Friday, July 12, 2024

Thread Brigades



Henry Threadgill Society Situation Dance Band - Dance Ghost, Dance

We'll kick off the weekend with this incredible facemelter of a concert -- it was taped 27 years ago today in The Hague -- and its anniversary.

I've been wanting to cover this aggregation since forever, but all the shows that circulate are missing the song titles, which in my obsessive, detail-driven approach to this stuff I loathe.

Case in point: this show circulated without the last tune for almost 20 years!

Thanks to that good old fashioned know-who, I was able to contact Jazzrita Jakob -- one of the superstars of the ROIO firmament -- whom I knew could supply the missing 10 minutes and 51 seconds of fun!

AFAIK this ensemble has toured twice... once in 1988 and again in 1997, from which this performance comes.

And what a performance it is. If I had to describe this music, I would brand it the crossroads of New Orleans Funk and the Albert Ayler-verse.

Particularly notable are violinist Leroy Jenkins and vocalist Aster Aweke, who shows up somewhere in the territory between Yoko Ono and Linda Sharrock on several of the songs.

Overall this is 67 minutes of mayhem that should get summer off to a sizzling start wherever you are.

Of course I've covered Henry Threadgill before as a part of his seminal trio Air, but this is so different from those guys that I figured let's do it.

So let's do it!


Henry Threadgill Society Situation Dance Band
North Sea Jazz Festival
Tuinpavijoen
Den Haag, The Netherlands 
7.12.1997

01 Bell and Pounds
02 Last Mingo
03 Everybody Will Hang By the Leg
04 False Face
05 Dance Ghost, Dance

Total time: 1:07:11

Henry Threadgill - alto saxophone, flute & percussion
Ted Daniel - trumpet
Stanton Davis - trumpet
Osvaldo Melendez - trombone
Wayne Goodman - trombone
Bob Stewart - tuba
Rolando Briseno - alto + soprano saxophones & flute
Booker T. Williams - tenor saxophone
John Stubblefield - tenor saxophone
Leroy Jenkins - violin
Charles Burnham - violin
Jason Kao Hwang - violin & viola
Michelle Kinney - cello
Akua Dixon-Turre - cello
Tony Cedras - accordion & harmonium
Brandon Ross - guitar
Stomu Takeshi - bass
J.T. Lewis - drums
Roberto Maldonado - percussion
Aster Aweke - vocals (Tracks 03 & 04)

Tracks 01-04: ggln seed of a likely master off-air FM cassette
Track 05: Lewojazz's digital capture, likely of an off-air FM broadcast
retracked w/announcer eliminated/titles corrected, edited, denoised & slightly remastered by EN, July 2024
485 MB FLAC/direct link


I'll be back in a little less than a week with a tasty milestone birthday for one of the primary architects of Oblivion.

But in the interim, don't hesitate to implicate Mr. Threadgill and his orchestra into your weekend dance card!--J.