"...you're
having this mid-young-adult life crisis..all of these things you've
never thought about fall on your head and a travel company advertises
a vacation for you...to rid you of these things ... to the asylum.
...and all the things that the travel agent is trying to rid you
of are parts of the songs... "
- Pflaumbaum speaking about
"MaJestic Vacation"
The approach to this MaJe project is can
best be described by the opening line of ‘Red Brother’ which begins,
“Two worlds colliding”. That sentiment is nothing short of the truth.
Mark
Duncan (guitars/vocals) is an improv player with years and
a wide variety of stage experience. Jeff
Pflaumbaum (keys/vocals), on the other hand, is a writer/arranger
with a less objective approach to music. “Imagine this,” Jeff said,
“you have a black and white picture. I color inside the lines and
Mark colors outside the lines. Collectively, that’s MaJe. And now
with Chris
(Kennedy/Drums) and Daniel
(Marks/Bass) they are the solid lines.”
The album, MaJestic Vacation, is basically an album that peeks into
the mind of a young adult. It’s sort of a one-man-soap opera. The
themes are drawn from a wide spectrum of crisis’ a guy in his twenties
might go through. You know, he feels like one guy roaming the earth
getting hit with one emotional bullet after the next. But he really
has nothing to complain about. All the wounds lie in his mind. He
may be sitting in a chair sipping a rum and coke but inside his
head it looks like Iwo Jima. So that in itself is a little unsettling
… because there is no outward visible distress. So after these continuous
bouts with various events he withdraws from society for a ‘vacation’.
Musically, the album sounds like what you might expect from polar-opposite
musicians. On one hand there is a stress on arrangement but on the
other hand there are loose edges that equally illustrate the thematic
paradox the album explores. Stylistically, the music comes from
the classic rock family of the 70’s. The influences are quite diverse
and range from Zappa and Kansas to Seals & Crofts and Pink Floyd.
But this album is really a guitar album and the guitar distinctly
paints the musical picture of what this album is about. Some of
Duncan’s playing functions like various string sections of an orchestra
while at other times he could be mistaken as the 5th member of Phish.
The album can seem progressive at times, but the ‘progressive’ sections
take on a roll of mini pop songs as much as they do instrumental
tie-ins.
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