Indulge me

 

It's my birthday, and I'll...

1. ... ramble on about someone other than B. for a change if I want to:

I mentioned back in January an occasional group with the maddeningly search-resistant moniker Jones Jones. Larry Ochs, Mark Dresser, Vladimir Tarasov... three players with a common connection to B., as it happens*, but no prior history of playing with each other that I know of. These guys get together every so often at festivals, and given that (to use a martial-arts metaphor) each of them is, like, a sixth- or seventh-dan black belt in his own right, when they combine... the level of musicianship on display is just ridiculous. Anyway, they finally put out their first studio recording last year; it was actually recorded more than three years ago (and mastered in 2021 by that man Myles Boisen). I have had my eye on this ever since just before it got released, and finally bought it. It is... very highly recommended to any serious fan of improvised music! Well worth the wait.

At the same time I bought the oddly-named** Poof, the most recent album by Henry Threadgill('s) Zooid. I had missed this one, somehow; I didn't even realise until very recently that the group was still recording, as HT has long since adapted the group's blueprint for use in his larger ensembles, and if anything I rather figured that he had said everything with the quintet that he wanted to say. This one doesn't have the same quality of thrilling surprise that the few first Zooid albums evinced, but as always, there's plenty of meat on these bones and I will keep coming back. [I have also been given, as a birthday present, the new book Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music, by Threadgill with Brent Hayes Edwards, and I'm sure I'm going to enjoy reading this over what remains of the summer.]

2. ... choose now to confess / retract something if I want to:

Years ago, in a moment of - arrogance? pique? - I said somewhere*** in these pages that although any musician who had worked with B. for any length of time knew more about his music than I did, I considered my views to "outrank" everyone else's (by virtue of the number of listening hours I'd clocked up). This was complete nonsense, of course: even if it had been "right", it would have been quite unnecessary to say it; and it wasn't right anyway, so I really had no business claiming anything of the sort. As far as I can (vaguely) remember, I may have been trying to make some sort of misguided point about professional critics and/or internet experts (who would try to exploit B's reputation as difficult to understand, in order to score easy "credit points" by making glib comments which they didn't think anyone could challenge), but whatever the reason, I was completely wrong to say it. Graham Lock... Francesco Martinelli... Art Lange... Hugo de Craen... there will be plenty of others, some of whom I have probably never even heard of, but that doesn't mean I know more than they do. Sorry everybody. I mean - for years now, I would no longer have stood by this claim... but I never actually retracted it, did I? I wish to do so now. I take it back.

3. ... continue to plug my mate's band(s) if I want to:

When I last wrote about Atanase's continued musical projects - or rather those in which he is involved - a first public live performance was approaching. Since then, of course, that has taken place - and there have been some follow-up events too, albeit these were primarily for projects which don't involve him, at least not as a core member. I have seen some video clips from both occasions, all of which are worth checking out. He and his friends have their own label, Toysop Records, with its own Youtube channel (to accompany the soundcloud page as previously linked), as well as Facebook and Instagram for those who use such things (social media, me? ahem), and snippets of live video are available from both the GRB3 / Georgina Beastly performances on June 3rd, and from the more recent event on June 23rd - where Two Professors and Dynamo 81 played, both of which had guest appearances including by Avto (on shenai and tenor sax respectively). From small beginnings... A. confirms that even people he had never met before came up afterwards and expressed their appreciation for the music. "Children in (the) audience danced", he tells me,  "always a good sign". Can't say fairer than that :-D

4. ... ramble on self-indulgently about my continued efforts to collect B's albums if I want to:

Having fairly recently lamented my near-miss with a copy of Anthony Braxton's Charlie Parker Project, I did manage to pick one up remarkably cheaply within the last month. (This was the original edition, not the remaster - with liners comprising an interview in English, and separate short essays in French and German, 

an approach which may have seemed quite natural to a polyglot Swiss producer... but which was apparently abandoned in due course.) Of course, having written quite extensively about this album earlier this year, I didn't feel a need to play it again more than once, but it's still a great pleasure to hear at any time. [Incidentally, I did eventually manage to hear some of the digital files from the later monster box set, too, and now realise that "Hot House", which opens the original album, didn't in fact begin with B's solo at all. The source tape must have been damaged or something, but in any case they eventually were able to restore it, and the full version begins with Dameron's written theme, as one would expect. That well-known count-in and in medias res beginning constitute a fiction which reminds the listener: just because something was recorded live and has not been overdubbed, that doesn't mean you are necessarily hearing it the way it was played#.]

I also finally got hold of an album I'd perused in the discography more times than I could count, but had never previously even heard: October Meeting 87 2, which features a Gerry Hemingway-led "supergroup" in which B. was one of eleven players on a piece called "Second Line Ratoon". The line-up for this project was so distinguished as to be just silly, but even so, there is no difficulty in picking B's contributions out of it. (I will write about this excellent album some other time.)

Naturally I do check eBay pretty regularly, although not as often as I might; I'm sure I miss things, but within the last couple of days I checked there just in time to snag five more CDs which needed a good home. Technically I already "had" all of these, though not in proper hard copy form, and that remains where it's at, ultimately. Three of these were solo releases, as it happens; after all these years, I will at long last have a proper copy of For Alto (having narrowly missed a copy in London more than two decades ago, and having later embarked upon the Braxtothon without even stopping to think about the fact that I was missing a key recording). Of course I have had a rip for years now, and I did eventually write about the album; still, it feels rather significant that I have finally, finally plugged that gaping hole in the actual collection. Copies don't turn up very often, and I was pleased with the price I paid for it. (Actually I can hardly believe that nobody else bid on it.) - the other two are 19 [Solo] Compositions, 1988 and Wesleyan (12 Altosolos) 1992, both of which I only had as digital files.

I did say five, and of the two which are not solo recordings, one of them sort of is: the copy I secured carries the original ("erroneous"##) title Compositions 99, 101, 107 & 139 - although these days the album is better known by the (rather unwieldy) title Four Compositions (Solo, Duo & Trio) 1982/1988. (Just last month, this one was on my "most wanted" list; I've only heard it for the first time within the last couple of weeks, and now I've acquired an actual CD.) The true outlier is another first-edition CD better known these days in its reissued, remastered form: Performance (Quartet) 1979 with Anderson, Lindberg and Barker. Delighted to give a good home to all of these! [I also missed out on one:  Anthony Braxton Live, which is to say, the CD edition (on RCA/ Bluebird) of the album better known to most friendly experiencers as The Montreux / Berlin Concerts. I have to admit that until I was bidding on this item, I didn't realise that it's not actually the complete album: it includes the quartet tracks from both Montreux and Berlin, for sure, but these recordings comprise only sides 1-3 of the original double vinyl. Side 4 - the creative orchestra piece, the original version of Comp. 63 - is missing. I wonder whether all the other bidders - who pushed this up way past what I was prepared to pay for it - knew that?]

***

That's that, for now... hey, but while I'm at it, this is already the third-most-productive year in the blog's history, believe it or not. Barring some unforeseen disaster, third will soon become second; and although I don't anticipate overtaking 2008, who knows what might happen now that McC is back on board? I certainly have no intention of stopping, now that I'm back up and running...

* Nobody coming here will need an explanation of Dresser's connection to the maestro, obviously. Ochs - to the best of my knowledge - only played with B. as part of ROVA; Tarasov, in a trio for which the de facto leader was composer-pianist György Szabados (who himself had played with B. prior to this)

** Americans who don't know much British slang - and that term is fairly outdated slang these days anyway - may not find it such a jarringly-odd title. HT probably just meant it as a sort of onomatopoeic reference to the cloud on the cover (?). Then again, why am I assuming I have any idea what goes on that head? Threadgill's mode of thinking is not something I could ever look to reproduce.

*** I honestly can't remember where or when, and I'm reluctant to go looking for it, but I know that I said it. Even at the time I had my doubts about coming out with it; but someone had probably challenged me on something recently and I was feeling bullish. I regret that now; this was never supposed to be any sort of pissing contest. 

# Speaking as a Zappa fan, this concept is far from new to me (though it's easy to forget it). The You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore series proudly proclaimed at the outset "no overdubs" and encouraged listeners to believe that we were hearing the music exactly as it was performed. FZ changed his mind about that, though, relatively early in the project: true, there are no overdubs (except in one very specific instance, which is clearly flagged up), but later volumes in the series often included recordings which had been heavily edited. Always read the small print, in these cases...

## - per Jason Guthartz. Other than the fact that this title lists the pieces in opus number order rather than track list order, the "erroneous" aspect is that Comp. 99 doesn't exist, being a series, not a single work. (In any case Herr Uehlinger appears to have agreed that the album's title didn't quite work, as he duly changed it the following year.)