Grasshopper (born Sean Thomas Mackowiak, May 25 1967) is an American musician with the band

Mercury Rev Mercury Rev is an American indie rock band formed in 1989 in Buffalo, New York.
Original personnel were Harmony Rockets, his own band Grasshopper and the Golden Crickets, and as a guest musician on numerous other recordings.

Early years

Mackowiak's early years have been colored by a 1991 interview given to music publication ''

Melody Maker ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...

'', which claimed that he met Rev singer

Jonathan Donahue Jonathan Daniel Donahue (born May 6, 1966) is an American rock musician. He is best known as the frontman and a founding member of Mercury Rev, with whom he has released nine studio albums since 1991. He is also a former member of The Flaming Lips ...

in Camp Sunshine, a reform camp for juvenile delinquents, at the age of ten.

Grasshopper was throwing dead squirrels and rats into a lawnmower when Jonathan met him. The blood spattered over a watching group of retarded kids and they screamed and yelled. They yelled, "Now throw the possum in! The Possum! The possum too!" Muses Jonathan, "When you're younger, these things make a more vivid impression. I remember huge adrenaline rushes as the guts flew and hit people on the legs. I don't know what Grasshopper had done to get in there. He doesn't talk about it much."

The reliability of the story is unknown, though the claim to have met in a reform camp was repeated to the

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

in 1998. Grasshopper was born in upstate New York and was introduced to music by his uncle, an

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...

employee who gave him records by

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...

Ornette Coleman Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Colle ...

and

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

, as well as novels by

Jim Carroll James Dennis Carroll (August 1, 1949 – September 11, 2009) was an American author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work '' The Basketball Diaries'', which inspired a 1995 film of ...

. Growing up close to the border, he was in range of Canadian radio stations, further broadening his musical education. In the early 80s, Mackowiak was a member of The People's Front (name taken from the Monty Python film ''

Life of Brian ''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' (also known as ''Life of Brian'') is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It wa ...

''), which played concerts in Fredonia, Dunkirk and Buffalo, NY. There was a film made of the band but has since gone missing. The film showed the band in concert and in a mock documentary with the storyline predicting great success not in the US, but "across the pond" in England. The film ends with a crash that was a foreshadowing of the fate that befell the actual guitar player for the group, Kyle Gaszynski. Grasshopper undertook a BA in the renowned Media Studies program at the

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

(1984–1988) where he studied with avant-garde filmmakers

Tony Conrad Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both d ...

and

Paul Sharits Paul Jeffrey Sharits (February 7, 1943, Denver, Colorado—July 8, 1993, Buffalo, New York) was a visual artist, best known for his work in experimental, or avant-garde filmmaking, particularly what became known as the structural film movement, ...

as well as Viennese action artist

Peter Weibel Peter Weibel (; born 5 March 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an internationally known Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet but soon jumped from the page to the screen within the sen ...

. He later received a master's degree in the same subject at

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

, 1990–1993. While studying at The University of Buffalo around 1986/87, Mackowiak began to play bass guitar with avant garde group Shady Crady, an embryonic Mercury Rev incarnation which also featured Donahue, a member of

The Flaming Lips The Flaming Lips are an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1983 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The band currently consists of Wayne Coyne (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Steven Drozd (guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, vocals), Derek Brown (keyb ...

until 1991. Also during his time in Buffalo, he had a relationship with Claudia Zucrow. She previously attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts as a musician, and members of Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, and The Goo Goo Dolls have lived with her at different points. These formative years brought him into close contact with other members of the Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev sphere, such as producer

Dave Fridmann David Lawrence Fridmann is an American record producer and musician. Career From 1990 onwards he co-produced most releases by Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. Other bands he has worked with include Weezer, Saxon Shore, Neon Indian, Wolf Gang, ...

and early Rev singer David Baker, also a media student. Other activities in the late 1980s included working in the video department of a legal transcription company, as a percussionist for the local Buffalo band Sunny in Chernobyl and as a medical research subject: "I did this thing at a medical school where I got paid to take various drugs they were developing. You're in this controlled environment for 3 days and they give you all these drugs then suddenly stop then watch you suffer," he said. Mackowiak is most commonly known by his childhood nickname Grasshopper, derived from how his family's Polish surname translates into the Polish language - "from where the poppies grow" - and his hyperactive nature as a child.

Mercury Rev

Mercury Rev properly began in 1989, with Grasshopper moving to electric guitar and the band playing along to footage of TV wildlife documentaries. The band's first two albums, ''

Yerself Is Steam ''Yerself Is Steam'' is the 1991 debut album by Mercury Rev. The title is a malapropism of the phrase "Your self-esteem," and is taken from a recurring lyric in the opening "Chasing a Bee." "Car Wash Hair" was released as a single to follow the ...

'' (1991) and ''

Boces The Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES //) is a program of shared educational services provided to school districts by the New York State Legislature. History BOCES owes its origin to a state legislative enactment authorizing the f ...

'' (1993) were intricate yet deafening soundscapes dominated by the feedback-strewn, heavily effects-processed guitars of Grasshopper and Donahue. The spirit of experimentation was manifested by the band's use of the Tettix Wave Accumulator, a homemade tone generator of Grasshopper's invention. Boces, remembered by the band as a particularly troubled record, was recorded under the influence of the drug

rohypnol Flunitrazepam, also known as Rohypnol among other names, is a benzodiazepine used to treat severe insomnia and assist with anesthesia. As with other hypnotics, flunitrazepam has been advised to be prescribed only for short-term use or by those ...

. When asked by

in 1993 what he liked most about the album, Grasshopper replied: "that it's done." Chaos also manifested itself outside the studio: a legendary, oft-repeated story holds that either Donahue or singer David Baker tried to gouge the guitarist's eye out with a spoon. The band's first UK interview, with the now-defunct Melody Maker in 1991, contained this memorable exchange, reported by Chris Roberts:

I ask Grasshopper's mother, who must be about 50-odd, if she enjoyed the show. "Oh yes," she beams, "it induced orgasm." I'm sorry? "It induced orgasm." After 36 hours in the vicinity of Mercury Rev, nothing on earth should throw me. This does. "Can I take your photograph?" she asks. I run away and tell Grasshopper that his band has just sexually aroused his mother. "Uh-huh," he says, like I've just asked him if he wants a beer. "She's kinda cool. And she smokes a lotta dope."

The year 1995, however, saw the departure of Rev singer Baker and a radical change in direction for the band, which drew on Broadway, jazz and

doo-wop Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chica ...

influences helped along by Grasshopper's clarinet. The album '' See You on the Other Side'', and resulting tour, saw the band virtually ignored. With Mercury Rev in disintegration and Donahue suffering a breakdown, Grasshopper retreated to a Jesuit Retreat House monastery in Spain. "I was there for six months. Then I left. I mean, you get up at six AM, you make your bed...it was the complete opposite of everything I had been doing for the past six years," he recalled in 1998. Ten years later, he remembered being "pretty scrambled up inside and it just helped me to reflect and to bring some brakes on certain things in my life that were spinning out of control ... For anybody who wants to go there, it's highly recommended. Just step out of reality for a second, empty yourself out, all the baggage." Between Rev records, he also issued a solo record under the moniker Grasshopper and the Golden Crickets on the

Beggars Banquet ''Beggars Banquet'' is the 7th British and 9th American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 6 December 1968 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. It was the first Ro ...

label. ''Orbit of Eternal Grace'' featured several Rev members, home-made electronic instruments and "N.Y. Avenue Playground", effectively a draft of "The Hudson Line", which would appear on the next Mercury Rev album. Around this time, he effected a radical change in appearance by cutting his bottle blond hair into a style which has remained constant since. Grasshopper was also active in Harmony Rockets, a sprawling Mercury Rev side-project responsible for Willy Wonka theme covers and ''Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void'', a full-length LP which contrasted ambient drones alongside full-on noise. "...''Paralyzed Mind'' is nocturnal trance music that never gets monotonous, a stunning feat for a piece this long.... In 2015 we'll be talking about this mercurial, revolutionary CD in the awed tones reserved for

The Velvet Underground & Nico ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' is the debut album by the American rock band the Velvet Underground and German singer Nico, released in March 1967 through Verve Records. It was recorded in 1966 while the band were featured on Andy Warhol's Ex ...

Revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...

A Love Supreme ''A Love Supreme'' is an album by American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Ga ...

, or

Bitches Brew ''Bitches Brew'' is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. It was recorded from August 19 to 21, 1969, at Columbia's Studio B in New York City and released on March 30, 1970 by Columbia Records. It marke ...

," claimed

Alternative Press Alternative press may refer to: Individual publications * ''Alternative Press'' (magazine), an American music magazine Alternative journalism * Alternative media ** Alternative media (U.S. political left) ** Alternative media (U.S. political ri ...

in 1996. Reconvening and moving to the

Catskill Mountains The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas c ...

in these in-between years, the band attempted to record what they deemed likely to be their last chance. The resultant record, ''

Deserter's Songs ''Deserter's Songs'' is the fourth studio album by American rock band Mercury Rev, released in late September 1998. British music magazine ''NME'' named ''Deserter's Songs'' album of the year for 1998. Limited edition copies of the album came in ...

'' (1998), was a critical and commercial triumph, leading to an extensive and lengthy tour. With each of the band members in emotionally difficult waters, Grasshopper's contribution on the record drew from the heartfelt death of his uncle. His guitar style, particularly onstage, had evolved from the squalls of the early '90s and was now strongly influenced by the

pentatonic A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancie ...

blues, albeit retaining an avant-garde edge. In 2001, Grasshopper was injured in a mugging attack which affected the recording of that year's ''

All Is Dream ''All Is Dream'' is the fifth studio album by American rock band Mercury Rev. It was released in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2001, in France on August 28, 2001, and in the United States on September 11, 2001. The album's front cover features h ...

'' album:

I was at the Jazz Festival in New Orleans, in this bar watching a Cuban band, with a friend of mine. We were the last ones there. We walked out and we just went around the wrong corner. It happened really fast. There were two guys. They had a gun on my friend and they cut me, and took our wallets. I was bleeding pretty badly. When I went to the hospital, the doctor said, "I don't think this is very good; three of your fingers might be paralyzed."

Making a full recovery, the guitar solo on the track 'Little Rhymes' was played with his arm in a sling. 2005's '' The Secret Migration'' was performed under less dramatic circumstances. Preparations for 2008's '' Snowflake Midnight'' album included a period of withdrawal from the guitar, as the band explored new directions with the introduction of software-based instrumentation. Aside from music, Mackowiak's interests include film and modern literature, particularly of the

Beat Generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...

, The Situationists, Minimalism, Fluxus, and Dada. He lives in

Kingston, New York Kingston is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in and the county seat of Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany, New York, Albany. The city's metropolitan area is grouped with t ...

with his wife and two young children. Mackowiak is an avid fan of the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...

and frequently posts about them on his

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

account.

Instruments and musicianship

Grasshopper is nominally the group's lead guitarist, credited in the band's peculiar vocabulary with "guitar shapes" and "single-exhaust clarinet" in the ''See You on the Other Side'' liner notes, and with "guitar reels" and woodwind on Deserter's Songs. ''The Secret Migrations 'Moving On' features prominent singing from him and Jeff Mercel, though 'The Hudson Line', on ''Deserter's Songs'' and 'Blood on the Moon' on ''Lego My Ego'' feature Grasshopper's only lead vocals with Mercury Rev. He also sings backing vocals live. He is credited with playing - and inventing - the Tettix Wave Accumulator on various Rev releases, telling Cokemachineglow:

The Tettix Wave Accumulator is basically a huge bank of oscillators, high and low pass filters, and wave shape manipulators. It can use any sound source to manipulate sounds. It also can then sample the manipulated sound and then store the sound on discs. It is still a very wonderful instrument. In 1994, when it was developed, we threw together a bunch of existing technology that hadn't been used together in quite that way before. Now of course, you can achieve many of these sounds with computer programs like Reaktor. The Tettix Wave Accumulator is now housed in the basement of a bar. We were trying to develop a smaller version, but the funds have recently dried up. You could say that Tettix Inc. has been acquired by the Carlyle Group.

"I started out playing clarinet and, I think when I was younger, a lot of my influences were horn players - like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, or John Gillmore, who played with Sun Ra," Grasshopper explained in 2001. "Then as I started playing more and more guitar, as a kid I liked aughsThe Allman Brothers and Neil Young's guitar playing. Then I got into, obviously, Sterling Morrison of The Velvet Underground, and Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd - I love that stuff. I like Robert Quine, who played with Richard Hell, and Lou Reed. I've also got some jazz and punk rock influences, but Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd re the big ones" On the 2005 ''Secret Migration'' tour, he provided additional harmonica, clarinet and electric piano during guitar-less moments. For the creation of ''Snowflake Midnight'', the band bought MacBooks and experimented with various software packages. "I was very interested in the

Native Instruments Native Instruments is a German company that develops, manufactures, and supplies music software and hardware for music production, sound design, performance, and DJing. The company's corporate headquarters and main development facilities are lo ...

programs Absynth and FM8 after seeing some demos about them at an electronic music conference I attended in Miami," Grasshopper explained to Cokemachineglow. His record ''The Orbit Of Eternal Grace'', recorded around 1996 with a loose group dubbed The Golden Crickets, features Grasshopper's vocals, electric, acoustic and bass guitars as well as a

Micromoog The Moog model 2090 Micromoog is a monophonic analog synthesizer produced by Moog Music from 1975 to 1979. During 1973 and 1974, Moog attempted to produce a synth system, possibly as a result of seeing Yamaha's massive GX-1. The bass and pol ...

, Casio PT-30, ENL Synkey,

Vox Continental The Vox Continental is a transistorised combo organ that was manufactured between 1962 and 1971 by the British musical equipment manufacturer Vox. It was designed for touring musicians and as an alternative to the heavy Hammond organ. It supp ...

Mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...

, tape loops, turntables, guitar synth, tone generator, 'rex', alto and tenor saxophones and 'Scotch 201 (1.5mil acetate)' - a type of analogue tape. He has tended to favour

Fender Telecaster The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successful Les Paul had built a prototype solid bo ...

s since the ''See You on the Other Side'' tour, often with customisations such as double

humbucker A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in d ...

pickups and tremolo arms. These have been decorated with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

stickers, the logo of the American Revolution Bicentenary (used frequently on album artwork)and stars on the headstock. A Fender Tele-sonic made its appearance on the ''All Is Dream'' tour, later acquiring a Bigsby tremolo unit. As the band's sound changed radically with the release of ''Snowflake Midnight'', Grasshopper switched to a hardtail, double-humbucker

Fender Jaguar The Fender Jaguar is an electric guitar by Fender Musical Instruments characterized by an offset-waist body, a relatively unusual switching system with two separate circuits for lead and rhythm, and a short-scale 24" neck. Owing some roots to th ...

and

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

electric guitar. He and Donahue both used Fender Hotrod DeVille 4x10 combo amplifiers since 1998's ''Deserter's Songs'' tour, but switched to comparable Peavey models to tour ''Snowflake Midnight'' in 2008. A Boss GT6 was added to the already-extensive array of assorted pedals in 2005.

References

External links

Mercury Rev's official website
*
Silvertone Series #2
Grasshopper and Mercury Rev in Russia. An interview for Podstantsiya.ru {{DEFAULTSORT:Grasshopper (Musician) 1967 births American rock guitarists American male guitarists Living people Mercury Rev members Musicians from Buffalo, New York 20th-century American guitarists The New School alumni University at Buffalo alumni