Marc Ribot

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Marc Ribot (born 1954) is a Jewish American guitarist, composer and occasional singer from Newark, New Jersey. He is perhaps best known for his long association with Tom Waits, who has described Ribot's stage demeanor as "a sometimes frightening voodoo frenzy". [1]

1 Biography
2 Equipment
3 Discography
4 External links

[edit] Biography

As a teenager interested in learning to play the guitar, Ribot's parents sent him for lessons with Haitian guitarist and composer Frantz Casseus, a family friend. Ribot later recorded an album of Casseus's guitar music.

In addition to his work with Tom Waits, Ribot has performed and recorded with John Zorn, Jack McDuff, Wilson Pickett, The Lounge Lizards, Arto Lindsay, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Cibo Matto, Sam Phillips, Elvis Costello, David Poe, Allen Ginsberg, Foetus, and Peruvian singer Susana Baca, among dozens of others. He has also led his own groups such as Shrek, Los Cubanos Postizos, Spiritual Unity, and Ceramic Dog, and served as a composer and/or performer within various film productions. Ribot provided his unique guitar playing on several of Waits's seminal albums, including Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Mule Variations and Real Gone. He also plays with the Italian folksinger Vinicio Capossela.

Ribot has appeared on numerous studio recordings by John Zorn such as the Filmworks series, The Gift, Bar Kokhba and The Circle Maker. He is also a member of John Zorn's Electric Masada. Ribot can also be found along with guitarists Bill Frisell and Tim Sparks on the Zorn release Masada Guitars, featuring solo guitar interpretations from Zorn's Masada songbook.

Marc has released two albums with his self-described "dance band" Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos (The Prosthetic Cubans). This outfit comprised of Ribot (guitar/vocals), Anthony Coleman (organ), EJ Rodriguez (percussion and vocals), Brad Jones (bass), and Roberto Rodriguez (drums), performs Ribot's interpretations of the work of late Cuban composer Arsenio Rodriguez as well as some original music in the same vein.

Ribot's playing and compositions draw on such diverse musical genres as soul, jazz, funk, traditional Cuban music, surf and no wave. His biting style is unique and easily recognizable, characterized by critic Nick Renshaw as "angular, discordant, (and) aggressive." Ribot is the first to admit his relatively limited technical facility, due in part to his learning to play right-handed though he is in fact left-handed: "That's a real limit, one that caused me a lot of grief when I was working with Jack McDuff and realizing I wasn't following in George Benson's footsteps. I couldn't be a straight-ahead jazz contender if you held a gun to my head, but that begs the question of whether I would want to be one." (Guitar Player, June 1997)

Despite these limitations, Ribot is often in demand; he's highly adaptable and generally well respected.

[edit] Equipment

[edit] Guitars:

Gibson ES125TDC
Harmony H-44 Stratotone
(possibly faceless) Silvertone
1930s Gibson flattop acoustic
early '70s electric Audition
ESP Telecaster

[edit] Amplifiers:

Fender (Twin Reverb, the Vibrolux Reverb, the Deluxe Reverb and the Princeton Reverb)

[edit] Mics:

Sennheiser MKH 44

[edit] Discography

Rootless Cosmopolitans (1990)
Requiem for What's His Name (1992)
Marc Ribot Plays Solo Guitar Works of Frantz Casseus (1993)
Shrek (1994)
Subsonic 1: Sounds of a Distant Episode featuring music by Fred Frith and M. Ribot (1994)
Don't Blame Me (1995)
Shoe String Symphonettes (1997)
Pranzo Oltranzista by Mike Patton (Ribot is featured on guitars on this album) (1997)
The Prosthetic Cubans (1998)
Yo! I Killed Your God (1999)
Muy Divertido! (2000)
Saints (2001)
Scelsi Morning (2003)
Soundtracks Vol 2 (2003)
Spiritual Unity (2005)
17 Hippies play Guitar (2006)