Improvise Men

Let's finish off September with this fantastic 40th anniversary show featuring 2/5ths of one of my favorite groups of all time.

One of these gents passed back in January, but the other is still thankfully going strong.

The band of which they were part for decades is one that I've seen play live maybe more than any other.

This set, a duo improvisation in four segments, was taped exactly 40 years ago tonight and features the two of them in total telepathic synchronization.

I even delved into the microfilms to figure out where this happened, as the precise venue of the performance was never specified in all the years this has circulated.

This one documents the period in the late 1970s when The Art Ensemble of Chicago was on a break and these cats teamed up for a few records with Johnny Dyani and Don Pullen, among others.

What can be said? When you get the opportunity to hear the meshing of mammoth musical minds like those of Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye extemporizing like this, you seize the moment.

Joseph Jarman & Famoudou Don Moye

RC Auditorium

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan USA

9.30.1979

01 untitled improvisation #1

02 untitled improvisation #2

03 untitled improvisation #3

04 untitled improvisation #4

Total time: 1:04:41

Joseph Jarman - reeds, flutes, vocals & percussion

Famoudou Don Moye - drums & percussion

looks like off-air FM reels of indeterminate origin

slightly retracked & repaired by EN, September 2019
403 MB FLAC/September 2019 archive link

Joseph Jarman left us in January, so take this as a humble tribute to a lifetime musical warrior for the ages, OK?

And we sure hope Don Moye lives to be 119 or so, if not longer. Long may he strike objects forcefully.

That about does it for the September to remember; now it's on to an October to bowl y'all over. Stay tuned and enjoy!--J.

                                        9.14.1937 - 1.9.2019

Karlheinz Sight

We'll continue the end-of-September memory lane with this, a 50th anniversary special.

That this footage exists at all is enough of a treat; that NRK-TV in Norway rebroadcasts stuff like this in HD makes it a sumptuous feast indeed.

I haven't posted a video thing in a while, so let's do this.

If you don't know who this guy was, I can't help you and you're gonna need to go get a basic grasp on the music of the last 60 years or so.

When he began in the 1950s, Electronic music barely existed at all, and what there was operated at the absolute fringes.

By the time he passed in 2007, Electronic music had become not just its own, thriving genre with a million different subgenres flourishing, but ideas from it had been integrated across the entire musical spectrum forever.

If you had to trace these developments to one central figure, you'd likely place their impetus at the feet of Karlheinz Stockhausen, perhaps the premier composer in the field of our lifetimes.

What we have today was taped 50 years ago today and tomorrow in Norway, and might be the best visual evidence of him in full Go Mode, leading a small ensemble through two of his most famous compositions.

Karlheinz Stockhausen & Ensemble

Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter

Høvikodden, Norway

9.29+30.1969

Part I (9.29.1969)

01 Kurzwellen (Short Waves)

Part II (9.30.1969)

01 introductory remarks by Karlheinz Stockhausen

02 Es (It)

03 Discussion with Karlheinz Stockhausen and seminar participants

Total time: 57:41 (26:17 + 31:24)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - electronics, shortwave receiver, harmonica

Aloys Kontarsky - piano, shortwave receiver

Harald Bojé - electronium, shortwave receiver

Johannes Fritsch - viola

unidentified - percussion, shortwave receiver

HD FLV files from two consecutive NRK rebroadcasts

998 MB FLV/September 2019 archive link

Imma try to do something tomorrow to close out the month, but I gotta work on that some so we shall see.

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this utterly astonishing hourlong foray into the universe of sound as interpolated by one of our age's most innovative and iconoclastic composers.--J.

8.22.1928 - 12.5.2007

Zorn Free: Naked City Limits

This next bit of late Septembering is all about someone I can't believe I've never covered here.

His birthday was at the beginning of this month, but I saved this for today because this show is turning 30 years old.

I am lucky enough to have seen him play with several of his groups, including the one in this concert twice, and right around the time this was taped too.

It's great that guys like him still exist, now that exploratory jazz stuff is further from the mainstream than Tuvan throatsinging covers of Bulgarian Folk tunes.

He is still going stronger than ever, too. He'll probably form five different bands the day he dies, sometime in the 2100s.

There's something totally uncorruptable and pure about his music, no matter the context... and he's got way more than a few across a 40+ year (and counting) career. 

You get the sense that John Zorn is someone who's never played a note or written a composition he didn't want to play or write.

Which in today's shitscape -- where no one does anything unless it's maximally profitable, with all the risk socialized and the reward privatized -- is all kinds of admirable, if you ask me.

He turned 66 on September 2nd, but (like I mentioned) this show -- featuring perhaps his most star-studded and devastating band -- was taped exactly 30 years ago today in France so I decided to do it now instead of earlier.

John Zorn's Naked City

Festival Musica 1989

Ancienne Laiterie Centrale

Strasbourg, France

9.28.1989

01 FM intro

02 Batman

03 Graveyard Shift

04 FM announcement

05 Latin Quarter

06 James Bond Theme

07 Reanimator

08 The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

09 FM announcement

10 Rapid Shave

11 Snagglepuss

12 Lonely Woman

13 Surfer Girl

14 Church Key

15 John Zorn announcement

16 Igneous Ejaculation

17 Igneous Ejaculation II

18 John Zorn announcement

19 Jazz Snob Eat Shit

20 John Zorn announcement

21 Chinatown

22 A Shot In the Dark

23 You Will Be Shot

24 John Zorn announcement

25 The Cincinnati Kid

26 Saigon Pickup

27 John Zorn announcement

28 N.Y. Flat Top Box

29 band introductions

30 FM outro

Total time: 1:03:23

John Zorn - alto saxophone

Wayne Horvitz - keyboards

Bill Frisell - guitar

Fred Frith - bass

Joey Baron - drums

digital FM capture of a 2015 France Musique rebroadcast 

384 MB FLAC/September 2019 archive link

This one has all the Naked City features: the apocalyptic outbursts in the middle of serene film tunes, the cartoon versions of various soundtracks from TV, all of it.

I left the France Musique announcer in because he doesn't blab over the music and keeps his commentary short and tout suite.

I'll be right back in 24 hours or so with yet more grist for your Satanic mills, and maybe even again in 48 for additional thrills if you eat your veggies.

Today, however, is the day to appreciate the alto madman we know as John Zorn, so do get next to this incendiary hour of Naked City-scape in the Maestro's honor... or you might end up on the next NC album cover!--J.

As You Like It: Dub Shakespeare

All righty, let's finish out September with a whole weekend full of awesome, wanna?

We'll kick it off by righting a wrong I muffed a few months back, when I failed to recognize that the show I was posting to celebrate today's birthday boy's longtime musical accomplice was indeed recorded on today's birthday boy's birthday. Which is today.

I should have held that one for today and posted this one then, but what does it matter? Bit of blog dyslexia there, please me forgive.

What matters is I did one half of this duo in May, and the other half hits today! Even the slow kids such as I are allowed to blog these days. I dunno what this world is coming to, honestly.

So yes, today. This guy, though. One of the most legendary on his chosen instrument ever to walk among us mortals.

He and his drummer pal. Are they the most down-deepest rhythm section still thumping? I'd say so.

You listen to this tape here, you see these cats are still making wholly challenging, uncompromised music whilst many of their contemporaries, across all genres, are gearing up for tonight's Grampa's Greatest Hits show at the Old Age Casino and Resort.

How many records have they and he anchored? Can humans count that high? Unquantifiable, they are.

These guys are probably the principal guys behind bringing the sounds of Dub that "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby pioneered into the realm of live performance.

At the center -- and the bottom -- of it all? Why it's bass supremo Robbie Shakespeare, turning 66 years young today.

We'll pop off the serious festivities with this wild 86+ minutes of Dubtastic shredding, taped in Italy and showcasing the heroic Sly & Robbie rhythm section holding things down for some badass jazzers.

Sly & Robbie + Nils Petter Molvær

"Il Volo De Jazz"

Teatro Zancanaro

Sacile, Italy

11.19.2016

01 Solid Ether

02 Hot You Hot

03 Bully Stick

04 Kakonita

05 Silk Worm

06 Darker

07 Land Far Away 

08 Satta Massagana

09 Ligotage

10 bass solo + vocal improvisation

11 You Don’t Love Me

12 band introductions

Total time: 1:26:18

disc break goes after Track 06

Robbie Shakespeare - bass & vocals

Sly Dunbar - drums

Nils Petter Molvær - trumpet & electronics

Eivind Aarset - guitar & electronics

Vladislav Delay - keyboards & sampler

digital, off-air FM capture of the October 2017 RAI3 broadcast, remastered by Tom Phillips & Lewojazz
dropout at the end of Track 05 repaired by EN, September 2019

543 MB FLAC/September 2019 archive link

Holy crap, did I just post a performance from this decade?? I must be slipping... next thing you know, I'll be acknowledging that any music existed at all after 1985.

OK? I will return tomorrow and for the next few days to end the Septemberings in fine style. There may even be German Electronic music that predates the Rock era.

For today, let's get you Dubbing to this slinky and slamming tape, intended to celebrate the birthday of bass deity Robbie Shakespeare, born this day in 1953!--J.