Every once in a while Martyrs’ scores a gig so cool I wonder what they’ve been doing the rest of the year. Here’s an Early Warning for ya: on September 11 (which is a Tuesday again, oh joy!), Eugene Chadbourne, the eccentric guitar maestro with the worst-designed Web site I’ve ever seen for an industrialized-world musician, and Jimmy Carl Black, the brilliant drummer who was introduced so memorably on Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention’s We’re Only In It for the Money back in 1967, will drop into town as the duo The Jack and Jim Show.
Somewhere in the maze of frames that is Chadbourne’s Web site is a bio that says the two men met in the early 90s, when Chadbourne was asked to invite 11 musicians to join him in an ensemble for a European jazz festival. Their name is taken from a painting by Black’s old collaborator Don Van Vliet: “Eugene became “Jack” based on a painting Captain Beefheart had done of Jimmy Carl Black, at one point one of the drummers in Beefheart’s Magic Band. The picture was of an Indian man and a jackrabbit, Beefheart entitled it “Jack and Jim.” Having already stolen alot from Beefheart, Chadbourne decided stealing this title would be allright, especially since it tied in with his lifelong love of rabbits.”