Who else in free jazz was writing pieces in 7/8 in 1964? (Dixon maybe? Andrew Hill was working in odd meters now and again, but he wasn't apart of that crowd.) Odd metered-rhythms and regular grooves, non-western instruments, clearly discernable chord structures--all that and extended techniques, atonality mixed with discernable melodic improvisation, rhythm section independence...
As ragged as the music sounds--even on the first quartet album, which is, again, probably the best total document to hear him in--you can't say that it's "winging it" like, say, Byron Allen. It's probably more heavily structured (that is, pre-determined) than Ayler, Ornette, or even late Coltrane, although structure does not equate to logic and the "impression of form" in this instance.
I think part of what makes Giuseppi's music so ineffable is that, for all the thought that clearly went into it, it feels even less "together" a lot of the time than completely improvised music of a similar vintage and place. The early ESPs have this quality to me of dropping space in-between the musicians--like how clear Peacock is on
Spiritual Unity, or how distant Sunny Murray sounds--but that first Logan ESP, I swear, sounds more compartmentalized and disjunct (acoustically and, then, "psychoacoustically") than almost anything I've hear from that era.
If I were going to play bad, bad armchair analyst, I'd say that maybe it's a reflection of Giuseppi's alleged lunacy, but that's always reductive and something makes me think twice. 1/2 of it is that he worked with Bostic and studied at the NEC (I'd be really interested in knowing what he studied there and, for that matter, when/whether or not he finished), the other is that Dixon clearly holds him in high regard. Whatever it is, it's different.
As far as technique is concerned, Logan's wind playing is
totally naif-like--but so much so that it goes past sounding fraudulent to me and into the realm of intentional extremeness. He's
super sharp and his tone is harsh--like lack of control harsh. His flute playing is an overblowing nightmare to the extreme. (I'd love for a wind player to chime in here and take a look at how hard it is to execute some of Giuseppi's phrases, at least in terms of dexterity and stamina.) At the same time, it's so consistent, controlled, and weirdly songllike that there's
something there; it's anti-Arthur Doyle--similarly "primitive" sounding, but completely unblustery and contained.
As far as Giuseppi's "help"... I really hope he can get back on his feet well enough to get a career going fast. I'd hate to count on this story disappearing because people realize he isn't Chet Baker or something, then have him recede into the shadows again. Maybe he can, maybe he can't cut like the young cats, and there are people now with skills and,
sometimes, ideas to match. Still, I think Giuseppi's a resource because of (1) the history and (2) the fact that his ideas are probably still way over many-a-modern head. Hopefully this won't be taken as a token thing, hopefully he can still do something crazy and out of nowhere, and hopefully the scene is big enough--it
better be big enough, because I am so
fucking bored sometimes.
Edited by ep1str0phy, 20 January 2009 - 02:49 AM.
