Guest Player: 1977 [live performance & broadcast]
Instrument: Cello
Other Gigs: Cheap Suit Serenaders; directed documentary Crumb, feature films Ghost World and Bad Santa.
Profile: The Cheap Suit Serenaders' eccentric aesthetic jibed with The Klezmorim's retro jones; in 1977/8 the thrift-store troubadors often shared venues and audiences with the Euro-roots jammers. At a Freight & Salvage show broadcast live over KPFA-FM, Terry Zwigoff and two fellow Suits — Robert Crumb and Rick Elmore — sat in with us. I loved Zwigoff's sly, scooping, trombonelike attack on cello — a sound I've never heard duplicated by anyone else. His biting, cynical wit is legendary; if the Great Depression could talk, it would sound like Terry. I've always suspected that Zwigoff was one of the inspirations for Crumb's irascible guru Mr. Natural...