... that is to say, if you only watch one Braxton-related video clip, located on Youtube, recommended by this monomaniac blog, this year - make sure it's this one.
Yes, I did promise to write about Thumbscrew next (and I will), but all these great pieces of video footage keep showing up on Youtube - I'm not even looking for them - and almost immediately after I posted the "duo stuff" thing last night, I came across something which may be somewhat famous * for all I know, but which I have never seen before: a nearly-fifteen-minute excerpt from a filmed concert in (purportedly) Antwerp in August 1985**, a trio with George Lewis and Mark Dresser. If that sounds as if it could be incredible (and will therefore turn out not to be), well, it actually is.
B. and Lewis have "form" when it comes to this sort of thing: I still remember babbling hysterically about the '82 Pisa trio with Derek Bailey when I first encountered it; once I'd calmed down a bit I posted about the same concert in these very pages... (a little later down the line the same concert - in expanded form, I think - ended up being published on TCF as an official "Braxton Bootleg"). So this is not the only chance to hear the two hornmen in a trio improv setting - although of course it's still great to be able to see them as well. But to be able to watch them interact with Dresser, himself very much still learning how to get to grips with being B's regular bassist at this point: that's just invaluable and man, the clip doesn't disappoint in the slightest. There is an absolutely astonishing bass solo towards the end of the clip in which MD sounds at times as if he is two or even three musicians playing simultaneously - it's great to see Lewis still moving to the pulse of the music throughout, despite having laid out at this point. This is obviously the kind of little "cherry on top" which you can never get from an audio recording. (B. himself, mind you, appears to be locked away in his own expansive world even while Lewis is grooving.)
The fact that the performance was professionally filmed would tend to suggest that there must be more of this footage, and in due course I shall have a hunt for it. In the meantime, for all I know everyone else - anyone who might even accidentally find themselves reading these lines - may well already be familiar with this excerpt, but if you're not - do yourself a huge favour and check it out at once!
***
Further confusion surrounds the "ringer" clip from the Braxton/Frith duo recording (as previously described in the fifth para of yesterday's post). I already warned that Soundohm's samples for that release include a clip from something completely different; when I'd finished writing - just before I was gifted the trio video raved about above - I discovered that the Youtube index for the fifth piece on the album is actually this same "intruder clip", lasting just over three minutes. Quite clearly it has nothing to do with the duo concert: even though the core recording sounds as it might involve live playing over a tape or similar (which is what led me to think it might possibly be an Echo Echo Mirror House excerpt), there is a live drummer on this and a live trumpeter (not THB) too. What's more, a quick check of the timings for the official release reveals that the last section of the music is just over eight minutes long. God knows what happened here, or which website originated the mistake (and how the hell nobody noticed that what they were posting as a duo recording couldn't possibly be anything of the sort) - but just be aware. I have not been able to find the fifth segment of the duo concert on Youtube yet, although the first four chunks are all there. It's not the first time I've had to explain some anomaly with a recording posted on that channel, is it? Dear oh dear. Never mind, four out of five is still decidedly better than nothing at all...
* Calling a creative music event "famous" is a bit like calling a politician honest - not a literal contradiction in terms, but not far off...
** The clip itself, which for once has actually got plenty of views - more than thirteen thousand in nine years - has no information with it, not even the personnel, so that this sort of thing had to get sorted out in the comments section (as is so often the case). Viewer Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg provided the missing details, though not the exact date. I wonder if I have this recording in my collection of tapes..?
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