Fresh Goods From Perishable
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What happened is that Loftus’s album (also called Loftus) turned a profit. In the meantime members had begun experimenting with other collaborations. Rex drummer Doug Scharin had moved to Chicago in October 1997, which made things that much easier. Red Red Meat guitarist Tim Rutili and percussionist Ben Massarella, who’ve played together since the pre-RRM combo Friends of Betty, decided to put the Loftus money–and then some–back into Perishable so that these various projects would have a home. So far they’ve financed albums by Scharin’s ethnic-flavored dub outfit Out in Worship; Drumhead, a mostly percussion project that features sometime Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone as well as Scharin and Massarella; and Rex bassist Phil Spirito’s “solo” project, Orso.
“It’s really great to have all these projects under one roof,” says Scharin, who also plays in the rock band June of 44 (which records for Touch and Go subsidiary Quarterstick) and heads his own “solo” project, Him (with records on three different labels). “It’s like how all the old Funkadelic side projects were on the same label or how old jazz labels would use the same musicians on a bunch of different records,” he says.
In September, Brian Deck began operating a new recording studio called Clava, largely financed by Ben Massarella. Clava has both analog and digital capability and uses the popular Pro Tools software, but its biggest selling point is that it’s mobile: though half the work Deck has done at Clava thus far–including forthcoming records by Chris Mills, Frontier, and Ilium–has been done at a space in Pilsen, every piece of equipment is built into its own wheeled case and the whole shebang can be set up almost anywhere in half a day. For more information and rates call 312-492-8750.
