![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/aristocrats.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLike the boundary-pushing and scandalously vulgar joke for which they\u2019re named, The Aristocrats aren\u2019t for everyone. But their brand of genre-blurring music \u2013 combining jazz, hard rock, fusion, prog and more \u2013 has won the group a legion of hardcore followers. Drummer Marco Minnemann, bassist Brian Bellar and guitarist Guthrie Govan all rank at the top of their respective fields as instrumentalists, and the members of this international group share a love of infusing their work with outrageous and irreverent humor.<\/p>\n
The three musicians got together in 2011 for what was initially thought of as a one-off performance. \u201cI remember when we started,\u201d says Govan. \u201cA lot of people assumed, \u2018Okay, these are three musos; they’ve flung together a supergroup, and they’re going to do one album, and the name of the band will be the three guys\u2019 surnames, and then we’ll never hear from them again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But fourteen years and ten albums later, they\u2019re still together. \u201cWe knew we wanted to make something with longevity,\u201d Govan says. \u201cWe wanted to carry on watering the garden and see what it becomes.\u201d He says that a key to the band\u2019s enduring is \u201ca shared worldview\u201d among the three. \u201cWe do have overlapping senses of humor, and I think that informs the sounds that we make. And it also helps us to keep our show on the road.\u201d Remarkably, The Aristocrats convey that humor without the use of vocals or lyrics.<\/p>\n
The Aristocrats\u2019 latest release is Duck<\/i>, an ambitious concept album about an Antarctica-based bird who\u2019s pursued by a penguin policeman across a 10,000 mile journey to New York City. But wait: a concept album without lyrics?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, why not?\u201d Govan retorts. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of classical music out there that has a narrative attached to it. Why should our field of music be any different?\u201d He explains that when composing instrumental music, he and his band mates often have some kind of background story or mood in mind. And in the case of Duck<\/i>, each of them wrote their tunes independently, with no knowledge of what the other two were composing.<\/p>\n
>Govan says that when he, Minnemann and Bellar reconvened in the studio and reviewed their new material, they made a surprising discovery. \u201cWe realized, \u2018Hang on: if we just move everything around a bit, we can get a whole narrative out of this that actually makes sense!\u2019\u201d Duck<\/i> was released in February, and a text version is being shared online in installments. \u201cI\u2019m not sure how many fans are going on the website and reading,\u201d he says with a chuckle. \u201cBut it is kind<\/i> of a coherent story.\u201d<\/p>\n
For listeners who are happy simply sticking to the music, there\u2019s still plenty to enjoy. Tracks like \u201cSitting With a Duck on a Bay\u201d navigate a thrilling journey through jazz, heavy funk and progressive rock, all in the space of just over seven minutes. \u201cWhat we\u2019re really trying to do,\u201d Govan admits, \u201cis write songs that [we all] enjoy playing, and that we\u2019d all like to listen to.\u201d Readily conceding that The Aristocrats\u2019 musical approach makes them harder to sell, he concludes, \u201cwe figure it\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like the boundary-pushing and scandalously vulgar joke for which they\u2019re named, The Aristocrats aren\u2019t for everyone. But their brand of genre-blurring music \u2013 combining jazz, hard rock, fusion, prog and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,40,41,42,56],"tags":[225,5489],"class_list":["post-27973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","category-instrumental","category-interview","category-jazz","category-prog","tag-aristocrats","tag-guthrie-govan","cat-32-id","cat-40-id","cat-41-id","cat-42-id","cat-56-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27975,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27973\/revisions\/27975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}