Paul Plimley, Joe McPhee, Lisle Ellis
(photo: Joël Gélys, aus hat ART CD 6162, 1995)
Fifty years after the end of World War II, neo-nazi skindheads kill gypsies in Austria, terrorist poison thousands with nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system, and a black family finds a burning cross on their lawn in a community near where I live in New York State. These are but a few isolated examples to be sure, but they represent symptoms of a problem. Perhaps the concept of freedom itself is the problem. Perhaps its too vague, too ill defined. Perhaps it needs qualification; freedom from what, for what, for whom? Once qualified, questions of rights, responsibilities, dicipline and control arise. Perhaps freedom has to be viewed with a kind of peripheral vision in order not to be seen at all, like an optical illusion or love. Just when you think you have it firmly in focus it jumps, changes and becomes something else entirely.
SWEET FREEDOM – NOW WHAT? (The answer is the question!) Each answer invites a new question, and when the questions stop, we are in big trouble! The challenges and the dangers are considerable once freedom has been acheived, but failure to question and challenge invites disaster. Clearly any consideration of the subject of freedom can not be so narrowly limited to race or gender or even music. Freedom, whatever it is, like Max Roach’s timeless protest, is an on-going process, a work-in-progress which demands constant engagement!
~ Joe McPhee, March 31, 1995, Poughkeepsie, NY, Liner Notes zu „Sweet Freedom – Now What?“, hat ART CD 6162, 1995 – die beiden schreibfehler sind wieder nicht meine.
Zum Vorfall mit dem brennenden Kreuz hat sich Judith Butler ausführlich geäussert in „Excitable Speech, A Politics of the Performative“ (NY 1997, deutsch in der edition suhrkamp 2006 unter dem irreführenden Titel „Hass spricht“).
When they began For Bill Dixon II in a second set, McPhee proposed that he start solo on fluegelhorn, and from the first he managed to evoke that haunting „music without notes“ for which Dixon is known, moving over the full range of the horn, from a whisper to a scream.
~ John F. Szwed, Liner Notes zu „The October Revolution“, Evidence ECD 22166-2, 1996
Die folgenden Passagen stammen aus der „Invisible Jukebox“, The Wire #294, August 2008, p. 20-23 – Dan Warburton hat für McPhee Musik aufgelegt und sich mit ihm unterhalten.
[MINGUS, „A Foggy Day“ von Pithecantropus Erectus]: [Instantly] That’s Charles Mingus. Pithecantropus Erectus. That’s the one that took me away… took me to another planet. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. „A Foggy Day“ keeps popping up, but with all these things happening around it. I was like, you can do that? […]
[ORNETTE, „Bird Food“ von Change of the Century] […] In 1963 I was in the army, and I had a Saturday off, but I didn’t have enough time to go home so I went to Birdland, and there I saw Don Cherry playing in the quartet with Sonny Rollins. When I heard the sound of the pocket trumpet I said, that’s it. Next year I bought a pocket trumpet in Germany.
[…]
I was so enamoured with Ornette that I made a watercolour portrait of him which I hung in my locker in the army in Würzburg, Germany. That got me into some trouble, with guys asking why I had a picture of Ornette Coleman there instead of a naked woman! [Laughs] […]
[SUNNY MURRAY, „Black Art“ von Sonny’s Time Now] […] [Stopped by Ayler’s saxophone] That’s the sound that made me want to play tenor. I borrowed one from a friend in 1968 and the next day I took it to a club. I had no idea how to play it, and the guys I’d been playing trumpet with let me sit in, but when they heard what I was doing they pulled me aside and said, please don’t come back with that! [Laughs] I was schooled on the trumpet, but no on saxophone. But every Sunday there was a jam session, and I’d go there in mechanic’s overalls, with a white shirt, a big bowtie and big round sunglasses, and when they heard what I was doing they said, oh my God!
[…]
[WARBURTON: We’ve just celebrated the 40th anniversary of May 1968. What are your thoughts on that whole revolutionary period, 40 years on?]
I thought it was essential, and now I think it’s really sad that the world is in such extraordinarily bad shape and I don’t see anything like the same thing from students today. […]
[CLIFFORD THORNTON, „Huey Is Free“, von The Panther and the Lash] […] I first met Clifford in 1963 when I was in the army. I didn’t want to play trumpet, I wanted to learn about computers and get into electronics. They said you’re qualified for this, but there’s no room in the school for you, but have a place open for a trumpet player. I said, oh no. They said, in that case you’ll be in the infantry marching band behind a tank. I said I’ll play trumpet! [Laughs] So I went to band training, which was very intensive, learning harmony and theory, playing every day, and it was the best decision I ever made. In 1964 I was transferred to Germany, but Clifford said, don’t worry Joe, no matter where you go I’m going to be there too. And he showed up in Würzburg. Clifford was the first person who showed me a piece of written music: Miles Davis’s „Four“.
You hear that valve trombone? I was with him when he bought it, in Würzburg. I bought my pocket cornet the same day. It’s a very special trombone, compact size. Then in 1971 we had a concert at WBAI in New York, the one that’s released on HatHut, and I invited Clifford, who was teaching at Wesleyan at the time. But he came with a baritone horn. I said, ‚Where’s the trombone?‘ He said somebody stole it out of his car. Well, in 1979 I was in New York and went into a music shop for used instruments and I said, I want to find a valve trombone, and the guy’s wiping the counter very nonchalantly and said, well I got this German model. I saw the nickel plated bell, I thought, that looks familiar. The case was upstairs. I gave my friend Craig Johnson some money and said, ‚If the case is maroon with grey around I want to take it, because it’s Clifford’s horn.‘ I looked at the bell and it said Würzburg. I was the only person other than Clifford who could identify that horn. So I took it. Clifford was living in Geneva at the time. I called him and said, ‚Does the number 872 mean anything to you?‘ He said, ‚No why should it?‘ I said, ‚Because that’s the number that was on your trombone.‘ He said, ‚How do you know?‘ I said, ‚Because I’m holding it!‘ [Laughs] I’ve been playing that trombone ever since.
[JEAN-FRANCOIS PAUVROS & GABY BIZIEN, „No Man’s Land“, von No Man’s Land] […] In 1975 I had a tour with a synthesizer player, John Snyder. We were travelling with an ARP 2600, which nobody ever did, playing Ornette Coleman tunes in the Alps. We came back to Paris and a friend of mine arranged a concert at the American Center. We played Albert Ayler’s „The Truth Is Marching In“ and I had this hooded costume on with the sax sticking out of my mouth, and they had rags hung over the wall and I stepped out from behind them and began to play. [Guitarist] Raymond Boni was in the audience, and he told me later he knew at that moment I was the person he wanted to play with for the rest of his life! That’s how it started.
[…]
[PAULINE OLIVEROS, „Bog Road“, von No Mo] […] That’s about when I started working with John Snyder. I met him in 1972, but we didn’t record until 1974. What I liked about John was that he wasn’t a keyboard player, he was a sound sculptor. He was a German teacher, not a musician. He couldn’t play a melody if he wanted to. Well eventually he did, when we played something called „Voices“ at Radio France, but because the synthesizer was analogue, every time the voltage changed, the pitch changed. So we had these strange parallel harmonies. […]
Po Music was something I got from reading Dr Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking, how you can use a fixed set of ideas as a starting point to move to something else, something you didn’t set out to discover in the first place. Like you’re driving north and you come to a hole in the road. Yo know you’re heading north but for some time you have to go south. And you discover something else along the way. That’s what the Po concept was all about. That’s the way I tried to present it to musicians. All those theories are fine if you make good music from them. If not you can just throw them in the basked. It’s the end result that’s important.
[MORTON FELDMAN, „Patterns in a Chromatic Field“, von Patterns in a Chromatic Field, HatHut] […]
[WARBURTON: The story goes that Werner Uehlinger started HatHut just to release your music.]
Craig Johnson and I had released four recordings, and Uehlinger at that time was a collector. He worked for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and they had offices in New Jersey. He was over on business and wanted to meet Craig and me. So we had dinner together and he asked if we had anything else. I told him there was more recorded at the Nation Time session but we didn’t have the money to put it out. He heard it, and said maybe I could do something with it. He drove home that night and got so caught up in the music he got lost! He called up next morning and said he wanted it.
Black Magic Man is from the same concert. He put that out, and then several solo recordigns. Then he said, we can’t have a label with just one person on it. So in 1977 there was a solo recording of Steve Lacy live in Basel. I was on that same programme. I played solo before him. He said to me before the gig, ‚Would you like to play together?‘ At the time I was blowing my brains out all the time, full force, all like that. And when I heard Steve play I thought, oh God, what have I gotten myself into? What instrument am I going to play? I had my trumpet, my tenor and my soprano. I chose soprano. What a stupid thing to do – he’s the soprano genius! What am I doing playing soprano with Steve Lacy? It was recorded, but I didn’t listen to it at all for 30 years. I finally played it again when Steve died. And, you know, I didn’t embarass myself that badly.
[WARBURTON: You were vice president of HatHut, weren’t you?]
Yeah, from 1981 until 85. Then it got to be too much. You know, all these musicians who wanted something out on the label and thought I could be some kind of influence. But Mr. Uehlinger was the President and he chose everything. It was like, I like your ideas but I’ll do what I want. It was time for me to leave.
[…]
[KEN VANDERMARK, „Goodbye Tom B“, von Free Jazz Classics 1 & 2] It’s my piece. Is it André Jaume? No, it’s Ken Vandermark. „Goodbye Tom B“. He’s playing it like me! I heard him play this piece in 1994 with his group. [Listens] He really got me. Ken called me up and that call started a whole bunch of things in Chicago. It led to the Brötzmann Tentet. I’d never played with Peter before. We’d played on the same programme in 1977, but I was playing solo and Peter was playing with Han Bennink. We never played together until the Tentet.
[WARBURTON: The Chicago connection is still important for you.]
Oh yeah, there’s a trio with Michael Zerang and Fred Lonberg-Holm called Survival Unit III which is really good. There’s one recording out on an Italian label [Don’t Postpone Joy!, Rai Trade 2007], and we’re working on another one.
[…]
Lacys Hälfte des 1977er Solo-Konzertes ist auf Hat unter dem Titel „Clinkers“ erschienen, es war damals die sechste LP, die das Label herausbrachte. Die jüngste Ausgabe war hatOLOGY 546 von 2000 und ist vergriffen.
Eine weitere CD der Survival Unit III scheint bisher nicht erschienen zu sein, es sind aber auf dem Brötzmann 5CD-Set „3 Nights in Oslo“ (Smalltown Superjazz STSJ197, 2010) mehrere „bands within the band“ zu hören, darunter auch die Survival Unit III. McPhee ist zudem im Duo mit Ken Vandermark und als Teil des Trombone Choirs (mit Jeb Bishop, Johannes Bauer und Per-Ake Holmlander) zu hören, weitere kleine Formationen auf den CD2-4 sind Sonore (Mats Gustafsson, Brötzmann und Vandermark), Zerang im Duo mit Paal Nilssen-Love, Bauer im Duo mit Holmlander sowie Bishop im Duo mit Nilssen-Love. Auf CD1 und CD5 ist das Tentet+1 zu hören.
--
"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba