Written by: Dave Cantrell

Oh the gems and jewels and oddities that pass us by in our earliest, formative/explorative years of music addic-, er, interest. In this writer’s case, having begun my path to hopeless music nerd in 1972 when I was sixteen, well, a lot went initially undiscovered if only because one is, at that age, surrounded almost exclusively by cohorts that are just as youthful and inexperienced, which maybe wouldn’t necessarily be to one’s disadvantage were it not for the fact that said milieu was embedded out in the relatively culture-deprived suburbs where the opportunities for discovery are, absent the rare hip older sibling, suffocated by both a lack of resources and the fact that most kids in that environment at that age during those way prior-to-internet years were too focused on being cool than being curious. Thus, it wasn’t until I wandered northward one day off-campus from UC Berkeley during my first semester there and stumbled upon the one-of-a-kind Rather Ripped Records that my true education – or anyway, one beyond the narrow parameters bordered by the likes of Eric Clapton and the Allman Brothers – wasn’t just allowed to flourish but rather had that flourishing thrust upon me in the form of the RRR staff whose implied, unconditional invitation in to their midst literally changed the course of my life. That said, however, there was no way I could be exposed to everything but at the very least a groundwork was laid where the Residents mingled with Sun Ra on Suicide’s back patio. Thus does it perplex a bit how the remarkably outre work of Bruce Haack escaped my (fairly ravenous) attention but hey, cie la vie and lucky me to get to discover something this daringly original yet wholly organic-sounding here in my – ahem – sunset years. 

Reissued by the ever-reliable ‘savior of our offbeat souls’ Shimmy-Disc, it would be a mistake of some consequence to think that this is just some kind of lost slice of eccentric ‘outsider’ art (even as it is arguably that) released into the ether for no reason but that it’s ripe for rediscovery (even as it is that as well) when in fact This Old Man, originally issued in 1975 on the Dimension 5 imprint – a label established by Haack with collaborators Esther Nelson and Ted Pandel – stands as a sui generis piece of electronic adventurism, expanding that then-still fairly new palette into shapes so genuinely Haack-like that it essentially created a subgenre in the artist’s own image. While that’s admittedly quite the claim it’s really not that much of a challenge to build that case, one we could expand on with the further contention that, whether or not a certain Don Van Vliet was privy to the work of Mr. Haack, the plain fact remains that, while history may have shortchanged the latter, the good Captain B’s palate, if not directly informed by Haack’s extraordinary, explorative, purely incomparable nature, certainly finds (at the very least) its aesthetic match. Exhibit A? The title track. 

Playfully uninhibited to the point of being fearless, there’s something so unabashed at play here, so humanly esoteric that it feels nearly fruitless to try and do it justice using the relatively static, flat-screened prose format since whatever we say will likely end up being a confused hybrid of the obvious and the out-of-reach, which is to say if there was ever an instance where we should simply step aside and let the work do the, umm, work, this is it. And besides, having had our historic horizons so suddenly expanded like this, we’ve got some exploring to do. We’ll see you out there on the fringes where, as usual, the truly true heart of creation holds sway.

[Exhibit B? Well, as it happens, this just in! and lucky you (and us). As we went to press another preview track became available and what a sweet surprise it is. Short at only 1:46, the appropriately titled “Thank You” nonetheless not only has the what-should-become-legendary Haack stylisitic touch but as well a wholeness of heart that so guilelessly balances the innately playful with the rather innocently adventurous that in its short duration pretty much exemplifies the late artist’s improbable panache and, of course, the uninhibited genius that seemed to illuminate the guy like a 100-watt bulb from within. So damn, have a double listen, lucky reader, and get hip to the doubly wonderful talent that was Bruce Haack.]

 

[pick up This Old Man here]