Rackett's Rise

It's a well-known fact that Princeton boasts an impressive faculty roster, but most students never stop to think of their professors' extracurricular lives. Professors' fun doesn't end when the stack of papers is graded. Two very distinguished Princeton professors, Paul Muldoon and Nigel Smith, recently decided to eschew the mundane and turn their mutual love of music into a rock and roll band. The result? Rackett, a rocking six-member band dedicated to, as Smith says, "straight up rock and roll".

Smith and Muldoon met and became friends while both were teaching at Oxford, but neither considered creating music together until Smith joined Princeton's faculty in 1999. From its origins in the gothic halls of Oxford and Princeton, Rackett has been branching out to new audiences. The group will be performing at the Knitting Factory in New York City on Sunday, Dec. 5, and also at the McCarter Theatre on Thursday, Dec. 9. The band hopes to produce a CD sometime next year.

Before forming Rackett, Smith, the band's bassist and vocalist, and Muldoon, guitarist and songwriter, had previous experience composing music and lyrics. While Muldoon had collaborated with late songwriter and composer Warren Zevon on numerous projects, Smith, in his youth, "was a member of several local bands in North London." The two soon realized that a band needed more than a guitar and vocals. In addition to Smith, an English professor and Chair of the Renaissance Studies Committee, and Muldoon, Pulitzer Prizewinning poet and Creative Writing professor, the band soon grew to include two Harvard graduates, Henry Rich and Eric Lybeck, founders of mint company Oral Fixation Mints; Beckman Rich, Associate Legal Counsel for Rutgers University; and Paul Grimstad, an NYU graduate student.

Rackett, with its impressive roster, is not your ordinary garage band.

"It's pretty amazing to be able to sing lyrics written by a Pulitzer Prizewinning poet, which are some of the best rock lyrics ever written," vocalist Rich said.

"While the lyrics aren't as intellectually complex as his verse, they're full of ideas and quirky, interesting perceptions. They're quite sophisticated as rock lyrics go," Smith added.

While Muldoon's lyrics differ from his poetry, Muldoon's literary background certainly surfaces in his songs. "In one of our songs," Smith said, "the first line includes a reference to King Lear, and I'm not quite sure what it's doing there, probably because we were talking about King Lear when the lyrics were being written . . . [Paul's] songs often work by fusing two landscapes, which creates an energy in their collision. Something that brings the speaker's world together with something from a world outside is a powerful facet of creativity in literature that both Paul and I recognize."

Muldoon himself found songwriting to be a very different process from composing poetry. "It's much harder to write songs," Muldoon said, "as songs have a consistent structure that one must stick to." But he contends that the lyrics, as good as they are, can't stand on their own: "Songs are not just poems set to music. Poems have their own music, but lyrics need music to bring them into being."

Lybeck, the band's drummer agreed, "Rackett is a band where everyone's supposed to fit together, but no one really stands out. That's the best way to service the lyrics."

While Rackett's catchy music, composed mostly by Smith, is reminiscent of 60s and 70s bands like the Rolling Stones, The Who and Cream, Smith also cites roots music as "an inspiration. Country, rhythm and blues, Jimi Hendrix, black funk, it all sort of comes through in the music, whether I immediately recognize it or not."

Rackett's wide range of influences contributes to the music's universal appeal.

"One of the great things about this band is the huge range of interest and experience that the others bring to the table," Muldoon said. While Rackett is undoubtedly a 'scholarly' band, its members try to conjure a communal appreciation for the music, regardless of the audience's academic background. "Our music doesn't really fit into a niche," Lybeck said, "and we try to make our music accessible by making it catchy and good." But he acknowledges, "While Paul's lyrics tend to attract an academic crowd who might be able to fully appreciate his talent, we don't really have a target audience. We just want people to enjoy the music."