The Wiz: Fu Manchu
A special project for a scorching week, part one:
What connects yesterday's question about discovering a band late, a 30th birthday, the rising heat and an old fictional villain with a famous mustache?
"Fu Manchu"!
An extraordinary live band that has been scorching stages and amplifiers for over 30 years, one of the longest-serving and, to my ears, finest standard-bearers for desert and stoner rock. As a dear friend recently put it: the spirit of youthful California!
They are one of my late discoveries, made only a few years ago. They did not come from the genre's Southern California capital, Palm Desert in Riverside County, but from neighboring Orange County, with Pacific waves breaking along its western edge.
That combination of desert and ocean comes through in a free, energetic, uplifting spirit, rather than a heavier, sludgier stoner sound. The lighter lyrics cover cars, parties, drugs, girls and science fiction. Their album artwork captures this atmosphere beautifully.
Three-quarters of the lineup have played together for around 24 years! Singer and guitarist Scott Hill goes back to the band's first incarnation, the hardcore-punk outfit "Virulence", formed in 1985, where he originally played guitar without singing.
Brant Bjork, a cornerstone of the scene and a founding drummer of "Kyuss", produced their 1994 debut, "No One Rides for Free", and later spent several years behind their drums.
The band takes its name from an early-20th-century literary villain who later appeared in comics and films and inspired other antagonists. This fictional doctor with an Asian appearance and distinctive facial hair gave his name to the Fu Manchu mustache, pictured here.
Like any band that survives this long, especially in the streaming and downloading era, they have a devoted audience filling venues in America and Europe. Unfortunately for both fans and band, their 30th-anniversary tour was recently postponed.
One of their songs, "Mongoose", appeared in a Toyota commercial during the 2008 Super Bowl, bringing them wider exposure.
This song, like many in their catalog, uses a percussion instrument that has become a cult object: the cowbell!
In keeping with their spirit and pace, most tracks are two-to-five-minute bursts of distorted energy. One remarkable exception closes their latest studio album, "Clone of the Universe" (2018): an approximately 18-minute epic featuring none other than "Rush" guitarist Alex Lifeson. Honestly, a real treat. I played it twice yesterday.
That Lifeson epic, the songs mentioned above, more samples from their catalog of 12 studio albums and live recordings, and a taste of a recent 30th-anniversary EP all appear in my playlists:
Put on headphones, get in the car or shut the door and press play. Imagine a few hundred "Fu Manchu" faithful in the middle of the desert. A generator hums in the distance, beer barrels stand ready, amplifiers are warm, a huge fire burns behind you, and a cool breeze tries to temper the madness, distortion and energy about to erupt!
In the image, middle column from top to bottom: the band, their 30th-anniversary tour poster and the new EP artwork. Lower-left: Will Ferrell in the legendary cowbell sketch. Middle-right: the villain Fu Manchu and his famous mustache. The remaining pictures are selected album covers capturing that youthful California spirit.
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