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In the Thermopylae of modern life, occasionally you encounter someone who is beyond a journeyman, way past a Renaissance man. In fact, George Hrab has gone straight through the Renaissance, leapt over the Napoleonic Wars, and now has his head currently right up the Jazz Age.
I first met and listened to George Hrab in 2010 when he was still a teenager. His podcast, The Geologic Podcast, once you get over the fact he never once mentioned, uh, igneous rocks, it’s actually a pretty good bath time listing. His latest funk fest of an album, Terpsichore, despite being named after the Olivia Newton John character in Xanadu, has not one single reference to roller skating.
Maynard: In fact, there is a mystery about your album that you’ve deliberately put in there. There’s a secret involved.
George: There is, there’s a little bit of a puzzle throughout my history of listening to records and you always get these myths and these urban legends arise. Did Pink Floyd consciously synchronize Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz? Because when you put those two on at the same time, a lot of interesting coincidences happen.
Was this foreplanned? Was it on purpose? Usually the answer is no. So I wanted to have something not quite as trippy as that, but I wanted to have something incorporated into the album that was a purposeful kind of puzzle. So far, only one person has figured it out.
M: Well, you can jump that number up to two because I have figured it out, George.
G: Have you?
M : First I thought, okay, it’s something about the time signature in the linking rhythms between the tracks. Then I thought, no, it’s obvious. You’ve basically redone Duran Duran’s Rio album.
G: I can’t answer if you’re right or not, you know, I don’t want to give it away to the audience, but that’s a damn good answer. That’s a damn good answer…
“Very smart people being very silly is incredibly appealing to me.” – Geo
