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Gregg Bendian's Interzone - Requiem for Jack Kirby

by Gregg Bendian

supported by
Dr. "Buzz" Frenzy (Matthew J Hesse)
Dr. "Buzz" Frenzy (Matthew J Hesse) thumbnail
Dr. "Buzz" Frenzy (Matthew J Hesse) The liner notes here, including the twentieth anniversary remarks from Messrs. Keneally and Partridge, truly say all that needs to be said about this evocative, spectacular, tour de force homage to Jack Kirby. I'll only add that -- if you have the opportunity -- you must see Gregg live: witness a painter of sound as he performs magic before your eyes. In the meantime, BUY THIS! This is one of those rare albums where, eighty minutes later, you're already hankering to take the trip again. Sublime.
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GREGG BENDIAN’S INTERZONE: REQUIEM FOR JACK KIRBY
20th ANNIVERSARY REMASTER
(DOWNLOAD INCLUDES ALL ORIGINAL ALBUM ARTWORK)

Gregg Bendian: vibraphone & glockenspiel
Nels Cline: guitar
Joel Hamilton: acoustic bass
Alex Cline: drums & percussion

All music composed by Gregg Bendian
C.P. 2001 (Iamuziks, ASCAP) Produced by Gregg Bendian
Recorded in August of 2000 by Wayne Peet
www.bendianmusic.com

All artwork by Jack Kirby
Interzone Portraits & Art Direction by Duncan Rouleau
Album concept & layout: Gregg Bendian
Album visual execution by Eric Eng Wong
Project coordination by Matt Stober
Originally released on June 7th, 2001

ORIGINAL 2001 ALBUM NOTES:

To merely call Jack Kirby a comic artist would be like merely calling King Kong a monkey. As an illustrator, Jack was an undeniable genius, a wellspring of of creativity and imagination. With his unerring sense of layout and timing he would have been a superb motion picture director or an award-winning set designer. But he was satisfied to simply gain immortality as the greatest and most influential story-telling artist of his time.

Excelsior!

STAN LEE


****

Jack Kirby! He is so intimately identified with comics that merely mentioning his name elicits a shockwave of imagery immersed in mythic dimensions, synthesized in half a century of creative fire, and consecrated in the crucible of universal media success.

He was the most influential talent ever spawned by the comic book form, a status that will endure through the next millennium because of the hundreds of seminal characters he forged during the four-color evolution and the thousands of pages he generated to bring them dynamically to life. Kirby’s best work inevitably combined vitality, virtuosity, and vision, an idiosyncratic approach that defied the assembly line production process, where the weakest link often defined the product. His comic pages rippled with a locust swarm of ideas that challenged Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Bohm, that combined the superhuman dream with accelerated technology on a quest to discover the secrets of the galaxy, and that was capable of producing exhilaration hotter than tomorrow’s holographic computer games. In many ways, he was light years ahead of his time.

His best storytelling is like the cosmos, almost infinite, with unexpected solar winds, explosive novas, and apocalyptic discoveries capable of restoring a sense of wonder to even the most jaded sensibilities. It is no surprise that Kirby’s work touched, energized, and changed the lives of millions who experienced his magic. Musician Gregg Bendian is one of them, and on this uniquely experimental album, he pays audio-kinetic tribute to a man who saw the future of the future and inspired generations of creative voices. It’s a warp-drive extravaganza across the event horizon and into the starlit paradoxes of the Interzone. Kirby would approve by what you’re about to experience.

STERANKO (author, artist, historian, filmmaker Jim Steranko collaborated with his mentor Jack Kirby during what he terms, The Marvel Age of Comics, and reciprocally, was the real-life inspiration for Kirby’s escape-artist superhero, Mister Miracle)


****


It’s time I got this off my chest. When I was nine or ten years old I committed my one and only act of theft. The elementary school I attended had a box of comics that they would drag out on foul weather days, when the kids had to spend recess and lunch periods indoors. One of those comics so utterly fascinated me that, one rainy day, I stuck it under my shirt and took it home. it was Fighting American #1.

In it, a big handsome TV commentator named Johnny Flagg is gunned down by “commies.” Scientists somehow get hold of Flagg’s body and transform it into an invincible but mindless and immobile super-soldier. Then, Flagg’s scrawny little brother volunteers to transfer his mind into the corpse. His own body, now an empty, soulless shell, dies, but the little guy lives on as the animating force in his dead brother’s body, the hero called Fighting American, or as I thought of him, “Fighting Dead American with Envious Sibling Inside.”

Maybe there’s a more twisted superhero origin somewhere in the annals of comics - but I doubt it. That was my introduction into the art and mind of Jack Kirby. More than twenty years would pass between the day I pilfered that comic and the day I first met Jack, face to face. By then, of course, he had created or co-created a couple of comic book universes and was widely-acknowledged as a true genius and visionary in the field of comic art. He was also one of the kindest, most generous men on the face of the planet, and I’m happy to report, every bit as twisted, at least in the worlds of his imagination, as Fighting American’s origin might lead you to believe. I miss him.

STEVE GERBER (Kirby collaborator and creator of Howard The Duck)


****


Jack Kirby was bold and innovative, and he did the impossible by creating work that was both brilliantly planned and utterly spontaneous. Like a fine jazz musician, he always knew what he was doing but, when he sat down at his instrument - in his case, a shabby ’n’ battered drawing table - he never knew precisely what would come out. He wrote and drew from the gut, infusing his work with emotion, raw and true, and even he couldn’t explain precisely how he did it. (You think you were surprised by some of what he concocted? So, at times, was Jack.)

Anyone who’d attempt to cobble up a requiem in his name would have to manage all that, along with capturing the sheer, soul-grabbing power that was in everything Jack did. Amazingly, against all odds, Gregg Bendian has managed that. As I listened to his work, I let my mind drift in Jack’s direction and yes, it fit, as both underscore and overture. I thought of both Jack the man and Jack the artist, since anyone who knew both would be hard-pressed to separate the two. And it fit…because it was honest and fresh and exciting. Like everything Kirby did.

MARK EVANIER (Kirby assistant and collaborator)


****


The visual realm has always inspired my musical life. As a boy, my imagination was fired by the world of comic book super heroes and villains, alien worlds and futuristic technologies, all involved in conflict on a galactic scale. Those vivid and uniquely personal universes created by artist and visionary Jack Kirby had a huge impact on my own artistic vision, of music. Kirby’s energy blasts and intricate machinery, awesome landscapes, cityscapes and planet-scapes, his larger-than-life figures, faces and cataclysmic events, all instilled in me a sense of wonder at his limitless imagination and the creation of possible worlds.

The man had serious chops. Jack’s influence on a generation of visual artists is far-reaching. He has profoundly affected Federico Fellini, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas (a-hem), Ridley Scott, and Steven Spielberg. Other musician’s who sing his praises include saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, Yes vocalist Jon Anderson, and Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney.

Jack grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s. He started weaving his visual magic back in the late 1930s, at the dawn of the comic book industry. By the late 1960s (during the Marvel Age of Comics) he had co-created what have become comic world mainstays and cultural icons such as The Avengers, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Hulk, Silver Surfer, Thor, and many, many more.

In 1971, late in his career and at a time when no one else had attempted such a thing in comic book form, Kirby struck out on his own to single-handedly write, draw, and edit three interlocking books on an epic scale: New Gods, The Forever People, and Mister Miracle. Here, more than ever, his work reaches far beyond its so-called “pop culture” medium, achieving a complex high art where men struggle for identity and mankind battles evil for its very soul. Check out all of Jack’s work, but note that these three interlocking titles (which constitute “The Fourth World”) now exist in easy to find collected editions. I treasure this, Jack’s magnum opus as purest Kirby - his most profound and personal statement.

I offer this Requiem for Jack Kirby with respect, admiration and gratitude, in memory of the man who made me a true believer, and who inspired me to create music my own way - truly one of the most important artists of the 20th Century - Jack “The King” Kirby!

GREGG BENDIAN, Spring 2001


****


2021 REISSUE NOTES:

What a beautiful album - such a strong concept, presented so cleanly and confidently, with spectacular sonics and performances.

This album shocked the hell out of me! I encountered Gregg in 2001, when my band shared a bill at The Bottom Line with The Mahavishnu Project, and he slyly turned me onto Requiem, knowing, I'm sure, how much it would blow my mind. 

My jaw hit the floor once I realized that this guy, who I knew at that point only as a volcanic drummer shredding on McLaughlin compositions, was represented here so brilliantly as composer and vibraphonist and comic book conceptualist! And, of course, such masterful playing by the Cline lads and Mr. Hamilton. It took my breath away and still does. The album is pure joy from start to finish. And such large portions!

It was only the start of my education, as I began coming to grips with the many fascinating facets of Bendian, a process that continues to this day and beyond.

Happy Anniversary, Gregg and Requiem!

MIKE KENEALLY, September 2021
(composer/multi-instrumentalist, pal and longtime collaborator)


****


When Zappa, and many others, said "writing about music is like tap dancing about architecture," they were of course, right. Reflecting one art form in the media of another is nigh on impossible...until Gregg Bendian and his ferocious cohorts who form Interzone, came along.

They took the work of the greatest comic book artist, the Leonardo of the Lurching Line, Jack Kirby, stretched it, squeezed it, and diced it into another form, music. I don't quite know how they did it, but they did. Pushing his granite-figured, galactic take on Bowery New York through the press of their instruments and extracting musical alcohol. A wine that sounds like Kirby's commando cave drawings, and gets you as intoxicated, but via your ears.

I don't understand quite how this transubstantiation works, but it does. They crash through a very modern jazz instrumental landscape, driven by rock oomph but in fine textures. Kirby Krackle delineated by Bendian's bubbles of vibraphone. Damn it, it sounds like Kirby's art.
It shouldn't.

They have tap danced about architecture, and I understand the language.

ANDY PARTRIDGE, September 2021 
(XTC guitarist/singer/songwriter and Kirby aficionado)

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released September 24, 2021

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Gregg Bendian New Jersey

Gregg Bendian is a composer/percussionist/producer/educator who has performed with many key figures of contemporary music, including Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Todd Rundgren, Derek Bailey, Pat Metheny, Jan Hammer, and John Zorn. Gregg has contributed 150 interviews with major music figures to Yale's OHAM. He hosts The ProgCast www.youtube.com/channel/UCphvawwdTgllJS4W2OCzcQQ/videos ... more

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