul scene. Natives of the Big Easy at the time of the album's recording, they really succeed at transposing the raw, enchanting feeling of the southeastern United States. It's alternately gaudy and sinister, and entirely infectious. Quintron, the baddest one-man band in America, is sure to move your ass and make you laugh.From Splendid Magazine by Jason Jackowiak - 2006
Imagine Rick James pulling Dr. John off a riverboat, shoving a host of pills and brown liquor down his gullet and forcing him to play hoodoo-voodoo disco-clash until the sun rises over the bayou.THE HISTORY OF ROCK MUSIC by Piero Scaruffi
Quintron (also known as Mr Quintron) is an eccentric character who plays all instruments at the same time, a veritable one-man band, and does so with a delirious, savage intensity. He also builds oddly tuneful instruments that complement his exuberant lo-fi (outrageously lo-fi) symphonies. His music is wildly improvised and can incorportate just about any theatrical element and stylistic nuance, but, ultimately, Quintron is aiming for dance/party music, albeit in a uniquely bizarre way. Quintron, based in New Orleans, is a hybrid between Frank Zappa's protege` Wildman Fischer, no-wave masters Mars, minimal toy-rockers Half Japanese, and synthesizer's inventor Robert Moog.THE LONDON INDEPENDENT (article about New Orleans and Hurricane recovery) - August 2006
If anyone epitomises the bohemian spirit of New Orleans, it's Quintron, who has also performed at Southern Comfort Fat Tuesday events. He bears scant comparison with any other artist, or even genre. A Hammond organ-playing one-man band who invents his own instruments (and whose performances are accompanied by his partner Miss Pussycat's puppet shows), he's like some freakish combination of Jimmy Smith, Raymond Scott, Moondog, Dr John and Harry Partch. And also, for the moment, Tommy Walsh, as he struggles to renovate The Spellcaster Lodge, his basement club just south of the Claiborne Bridge in the Ninth Ward.
"The room was gutted by the storm, and I've been working on renovating it for 10 months,' he explains. "We got some Fema money, but we don't have any insurance, so the majority of the money to fix the Spellcaster Lodge has come from musicians and friends from around the world."
Though he's an expert electrician, Quintron had to pick up hints on plumbing and carpentry from friends, family and the old guy who runs the hardware store up the road.
"This is a city of poor property-owners, because we have homestead exemption here," says Quintron. "If you own just one piece of property worth less than $70,000, you are exempt from property taxes. That's why the Lower Ninth Ward is not getting rebuilt, because a lot of those properties were purchased and passed down through poor families, so there were a huge number of poor homeowners who don't have insurance and can't afford to rebuild."
Quintron plays what he calls "swamp-tech" music, which he describes as "a combination of ghetto-tech and swamp-pop".
"My main instrument is a Hammond organ, I do basslines with a Fender Rhodes, and I've got drum-machines that I've built," he explains. "I play a hi-hat with one foot, and with the other I control a volume pedal and a wah-wah pedal that I'm constantly tuning my Rhodes with, and I sing at the same time, so it's a very chaotic thing."
Quintron's experimental enthusiasm and sheer determination in the face of incredible odds is enormously heartening, and as long as the likes of him remain active in the city's scene, New Orleans' musical future is assured. While I'm at the Spellcaster Lodge, Quintron's friend DJ Pasta drops by for a chat. A tall, gangly chap, Pasta has been deejaying since he was nine years old, moving from California's Silicon Valley to New Orleans five years ago because he knew he could live and work here on a shoestring budget.
"The night Katrina hit," he recalls, "I was supposed to be doing a big Mod Dance Party at the Circle Bar [the city's main bohemian hangout], then when we heard of the impending hurricane, we considered changing it to a Hurricane Party. I was on my way to the Circle Bar and the local radio station I was listening to went off the air. I thought, maybe this is not a good idea!"
After a few months in Memphis, Pasta returned to New Orleans to find his second-floor apartment untouched by the floods, although water damage to the block's foundations meant he had to relocate anyway, which was harder than it might seem.
"Apartment rents have increased since the storm," he reports. "Before, they were about $450 to $600 a month for a really nice pad; now, we're talking anywhere between $950 to $2000. So that's dissuading people from coming back, too."
Pasta has doubts about whether the city will retain its unique character in the face of the inevitable changes: "It's especially tough for independent businesses - what I'm noticing now is a lot of big chains moving in, which will hurt the local shops."
This, perhaps, may pose the greatest threat to New Orleans' distinctive identity. While most other American cities have succumbed to the creeping corporatism of the generic retail sector, New Orleans has managed to hold on better than most to its own peculiar local character.
Quintron, though, remains committed to the local principle. "I think it's really good when things are intensely local, when towns are more into themselves than they are into the rest of the world of pop culture," he says. "That's the problem I have with New York and LA: there's some good stuff comes out of there, but the main influence on bands from that culture is in getting famous. Whereas in towns like this, it's more of a backwater, so things are allowed to fester and develop creatively in a unique way. It's how village culture must have been a hundred years ago."
And ironically, if New Orleans music is to regain its former prominence on the national and international stage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it's imperative that it retains that village outlook, and remains outside of mainstream trends. After all, it didn't get to be the most important music city in the world by being the same as everywhere else. Dr. Rusty T. Oblivious III, Twin Falls Accredited Community College, Twin Falls, ID for MISS OBLIVIOUS ZINE - SEATTLE, WA
Abstract:
Mr. Quintron has derived a complex method to create Ògreat fuckinÕ musicÓ (GFM) through the use of paleo-devices that include an overdriven piano, a organ, the Drum Buddy, and a Òhigh-hatÓ cymbal system. A hundred-plus sensitive receptors were exposed to Mr. Quintron operating these paleo-devices over the period of one hour on July 12, 2006 at the Sunset Tavern, Seattle, Washington. The sensitive receptors and this author experience a strong positive reaction to the exposure, which was exponentially increased with the addition of alcoholic liquors.
Mr. Quintron (Fig. 1), a New Orleans based technologist, has developed several significant advances in the field of paleo-instrumentation, i.e. the application of former technologies: the lower audio spectrum accommodated by a Rhodes piano overdriven through a rotating Lesley speaker, overlain by a standard organ. These palo-instruments are augmented by the Drum Buddy (Fig. 2), a photo-sensitive percussion device developed by Mr. Quintron in his clandestine Louisiana laboratory, and a standard Òhigh-hatÓ cymbal system.
When applied together under the administration of Mr. Quintron the above listed instruments can be combined to form what is commonly called Ògood fuckinÕ musicÓ. Equation 1.1 is a simple mathematical model that best represents the Quintron formalation, and has been label by other workers as QuintronÕs Law:
Ro + O[c][k] = great fuckinÕ
music (GFM)
Equation 1.1: QuintronÕs Law
Where R is piano(raised to the power of overdrive [o]), O is Organ multiplied by the rate of oscillation (k) of the output of the Lesley speaker. When computed the units cancel out to form the new unit of Great FuckinÕ Music (GFM).
QuintronÕs Law is best observed on the compact disc of vinyl recording, Swamp Tech. Workers are advised to sample cut 061 Swamp Buggy Baddass and cut 067 French Quarter Faggot.
Although QunitronÕs law has been well analyzed in previous studies, this study observed the effects of QuintronÕs Law on sensitive receptors. The study area of the Sunset Tavern in Seattle, Washington was chosen as the best location to make observations. Observations were made of the course of approximately one hour on July 12, 2006. Prior to observations, Miss Pussycat (MP) a colleague of Mr. Quintron prepared the sensitive receptors through entertainment by means of a moralist tale, conveyed by automated puppets (Fig 3).
At the fruition of MPÕs automated entertainment, exposure to QuintronÕs law commenced. The experiment was set according to Fig. 4:
Figure 4: Study area.
It is important to note the ÒMercedes-BenzÓ-style frontage that was placed on the piano/organ paleo-device. Sensitive receptors showed a marked positive reception to this aesthetic.
As the Sunset Tavern was able to hold well over a hundred sensitive receptors and capacity was filled to the limit, the experiment was well received. At a measure output of 500 GFMs the 100-plus sensitive receptors showed 99.9 percent positivism to exposure to QuintronÕs Law. Of particular interest to our workers was the impact of alcoholic liquors to the
Receptors as explained in equation 1.2:
QL[A(proof)] = X (GFM)
Pu(Ke)
Equation 1.2: QuintronÕs Law influenced by alcoholic liquors
Where QL is raised to the rate of alcohol consumption multiplied by the percent-proof of the liquor type. Pu (ke) is the Òhang-overÓ constant and must be applied for receptors that engaged in 40 > [A(proof)].
In conclusion, these workers feel that any receptor (human, animal, or other) will generate a substantial positive sensitivity to copious amounts of exposure to Mr. Quintron and his paleo-devices. I would recommend this experiment on anyone, and in the meantime pick up a copy of Swamp Tech (Fig 5).