Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Finding quality music in a Huff

Friday, June 18, 1999 | 9:32 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@vegas.com.

"I started making an album about a year and a half ago," Mark Huff says. "It was recorded, and just about ready to go. And I scrapped it."

Why?

"It sucked."

Mark Huff has been the constant in Las Vegas' on-again, off-again music scene for a decade. When our nation turned its lonely eyes to Seattle, Huff held firm with folk-rock. While the Crystal Method learned to mix Zeppelin with Eno, Huff was still mixing the lessons of Dylan, Ochs and Guthrie.

For his devotion to craft I have nothing but respect; you can't get this far without knowing the road. If he says the record wasn't worth saving, I believe him. Besides, I've heard the record he recorded after throwing out that initial effort, the tuneful and elegant "Skeleton Faith." Not even Huff's previous releases -- "Happy Judgment Day" and "Truth is Chaos" -- come close to measuring up to it. "Skeleton Faith" is a real accomplishment, and hearing it, it's rather easy to see how Huff could throw the previous baby out with the bath water. This is the best music I've ever heard out of him.

Huff thinks so, too.

"I'm glad I didn't put it out," he says. "I think the songs I wrote in the meantime (after the first record was scrapped) and the band that I have put together right now is so much better than before."

Did he surprise himself?

"That's what I was hoping to do, yeah."

Opening with the wary "White Trash Town" and winding through a forest of Americana -- standouts are the bright pop of "Paper Route" and "Nothing," which floats on a bittersweet string part -- "Skeleton Faith" is a real gem. It offers that most rare of surprises -- the sound of an artist reinventing himself. When Huff formed a new band, the Mark Huff Four, some three years back, he started cranking out some of the toughest rock I'd yet heard out of him; that, coupled with another lesson learned from a past master, more or less built "Skeleton Faith" from the skull down.

"In the last few years I've been writing songs without writing them down," Huff says. "I've just been committing them to memory, and whatever I could remember was what I would play. I read an interview with Roy Orbison six or seven years ago in which he said that he doesn't write anything down because if he couldn't remember it, it wasn't worth remembering. That takes a lot of (guts).

"I was doing vocals for 'Rehabilitation of the Heart' when a line popped into my head: 'When your skeleton faith is all broken in two.' I don't know where it came from. That line, and over half that record were never written down. I wouldn't commit them to tape or to the notebook, and when I brought the song to practice I hoped I'd remember them. Then we'd play it enough to hopefully drill it into my brain."

And what Huff didn't know, he improvised.

"Some songs, like 'Brick by Brick,' were made up on the spot," he says. "We'd start playing and sing and hoped that everybody fell into place. Then we'd go record it right away. There wasn't a lot of waiting around. For that reason, there's some stuff that I've forgotten because I didn't write it down and it didn't make the record."

The best of Mark Huff's memory will be released in mid-July, at which time the performer will take "Skeleton Faith" to the stage. Not surprisingly, this is Huff's favorite part.

"I'm ready," he says. "This is what you look forward to: going out at night, putting on the guitar and singing songs. At least, that's what I look forward to."

Stereo Dynamics

Various Artists, "Short Music for Short People," Fat Wreck Chords.

We're talking economy here. One hundred and one punk, garage and ska bands, 101 songs -- insanely low price. That's America for you, kids. Could someone put out a single-disc compilation of 30-second songs in Mother Russia? No way, tovarisch.

Drawn from the cream of the New Rude crop -- Blink 182, Green Day, Screeching Weasel, Less Than Jake, Nerf Herder and 96 more -- the music on "Short Music for Short People" can be broken into three distinct categories. There's the incisive social commentary (Unwritten Law's "Armageddon Singalong"), the playful jab at the ludicrousness of the enterprise (Dance Hall Crasher's "Triple Track," a how-to on creating a 30-second song) and the predictable cuss-fest (Blink 182's "Family Reunion" should offend everybody, if properly deployed).

The music runs the gamut from perky rockabilly (The Living End's "Ready") to two-chord homicide (Samiam's "Long Enough to Forget You.") Curtness is good; CD is great. Thirty-second review over.

Get Out, Act Up

Come in and dig this crazy scene. Get up off your feet for Mr. More More More, Mr. Please Please Please, Mr. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, the hardest working man in show business, you know the rest. If you don't, you're long overdue to see Mr. James Brown. He plays the House of Blues tonight at 8. Tickets run from $47 to $62. Call 632-7600.

Hey, smartypants, it's the Socratic method! Hemlock, Blessed Be Thy Name, Stretcher, Cheva and Against All do the all-ages thing at The Castle, 6:30 tonight. It's in Henderson, naturellement. Call 220-9194.

When Zebrahead opened for the Offspring at House of Blues it created an honest-to-God sensation. Saturday night at Sanctuary, without the Southern California pop-punk outfit to push them around, the boys will settle the score. Sensamotiva opens. Eighteen and over, please. Call 477-7703.

Like that room-sized Muppet used to say on "Saturday Night Live": "It's gonna cost ya." Pennywise plays the Hard Rock Joint Sunday at 8 p.m. Call 693-5066.