Primitive Culture

PRIMITIVE CULTURE – Fantasy

(2009 Hechtic Records)

Madison’s Primitive Culture has been steadily gigging, performing in clubs and at festivals with a regular clip since forming in 1998. It’s surprising then that Fantasy is the band’s first recording, especially when you consider the close connection to the now defunct E-Labs Multimedia recording facility vis a vis the brothers Nevaiser (Bruce plays bass and Jerry plays drums) and the combined recording experience of the members of this band, which is significant.

Musically, Primitive Culture is all about the groove, feel and rhythm. The high caliber of musicianship in the band allows them to move seamlessly from funk-infected blues to reggae to island music to calypso and more, all in the context of a rock ensemble with horns. And the horns play a significant part in the makeup of Primitive Culture and in the songs that make up this recording. Heavyweights Bob Corbit (saxes) and Phil Lyons (trombone) get some help from Al Falaschi (sax) and John Schipper (trumpet), both of Phat Phunktion, to make as good a horn section as you’ll find anywhere in the country. They perk up these already sprite tunes with precision and finesse. Most of the songs also feature Corbit’s soloing, perhaps even two saxes at once, which he is known for onstage.

The songs also benefit greatly from exceptional Hammond B-3 performances turned in by the incomparable Jimmy Voegeli. He really spices up the opener, “What I’ve Been Told,” a funky tune with punchy horns. Here Corbit takes the band out in grand style in the coda. Voegeli also turns in a superb solo on “Steppin’ In, Steppin’ Out.” One of the recording’s best tracks, this one is steeped in Stax/Mowtown soul with a funky undercurrent. Guitarist David Hecht turns in a tasty guitar solo on this one as well, one of the few on the album.

But the band doesn’t need all that help as they demonstrate on the live track that closes the album. Here they are in full island music fun mode, ultimately cementing themselves as an ultra-tight performing band and good-times generator.

The band’s message is mostly about love relationships: the breaking-up-is-okay strut of “What I’ve Been Told,” the new woman in the calypso-groovy “Hook Up,” the infidel woman in “Steppin’ In, Steppin Out,” the alcohol-and-cocaine abuse of the problem-laden woman in “Lonely Dreamer,” the my-baby-is-so-fine woman in the blues-rocker “Feel Like Wood” (yes, it’s that wood), and the “sex muffin” described in the reggae-soaked title track, a real game-player who likes to wear rubber suits. But perhaps the song that really points out where these guys are coming from is “Pile of Money,” where the protagonist turns down the big city job to lead the relaxed life. Here the band is not afraid to expose a penchant for weed with lines like “No sir, thank you no I won’t be round / I’ll take the clear blue skies with my feet on the ground / The ship of fools won’t sail too long / I’ll stay right here and sing this song / With my baby / Sit on the beach and smoke a big spliff / With my baby.” It’s clear these guys know what’s important when they say, “It’s alright / Sit on a beach and roll ‘em up tight.”

“No Justice in Babylon” allows the band to get its rasta on with lead vocals from Corbit, who sounds like he was raised in Jamaica. Great sax solo here again and some nice echo on Hecht’s guitar.

Primitive Culture is a reformation of sorts. Hecht and the Nevaiser brothers (three of them with brother Don) played in Harold and the Rhinos before Hecht went on to a very successful run with one of Madison’s best-loved bands Java. It’s Hecht who is the center of gravity in the band. He wrote six of the album’s twelve songs and co-wrote two more (the last four tracks are covers). His rhythm guitar playing goes unmatched locally. Credit should also be given to the band’s rhythm battery, particularly Bruce Nevaiser’s bass playing.

As the band says on “Love the Life,” “You gotta love the life you lead / Lead the life you love.” That sums up Fantasy perfectly. - Local Sounds Magazine

Funky, bluesy, reggae flavored grooves are the language of Primitive Culture. David and the bros (Bruce, Don and Jerry Neviaser) started playing together in 1975; cutting their teeth on the rock and funk of the 60s and 70s. The first incarnation of the band, Harold and the Rhinos, was a raucous, fun and funky group that was heard around the bars and fraternities of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. From those humble beginnings, David went on to form the acclaimed international touring and recording group JAVA, which claimed fans from all over the US, Canada and beyond. After eight years as the leader of Java, David began a new chapter, traveling and living in Latin America, honing his skills as a solo performer, later moving to Colorado to perform in the ski resorts of the Rockies. In 1998, he returned to Madison, reuniting with his long time friends the talented Neviaser brothers (aka The Rhinos), veteran sax master Bob Corbit (formerly of Ike & Tina Turner), and the multi-talented percussionist and trombone man Phil Lyons, to form Primitive Culture, a groovy, percussive ensemble that brings various genres together in an upbeat and ultimately danceable group.

- Isthmus Madison Music Project

MadTracks: 'Hook Up' by Primitive Culture
Jessica Steinhoff on Wednesday 11/25/2009 12:24 pm , (5) Likes


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Madison world-music ensemble Primitive Culture invites listeners to "break on through to the other side" in "Hook Up," a single off of the band's new album, Fantasy. However, this isn't the psychedelic "other side" of Jim Morrison and the Doors. It's more of the "drop everything and move to Latin America" variety.

Yes, the song is about what the title suggests, but it seems to be about something else as well: letting go of mistakes made in the past and not limiting your idea of what the future holds. Or, as singer/guitarist David Hecht puts it, "Don't retreat because of where you've been."

Hecht, who grew up along the Texas-Mexico border until moving to Madison for high school, has been playing Latin music for a long time, first as a student and then as a member of the touring band JAVA. It wasn't until he left JAVA, though, that he shed his inhibitions and moved to Latin America. And it wasn't until he returned to Madison in 1998 that he found the right group of people for Primitive Culture, including Bruce and Jerry Neviaser, two friends from his high school years.

In other words, Hecht needed to travel the world to find his way home, both personally and musically. Perhaps "Hook Up" is a story about that, too, at least on some level. While the band often ventures into reggae and calypso territory, here the saxophone and trombone players are used to speak a different musical language, one that's more Mexican than Carribbean. The result sounds like a south-of-the-border journey, with Tex-Mex swing, mariachi and more cooked into a flavorful, danceable melange.

Sharp and funky drumming keeps the song alive from the start, but it's the sultry, minor-key saxophone interludes that make the song groovy and as cool as it is hot. The most intriguing thing is that it feels like a celebration while sounding effortless. With a roster that includes performing veterans like Bob Corbit, who can play two saxes at once, it probably is effortless. Deciding to broaden your own horizons, whether through travel or listening to music, is the hard part.

An MP3 of "Hook Up" is available in the related downloads section at right. More music by Primitive Culture is available on its MySpace page. The band will celebrate the release of Fantasy with a show at the High Noon Saloon on Sunday, November 29. - Isthmus

When Bruce Neviaser, looking like Santa Claus, eased himself into a booth at the Fish Hatchery Road Panera Bread on Monday morning, his buddy David Hecht was telling a story about playing music with his old band Java in New Orleans.

"I have a photo of Buffett up on stage with us playing my guitar," Hecht said.

"Warren Buffett?" Neviaser asked.

"Jimmy," Hecht said. "I'm standing behind him playing the tambourine."

Hecht grinned. "It was 1985 or 1986. What year did the Bears win the Super Bowl in New Orleans? Bill Murray was there, too."

The Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986, and Madison-based Java was there because, well, because for a while there Java played in New Orleans a lot. They opened for the Neville Brothers, Dr. John and Buffett (Jimmy), among others.

But they broke up not long after that 1986 Super Bowl - Hecht took an opportunity to manage a resort in Mexico - and when Hecht found his way back to Madison, in the late 1990s, he teamed up with Neviaser, his old college roommate, to form a band they called Primitive Culture.

Neviaser, 54, and Hecht, 50, had arranged to meet for coffee Monday to talk about Primitive Culture's new CD. Titled "Fantasy," it's the band's first. Inevitably, the discussion also included a lot of shared history. The two old friends pass stories back and forth like riffing jazz musicians.

They met after Hecht's father, a physician, moved to Madison from Texas in 1974, the same year Neviaser's family moved from Madison's Hill Farms neighborhood on the West Side to Maple Bluff. Hecht and Bruce's younger brother were classmates at Madison East High School.

Bruce's dad, Dan Neviaser, was a prominent Madison developer. Among his developments was the Howard Johnson hotel at West Johnson and Marion streets and he also owned an apartment building nearby on Dayton Street. That apartment is where Bruce and Hecht roomed while attending UW-Madison. They had a mutual interest in music and jammed in the apartment's attic.

"It was literally 120 degrees," Neviaser said. "It wrecked the finish on my guitar."

They recruited Bruce's brothers - Don and Jerry Neviaser - and formed a band they called Harold and the Rhinos. Their first gig was at the Memorial Union Rathskeller.

The band split up around 1980. Hecht headed out with Java. Neviaser wound up joining his father in the development business, a decision that surprised some of Bruce's old friends. He didn't seem cut out for the buttoned-down business world. But Bruce eventually flourished, and was a founder of the Great Lakes Co., one of the first developers of indoor water parks around the country.

Hecht and Neviaser reconnected in 1998, and eventually invited some other talented local musicians to join them in Primitive Culture, notably sax player Bob Corbit, drummer Gregory Marsh and percussionist Phil Lyons.

They played gigs around the area and established a following. With some of his Great Lakes money, Neviaser built a recording studio off Fish Hatchery Road. E Labs Multimedia opened in October 2005 and the plan was for Primitive Culture to record immediately.

"We had focus issues," Neviaser said, but they finally got it done. "Fantasy" was released last month and has been getting air play on 105.5 Triple M. In 77 Square, Katjusa Cisar praised its reggae, funk, blues and Latin mix. Cisar especially liked the opening line of a Hecht-penned song called "What I've Been Told" - "I don't know but I've been told/You've been running 'round like a horny toad."

The CD is available at several Madison music stores. Meanwhile, the live shows continue. Primitive Culture will play the Devil's Head Resort on New Year's Eve and has Madison shows Feb. 21 at the High Noon Saloon and Feb. 27 at the Harmony Bar.

On Monday, Hecht and Neviaser were asked if making music is still fun after all these years. "A blast," they said, together, and laughed. They have the riff thing down pat.
- Wisconsin State Journal

Stylistically, Primitive Culture roams the map. The local six-piece band falls into that uselessly all-purpose genre, “world music.” And that, as trombonist/percussionist Phil Lyons said recently with a for-heaven’s-sake tone in his voice, “includes polka.”

The closest Primitive Culture gets to polka is cumbia, a South American folk dance that singer/guitarist David Hecht picked up while living in Mexico for year in the late ’80s. The band’s 50-50 mix of originals and covers draws on decades of musical exploration into reggae, funk, Herbie Hancock-style jazz, straight-ahead blues and Latin grooves.

Despite over a decade playing together in various formations, Primitive Culture is just now releasing its debut album, “Fantasy” and celebrating it with an early show this Sunday, Nov. 29, at the High Noon Saloon. They recorded the album at E Labs Multimedia in Fitchburg with audio engineer Dave Poler, who worked for years at the Hit Factory in Miami with clients like Michael Jackson, N’Sync and Julio Iglesias.

“It’s not like most CDs. It sounds more like a compilation CD,” said Hecht. But “if people can invest 13 minutes into the first three songs, then they’ll have a snapshot of our band.”

The first three songs are all Hecht orginals. “What I’ve Been Told” is bouncy, horn-fueled funk with a contender for best opening line ever — “I don’t know but I’ve been told/ You’ve been running ’round like a horny toad.” The second, “Hook-up,” burns with the hip-popping rhythm of Caribbean salsa. The third, “Pile of Money,” is pop reggae in the vein of Trevor Hall.

“The band is open to doing just about anything. There aren’t any limitations,” said Hecht.

Playing without limits has as much to do with being open as it does with the band members’ musical versatility, according to Hecht and Lyons. Drummer Greg Marsh “can play everything from bebop jazz to reggae.” Saxophonist Bob Corbit is “the elder statesmen of sax in Madison,” and can even play two saxes at once — a gimmick, they concede, but a good one.

Corbit’s double-sax trick inspired the stick-figure musician depicted on the ceramic tablet Lyons made and photographed for the “Fantasy” album cover. A pottery teacher at West High School, Lyons said he wanted to evoke ancient Mayan art in the piece.

Hecht and Lyons graduated from Madison high schools the same year, 1977. Hecht has always been the band’s driving force, but other members flowed in, out and back in Primitive Culture and its previous incarnations in the decades since. The band struck gold with the current lineup — “like being married to five people,” said Hecht.

Primitive Culture sinks most of its energy into performing, so it’s actually not that surprising that “Fantasy” is the first album. They’ve got a following, too, a core of regulars who turn out to most shows to dance. Live shows are what it’s all about, anyway, a rush of endorphins and ecstasy, Lyons said.

“There’s a lot of camaraderie, a lot of hugging. Some people go have cigarettes afterward,” joked Hecht.

IF YOU GO

What: Primitive Culture

When: Sunday, Nov. 29, 4 p.m.

Where: High Noon Saloon, 701 E. Washington Ave. - Wisconsin State Journal