The Greatest Band Of All Time.

Ooooooooooooh, Ooooooooh...: Petra Haden

Nineties rock block week continues with a brief exploration of the career of Los Angeles' pocket violinist, Miss Petra Haden. One of the three triplet daughters of Ornette Coleman bassist Charlie Haden, Petra began her career in earnest in the early Nineties when she and her sister Rachel began working with high school friend Anna Warnoker. the trio added a drummer and an incredibly shitty band name—that dog. (note: lower case, with punctuation)—and soon became a "staple" on the L.A. "club circuit" as hangers-on to the burgeoning alternative rock movement.

Amidst the early nineties Alt-rock buying frenzy, that dog. somehow got themselves a contract with powerhouse DGC in time to release their self-titled debut in 1994. An average, formulaic alternative rock band—that dog. hold a special place in my personal affections, and though I can't in good conscience really offer an affirmation of their recorded works, I think it's fair to say that the elements of the band worth noting can nearly all be attributed to the doubly-powerful Haden sisters. Between their mutual vocal harmony explorations and Petra's signature violin playing, that dog. was elevated just above mediocrity—a C+ average best evidenced on the band's final album, the throughly alright Retreat From the Sun.

With that dog. still kicking, Petra began to become quite a commodity all over Los Angeles—as most string players in rock bands seem to—moonlighting for the likes of Mike Watt, Beck, Spain (her brother's band), and Green Day. It was at about this time that Petra also began working with Weezer bassist Matt Sharp on his Numan-ian side-project the Rentals—a partnership that would evolve into that band's celebrated Return of the Rentals, and that would continue loosely through the band's demise.

About a year before that dog.'s break-up, Petra compiled a tape of her wordless, largely a cappella four track experiments—tapes she had been making since she was a girl—into an album called Imaginaryland. A marvel of interlaced vocal harmony, the record is comprised almost entirely of wordless singing—in places emulating specific instruments, otherwise just hollow consonants. it's a joyful, willfully naive experiment, and the result, though extremely narrow, are haunting enough for me to pine for the record for a number of years.

With the demise of that dog. in 1997, Haden's future was in a sort of upheaval—a listlessness that lead to her briefly relocating to Portland. Along with Accordionist Miss Murgatroid, Haden began work on Bella Neurox, expanding the ideas she began on three years earlier on Imaginaryland. With considerably fuller instrumentation, Neurox was largely a collaborative effort, and though not quite as pure as her solo debut, it was a welcomed maturation.

In 2000, Petra was struck by a car while crossing the street in Venice—an accident that sent her briefly into a coma that woke to phenomenal medical bills for the uninsured musician. An outpouring of support from all of her rich ass friends (including Beck, Tenacious D, Stephen Perkins, The GoGo’s, Vincent Gallo, Sean Lennon, and Weezer) soothed a bit of the costs, and soon she was back on her feet.

In the time since, she's recorded an as-yet-unreleased, fully a cappella version of the Who's landmark The Who Sell Out (which, despite feeling a little like Rockapella or whatever, is actually pretty awesome), a collaborative record with Bill Frisell (with a bunch of cheesy shit like a cover of Coldplay's "Yellow"), and a follow-up to Bella Neurox called Hearts & Daggers—also unreleased.

Her studio credits are impossibly long and rarely reliable, but you can usually bet that her contribution to anything she touches will likely be the most memorable moments therein. like a fine seasoning salt (and bad metaphors), Petra just makes everything better—like you'd expect from the Greatest Band Of All Time.