Live at the Rainbow Gallery '79 (unofficial release)
Back here, again. - This being a puzzle I have not managed to solve, it keeps drawing me back... this time, rather than leaving it on in the background to see how many impressions filtered through to me (if any...), I gave it more or less my full attention: having announced the last time I wrote about this recording that I'd changed my mind about never owning it on CD, it was actually the first CD I bought after we moved house, but for various reasons I only got round to listening to it last night (mainly because by this point I was looking at it as "work").
The title is a nonsense, but of course this is the kind of thing that happens when stuff gets bootlegged. Despite being clearly short on actual details, the label lists the personnel as if they have no doubts about that, but of course they aren't able to cite any sources for that information; we do have a venue listed - that part of the title makes sense, if it can be trusted - but no firm date, and instead the date in the album title refers to the eventual radio broadcast (although even that is somewhat dubious, since there is no precise date given for that either: in the liner notes, all we're told is that it was aired "at the end of the decade"). As I said last time, obviously the guys who chucked this together were in no position to get their facts checked with official sources, since they evidently had no intention of clearing copyright before releasing this. If ever there was a good advertisement for pirating a recording (or buying it second-hand) rather than getting it from a retailer, it's this one: with some reservations, I actually think this is a fairly decent live boot - and it's surely the case that any friendly experiencers will find something to enjoy in it - but if you want to own a hard copy, I strongly recommend getting it as cheaply as possible. (I certainly did.)
Having listened to it now three times in its entirety, and at least once with (more or less) undivided attention, I am more sure than ever that this dates from 1976, and that the listed personnel are probably accurate: that is, I am quite sure it's George Lewis, and almost as sure that it's Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. Who the pianist is, I'm really in no position to say; there's no reason to think it isn't Muhal, but identifying pianists really is not my... forte (groan). Whoever it is certainly knows his or her way around a keyboard; and it's highly likely to have been someone with prior knowledge of B's music. But in the absence of any corroborating evidence regarding the date - or the circumstances which took these guys to a Minneapolis art gallery in the first place - I am not about to take HiHat's word for anything, really.
With the source recording supposedly being an airshot, it still seems strange that there are no announcements on this, but there we are. "Cherokee" begins with no preamble, and I've observed before that it's most jarring to hear B. open a live set with a standard; I've also previously observed that we have no reliable way of knowing whether the album presents the complete set-list, or even the precise running order, but having said that, I do reckon that "Cherokee" was the first piece played. All I am really basing that on is the audience reaction to B's solo: he goes first - which he always did, as far as I know, on the opening number of a concert - and the extra "wow" factor in some of the audible responses strongly suggests to me that this is the first time this crowd has heard him play. Hence, as much as it might make more sense to wonder whether this wasn't an encore, presented out of order on the CD, I really don't think it was. Possibly it was decided beforehand that a standard would be a good way of breaking the ice for a crowd which wouldn't necessarily be expected to come just for the music...? In which case, a number which gives a natural opportunity to show off the band's chops is an easy choice.
It still irritates me that I can't pin down the written line which B. and GL play in unison, after the opening "head" - maybe it is a Charlie Parker solo, but to me it doesn't especially sound like one, and it certainly didn't sound like the famous one. (Refer to previous post on this subject.) Maybe one day I will have an answer to this... but in the meantime it's not going to cost me any sleep. Once you get over the surprise, this is a pretty enjoyable performance, even with so-so sound quality, and in the end it's a bit annoying to have it clipped off in the middle of Lewis' trombone solo. (Another mystery: audience recordings from this era are forever plagued by the problem of having to change the tape, but in the middle of the opener?! no, something else happened here - and presumably this was the best the label could do.)
With some music missing, clearly we don't know whether what we get next is what was actually played next - but again, if we are going to accept that the band was playing to a gallery crowd which might or might not be expected to have prior familiarity with B's music, it makes sense to think that a crowd-pleasing standard might be followed by the closest thing B. ever wrote to "a jazz ballad". Comp. 23d so obviously deserves to be more widely known that its continued neglect doesn't say anything very positive about the human race, if you ask me, but I digress... here (now that I am paying attention to it) there are some slightly jarring qualities to it: Lewis takes first solo this time - nothing unusual about that; this wasn't the opener - and the piano sounds rather dissonant with the comping, refusing to let the music "settle". The drummer seems at this point to be treating the piece with no respect whatsoever, bashing away unnecessarily hard at the cymbals as if in defiance of the basic tessitura; bear in mind, at this point in my listening I am still trying to assume nothing about who is playing, waiting to see whether clues start to present themselves (although I have already come to the conclusion by now that the trombonist can only be Lewis), so with the drummer apparently ignoring the general "vibe" I find myself wondering if it might not be somebody other than Altschul, after all; this guy's certainly busy enough to be him, but would Altschul play this tune in this way? (Needless to say, you can really second-guess yourself with this stuff and almost drive yourself mad with it... but read on.) One thing which has always been required of the drummer in particular in these live contexts, I remember, is fuel for the soloists' fire: this sometimes led to problems with Kenny Wheeler in the band, as he didn't always seem to know what to do with it when it was provided, which later led to the rhythm section dialling the intensity levels right down when his turn came; no such issue with Lewis, obviously. So is the overactive drumming just that, fuel to burn? For that matter, is the whole thing just an "audio illusion", caused by the recording hardware being closer to the drum set than to the rest of the band? I can't rule that out...
In any case, these first two pieces have left me feeling (almost) completely sure that I'm listening to Dave Holland, now that I can hear the bass better than I could via Youtube; as for the piano player, well here s/he* comes now - and funnily enough, the drums lay right back, way back at this point. It occurs to me round about now that the pianist could actually be fairly easily identified, in principle - just not by me, or at least not without a lot more preparatory/comparative listening. The piano solo overwhelmingly favours long, exploratory runs with the right hand, with only minimal activity in the lower register**, and on the assumption that this is a regular preference with whoever this player is, the right ears could doubtless nail this question right there. In any case, the long solos taken by Lewis, the pianist and the leader on this one, combined with a shorter bass solo, confirm how it is possible to play such a long version of this number, which doesn't seem to be a natural territory for such extended improvisation.
Track two, for what it's worth, is the only one which is correctly presented (even if they didn't manage to identify it on the "track listing", or what passes for a track listing in this case): it is a complete rendition, and hence also properly indexed. Comp. 23e, which comes next, is subject to another dropout, so a decision was taken to end track 3 at that point and begin track 4 with the same piece still very much underway. This is a pretty good version of this piece, though, and in purely musical terms probably the highlight of the set, although that's not completely straightforward for a couple of reasons. One thing this number does have, for sure, is a red-hot rhythm section and it's a minute or so into this piece, indeed, that I decide once and for all that this must be Altschul behind the kit. The boiling, fizzing intensity of the drums as the tension mounts higher - remember, Comp. 23e is a piece of two parts, an initial section of minatory tension eventually giving way to a completely free environment filled with all manner of eldritch utterance - is very much like the studio version with which this composition (previously developed on the road) was perfected, in 1975; and although I had finally decided that the crucial role here is played by the bass, not the drums as I originally surmised, both players are very important to the atmosphere of scarcely-bearable intensity as the energy levels are gradually being ratcheted up. And both players, here, sound so completely comfortable and familiar with this that I can't possibly think of it being anyone other than Holland and Altschul, at this point, whatever doubts I may have entertained up to now. (I say comfortable - that's not the right word, exactly, and indeed has some pretty unfortunate connotations. What I mean really is that both players sound completely confident negotiating what - for a newcomer - could easily be quite intimidating territory.)
It's weird, nevertheless, to hear this played without Wheeler in the band***, which (leads to what) is ultimately one reason why I couldn't just say that this is the highlight of the set: Lewis is barely present here, and indeed sits the second half out completely (at least I didn't hear him), as if - bizarrely - he finds himself somehow superfluous to requirements. The brass is essential to the first section of the piece, the unison monophonic line being a required part of the overall effect, but once we have "crossed", transitioned into the free space across the energetic barrier, there doesn't seem to be any space for the trombone at all. The other face of this coin is the piano: this is much used in the second half, but not needed at all for the first part. Hence, the instrumentation doesn't completely work for this particular selection, arguably (although not all voices are needed at all times, clearly). It would still be quite easy not to notice that, as they make such a good job of this, the first section in particular being utterly mesmerising, that it's quite hard to imagine anyone who witnessed it muttering to their neighbour afterwards "yeah, but I'm not sure that was the right choice of material for this band". What is always pretty challenging with any live rendition of this piece is to maintain the intensity levels beyond a certain point, and that is very much the case here, where even the drums eventually become quite restrained once the transition is achieved; not that this puts the leader off, as he is just in another dimension by this point, spending minutes on end in an altissimo register of overblowing, squeaking in tongues (as it were). Another quite long piano excursion eventually follows this, but of course it's cut in two thanks to the dropout. Track four begins shortly after Track three fades out, and gradually builds back up to another peak of intensity, making one wonder in the end how this piece ever worked properly without a piano. But like I say, it's not relevant to the first section at all and, as powerful as this performance undoubtedly is, I can't help feeling overall that it's not entirely suited to the personnel on the date.
There is a brief pause - but no indexing - before Comp. 40f, the concert's concluding piece. A few minutes in, B. and GL launch themselves into this fabulous high-speed run together, something which I really don't remember from other renditions of this tune; once again, though, the piano has pretty much no part to play here. We do, much to everyone's joy no doubt, get some contrabass clarinet before this one is done, and B. unleashes some magically subtle "dragon dreams" with it, displaying all his virtuosity - although oddly enough, when he starts up with the "kisses" a little later, Lewis does not respond for once. This is a slightly eccentric choice for a set-closer as it generally segues into something else, in a live context; here, it just gradually peters out into silence, although that actually seems to work quite well as it simply shows how hypnotised the audience is, no background chatter evident at all as the music here winds down into empty space, final relieved applause indicating how much those present enjoyed what was, really, a pretty impressive set.
So: it's definitely worth hearing, even with all these numerous caveats. It's definitely not worth buying at full album price, so don't even be tempted. Oh, and I still couldn't say at this point whether or not the piano was played by Muhal Richard Abrams. How come B. doesn't do his customary naming of the band, at the end of the show? Maybe this was not the whole performance after all... but for now, as far as I know, it is all we've got. I have no intention of writing any more about this recording..!
* I am rather perversely allowing a sexist stereotype to persist, there: a pianist might be female, but a drummer won't be. Then again: name one female drummer in free jazz/creative music at that time. Having said that, female pianists weren't greatly in evidence either.
** The only piano player that I have actually noticed displaying this customary preference for the right hand in his solos is Hank Jones. I'm gonna stick my neck out here and say that whoever else this might be, it's not him...
*** There very possibly are other recordings of Comp 23e featuring Lewis, I'm just too rusty to say for sure if I have heard any. It is definitely something I associate with Wheeler. More than anything, though, it is a feature number for Holland's rock-solid arco technique in particular and, to a slightly lesser extent, for Altschul too. I can't realistically imagine that B. would have kept it in the book once those two players had departed.
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