Garretson & Gorodetsky set the Angst of Insomnia to a Latin Groove

Weba Garretson is a singer, actress and songwriter best known to the LA audience for her avant vaudeville performance The Weba Show. For over 20 years, she’s been writing and performing with Ralph Gorodetsky, known for his music with Universal Congress Of and the Mecolodiacs. 

Garretson has always had trouble sleeping. As a child, she had night terrors and would wake crying. As an adult, she has tried almost every therapy and medication to gain a good night’s sleep. The video is inspired by a 1960s television commercial for Sominex with the jingle “take Sominex tonight and sleep…” 

In the video, director Alex Italics uses the Sominex commercial as a point of departure. Using varying film speeds, blurred focus and “flim noir” lighting, he and cinematographer Brody ____ portray the inner turmoil of a person with chronic insomnia. Images of blindfolded singers, decapitated birds, knives piercing pillows, feathers and pills, pills and more pills are intercut with Gorodestky sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas encountering another sleepless night, while Garretson tosses and turns behind him.  On their bedside table is a medicine bottle labeled “Insambia.”

The song begins with a free form opening in which Garretson sings the Sominex jingle. Then the groove kicks in with a ballsy combination of Samba and Klezmer swing that builds to Operatic heights. “There is a little chaos within the structure, and a little structure within the chaos” says Gorodetsky of the music. “The trick is, much as it is in life, to find the balance between the two and understanding their mutual interdependence.”

“Insambia” is the first video release from Garretson & Gorodetsky’s latest recording “In the Year of the Firemonkey” for which they assembled a group of LA musicians renowned for their ability to improvise and their ability to lay down a funky groove:  on horns Vince Meghrouni (Bazooka, Atomic Sherpas, Hell Bat, Mecolodiacs, Mike Watt, Brain Children of Xenog); on drums Brian Christopherson (Saccharine Trust, Tune to Me, Brain Children of Xenog); and on bass Michael Alvridez (Atomic Sherpas, Brain Children of Xenog, Non Credo). 

“Not being able to sleep is maddening…but then there’s also that fear of not waking up” says Garretson. “When I take medicine to sleep, I worry that I’ve taken too much or inadvertently combined it with another drug…We used to joke at our live shows that the song “Insambia” is our “ode to Ambien” and people would laugh. But it’s a really a serious issue.”

“Insambia” was recorded at Catasonic Studios by Mark Wheaton.  The sound and the feel of the song is very organic. We all set up and played the song down live, then picked the best take. “This is not an overdub kind of recording, there has to be that feel between the players” says Gorodetsky.

“There is a little chaos within the structure, and a little structure within the chaos” says Gorodetsky of the music. “The trick is, much as it is in life, to find the balance between the two and understanding their mutual interdependence.”