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.