Talking to Vincent Gallo is like trying to bearhug a supersonic jet at takeoff.
You just have to hold on tight, as your knuckles turn white.
The outspoken, multitalented Gallo is the controversial writer and director of indie flicks like "Buffalo '66" and "The Brown Bunny." Released in 2003, "The Brown Bunny" featured Gallo and Chloë Sevigny in a lengthy, authentic oral-sex scene.
Gallo comes to Tucson with a new music project, RRIICCEE (Gallo pronounces it "R-R-I-I-C-C-E-E"), a four-piece that also features former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson. The group will arrive with no pre-composed songs, as its intent is to spontaneously create new music live.
"If I didn't tell you that the entire show was improvised, most likely you would not know it," said Gallo, 46, who has performed in several bands over the years. At age 16, he was in a short-lived band called Gray with the legendary artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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As for RRIICCEE, it's an almost total mystery. There's no known recorded music by the band, and Gallo intends to keep it that way. He said that if he catches anyone recording Saturday's show at Solar Culture, they'll be kicked out.
The group has played only two shows, one in Japan, the other in San Francisco.
Yet RRIICCEE suits Gallo's eccentric résumé, which includes offering his sperm for sale ($1 million), as well as himself as a male escort (females only, $50,000 per night), under the merchandise section of his Web site. That he's decided to challenge traditional live music convention (some form of pre-recorded or arraigned music, general audience familiarity) is no shocker.
Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles, his nasally voice coated a flurry of intensity. In one answer during our 20-minute conversation, he described the Red Hot Chili Peppers as being "stuck in their own story and self-glorification," moved on to how he is reviled by outsiders for his views, and ended by talking about RRIICCEE and what concert attendees can expect.
"What they're going to get is four people exchanging musical language and vocabulary in the most honest, open, focused, sincere, committed way possible," he said.
Throughout the interview, Gallo remained vague, yet polite, and you have to give him this: He's fearless.
It takes a lot of will to knowingly announce a cross-country tour playing music literally no one, not even yourself, has heard before, and charge double-digit admission.
"They're going to get a collection of four individual musicians, or creative people, that are going to put themselves in a very vulnerable position and fight their way out of it the best way that they can that moment, that night," Gallo said.
Call it Gallo's campaign of curiosity. Saturday's show at Solar Culture is the tour kickoff, so we'll have the chance of first experiencing what almost no one else in the country has, for better or worse.
Gallo said he specifically requested our quirky Tucson as a tour stop, as it's the Arizona city he knows best.
He fell in love with the state while acting in the 1993 movie "Arizona Dream" (whose cast also includes Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway), which was filmed in the Douglas area.
During the six months the movie was shooting, Gallo said, he rented a Lincoln Town Car and racked up 55,000 miles, drifting around.
"I was so connected to the state of Arizona emotionally, that it was the most important experience of my life in regards to getting out of my past, and the story I was stuck in," Gallo said.
Mystery Music
• What: RRIICCEE
• Where: Solar Culture, 31 E. Toole Ave., a venue that's been the subject of safety concerns.
• When: 9 p.m. Saturday.
• Cost: $13 in advance, $15 day of the show. All ages.
• More info: rriiccee.com.
