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Mirage--Lester Bowie


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If you can find Amina Claudine Myers' SONG FOR MOTHER E (Leo)... as Jim would say, carpe!

Also, in the spirit of six degrees etc. -- Amina makes incredibly important contributions to this Frank Lowe recording.

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DIW also released some live shots (from SOUNDSCAPE) by this same group. Not easy to find, but worth the hunt.

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I heard Fresh in real time, the first Frank Lowe I had heard (thank you Arista-Freedom, easy-enough-ish accessability), and "weird" was not at all what came to mind then. Sounded like some frisky guys really playing, still does.

Just curious, Jim--had you followed Lowe up to that point (live or on record)? It sounds like such an abrupt turn to me. With the exception of episodes of Noah Howard's Live at the Village Vanguard, Lowe doesn't really sound like he does on Fresh before '74. It's different than, say, Marion Brown or Archie Shepp, both of whom sort of transitioned into more melodic (but also, for the most part, more subdued) playing after the fire music heyday--Lowe plays more melodically after the early 70's, but with this sort of blotchy abandon that is more akin to Braxton or Roscoe than an Ellingtonian horn.

For all suggestions that the music went into severe crisis mode after the unleashing of Ayler and late Coltrane, I definitely feel this vibe that "something's happening" on a lot of early 70's free music--and it's all at once geographical, generational, and conceptual. Even on supposedly marginal stuff like Fresh or, again, the Bowie Muse albums, there's this sense that doors once blown open raise a lot of interesting questions about residence, property, and sanctuary.

I don't really remember when I heard Frank Lowe first. probably late 70ies or early 8oies with Billy Bang. I may have picked up Fresh later. I don't get the marginal thing either especially for the Bowies; For me what ever Bowie did was at it. And i got the muse as soon as they were available.

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"weird" is not a negative term in my lexicon, fyi.

also, though it's an expensive set, the missing link between the earlier Black Beings/Exchange torrents and Fresh is heard on Out Loud.


As with a lot of things, the shift wasn't turn-on-a-dime abrupt, it just wasn't on record until posthumously.


And I want ep1str0phy and Sngry to edit all my articles from here on out.

Edited by clifford_thornton
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LOL--Jim has seniority and the chops-

In terms of the Fresh/Bowie Muse discussion, this does raise the most interesting boring question in the world--i.e., how does the availability of documentation affect the reception of an artist's work, and (pt. 2) isn't availability a two-sided thing?

Naturally, guys who got to this music decades after the fact have the benefit of "calling" these huge evolutionary arcs that may or may not have been evident in real time, but (in a recursive sort of way) the nature of this analysis hinges on whatever documentation the listener has in his or her possession at a given time.

I wonder if something like Fast Last! gets "marginalized" because, naturally, we now have the conceptually related The Great Pretender more widely available and in better fidelity (though I'm not sure if one album is better than the other), not to mention easy access to the staggeringly important early Art Ensemble discs. My favorite Brass Fantasy disc is Twilight Dreams, which completely changed my perspective on how creative and exciting that project could be--but I wouldn't have even heard about it had I not found it in a cutout bin a few years back. Now you can buy it on Amazon for $10.

Fresh was the first Frank Lowe disc I got my hands on, but it was hard for me to "get to" that one first with Black Beings and Duo Exchange readily available back when I was getting into Lowe's music. That being said, was Fresh actually recorded for Freedom? And, if so, since Freedom had an actual distribution system in place, was Lowe thinking that Fresh would get to more people? I wonder if that might something to do with the wider conceptual breadth of that record, though I might just be spinning my wheels.

As a musician, it behooves me to lean on primary resources as a learning tool, but in a much nerdier/academic sense, secondary resource analysis is really interesting. This sort of salvaged the Ratliff Coltrane book for me, in that it's one thing to listen to late Trane with the comfort of time, but it's another thing to read the contemporaneous reactions to that music and be reminded that this was (and still is) a holy war for some people. Charles Moore telling Don Ellis that he "must die" captures a specific race/conceptual divide that I can only understand with cool, objective distance.


Also, Clifford--I take your recommendations 100% seriously, though I have the same reservation as most when it comes to something like Out Loud--I have a hard time rationalizing a purchase like that. It's the same reason I'll never get that NYAQ box, and the same reason why a lot of people didn't get the Ayler box (though I did, but I had more disposable income back then).

I'm sure listening to the Cecil trio track w/Albert Ayler would go a long way toward explaining the development of both of those artists, but it's buried amidst what was <$100 worth of live recordings with the Beaver Harris band, and I know a lot of people couldn't get to that. But then here comes youtube, and it's a whole new world.

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Have you guys read/seen the Lowe DB article? It's reprinted as the liner notes on the AF LP, but I have no idea what's on any CD versions. If not, I can dig it out, scan, and post it.

I don't think "weird" is a negative either, it's just that hearing that record as I did when I did, it didn't seem in any way weird, it just seemed, like I said, frisky. And I was used to frisky music at that time. So it just seemed to me, like cool, more frisky music from more frisky people, that's a good thing.

And to be honest, I found The Flam a little less frisky than Fresh. More energetic, but not as frisky. Frisky, I guess, entails a specific assertion rather than simply an energy of expression. To that end, Decisions In Paradise remains a favorite.

And really, I discovered pretty much all jazz in the 1970s, so I understand how a retro-discovery differs from a real-time one. You can't do anything about that, right? But when people who are older tell you that they feel betrayed by Miles & Wayne & Sonny Rollins & all like that, even now, hey I have to accept it as true to them, even though I can put together a different story about it than they can. I have the luxury of having that distance, they have the luxury of having been there. Either way, life is good.

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Fresh was the first Frank Lowe disc I got my hands on, but it was hard for me to "get to" that one first with Black Beings and Duo Exchange readily available back when I was getting into Lowe's music. That being said, was Fresh actually recorded for Freedom? And, if so, since Freedom had an actual distribution system in place, was Lowe thinking that Fresh would get to more people? I wonder if that might something to do with the wider conceptual breadth of that record, though I might just be spinning my wheels.

Produced by Lowe himself. Alan Bates was "Executive Producer" which could mean anything from putting up the money to serving as the conduit by which Lowe got his session released, I don't know. That term has never had a specific meaning to me.

What strikes me most immediately about that record today (and to some extent then) is how much of a "St. Louis" (that is to say, BAG) record it is in terms of personnel. So I guess the question is what was Lowe doing in that circle at that time that precipitated that being the band, because let's face it, making a record, especially a self-produced record, is as much about social connections as it is business ones. The answer lies in the liners, that Lowe had recently formed a group with Joseph Bowie. It's been my assumption that this was the group that appears on Fresh, or at least the nucleus of it did.

Now if you want to get really speculative, you can ask why THESE guys? Obvious answer is that Memphis is a lot closer to St. Louis than it is to New York, and that New York is full of lonely people, a tough town to really get a solid footing in, so kindred spirits and all that. Not that Lowe wasn't shunned by the harder core NY scene, I don't see any readily available indicator of that, just that he no doubt felt equally at home in either circle.

And finally, here's where it gets real (not cynical, just real) - both Bates through (Arista) Freedom and Cuscuna through Muse were giving a relatively big push to the Mid-Western players. If I've got any survival instincts at all, I'm seeing all this action going on in records if not necessarily in gigs, and hell, I'm wanting to be positioned where the action is if I have any choice at all. All things being equal, everybody can play, so, shit, who's getting the breaks, right? Nothing dishonorable about that at all, that's just being smart about your business.

So there's that, fwiw.

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Fresh was the first Frank Lowe disc I got my hands on, but it was hard for me to "get to" that one first with Black Beings and Duo Exchange readily available back when I was getting into Lowe's music. That being said, was Fresh actually recorded for Freedom? And, if so, since Freedom had an actual distribution system in place, was Lowe thinking that Fresh would get to more people? I wonder if that might something to do with the wider conceptual breadth of that record, though I might just be spinning my wheels.

Produced by Lowe himself. Alan Bates was "Executive Producer" which could mean anything from putting up the money to serving as the conduit by which Lowe got his session released, I don't know. That term has never had a specific meaning to me.

What strikes me most immediately about that record today (and to some extent then) is how much of a "St. Louis" (that is to say, BAG) record it is in terms of personnel. So I guess the question is what was Lowe doing in that circle at that time that precipitated that being the band, because let's face it, making a record, especially a self-produced record, is as much about social connections as it is business ones. The answer lies in the liners, that Lowe had recently formed a group with Joseph Bowie. It's been my assumption that this was the group that appears on Fresh, or at least the nucleus of it did.

Out Loud (actually would have had another title) was recorded for Bates/Freedom first, then shelved and they went back in the studio to record Fresh. Both versions would have used some material from the Memphis Four - would be interesting to compare the originally-intended album and what exists as Fresh.

Bowie is on the Out Loud sessions, and Lowe had also sat in with the AEC by that time (apparently). Lowe is interesting for being at the crossroads/confluence of the relocated AACM, BAG, Bay Area free improvisers, and the post-Coltrane NYC milieu, at both a personal and aesthetic level - kind of a microcosmic figure for how streams were converging at the time. Definitely the Memphis/St. Louis connection is worthwhile but Lowe also spent time out west and had tried New York before (Sun Ra experience, apparently). So he was somewhat itinerant for a while.

Edited by clifford_thornton
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FWIW, Clifford, that AEC + Frank Lowe (and Braxton, too, is on that session) is "around" and accessible.

Something that Clifford said in passing in the midst of a discussion of Mal Waldron really reignited my interest in music of this vintage--something about having some attachment (?) to these years/this era. It's interesting in that albums like Fresh, Rope-a-Dope, Fast Last!, etc. are simultaneously indications of the music in transition and "sites" of their own. There's a sound to these recordings that is definitely more concrete than the cataclysmic music of early free jazz but not yet set in the way that a lot of 80's creative music was.

The version of "Lonely Woman" on Fast Last!, for example, is something that could have only happened around that time--the arrangement is just too diffuse and deconstructed to be read as an earnest Ornettian artifact, and there's a detachment there as a result. The closest "thing" to Ornette is Hemphill's alto, but it's relegated to these ghostlike obbligatos. At the same time, the orchestration is juxtaposed against these prototypical, immeasurably deep Bowie vocalisms, and it's clear that you're listening to music that is once primordially serious and profoundly conversational (both literally and figuratively). In pithier terms, I can't remember the last time I heard something like this that wasn't overtly referencing the AACM ethos in some way--in a (sloppy) quantum sense, it's like the minute like this music happened, it became an edifice that had to be scaled in some way.

Returning to some thoughts above, I don't think it would be possible to look at The Music in this way without the benefit of historical distance. The dominant historical narrative is that there wasn't much "there" there when it came to jazz in the post-60's/pre-Marsalis area--this is bullshit, as many here know, but I feel like there wasn't a large scale change in the popular understanding of this period until relatively recently.

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Returning to some thoughts above, I don't think it would be possible to look at The Music in this way without the benefit of historical distance. The dominant historical narrative is that there wasn't much "there" there when it came to jazz in the post-60's/pre-Marsalis area--this is bullshit, as many here know, but I feel like there wasn't a large scale change in the popular understanding of this period until relatively recently.

True, but/and that's pretty much the case with anything/everything creational that is not popnomically generated, or, at least, sustained (and even then, was Miles' 1966 music ever more popularly understood than, in, say 1996? Or Bird's music of 1949 than in 1969?). First musicians catch up, then hipsters catch up, and then, finally, if at all, popular understanding catches up. And by then...yeah, by then.

On my darker days (which are sometimes many) "popular understanding" is not as much understanding as it a basic familiarity, a commonality of reaction, people finding things no longer offputting, maybe even beautiful. But attraction, comfort, even enchantment, or even love, these are not understanding. Understanding means the ability to replicate, not just appreciate. Because if everybody really understood all these things, it would blow up the world or something. I understand enough to know that I don't understand it that well. I can blow myself up sometimes, but that's on a good day, and that's only as far as it goes. Placeholder removed, replacement provided immediately. That ain't blowing up the world or anything, not even. That's just having a good day.

These seeds of true understanding when/as planted are too strong, too real, too true to die, but the gestation period to the full bloom of anything approaching a general awareness takes longer than we would like to think and/or see, and one can well make the case that the genuine life of these musics was before their popular understandings, not after them, that popular understanding is as much a signal of death as it is life. For all the faster that time moves now, I swear to god that the net result of that is an increase in density that makes everything move faster, but connect slower. Like, when was the last time that popular understanding formed a really healthy (in both content and aftermath) stool? If it's happening now, well, it's about time. Past time, really.

The beauty of popnomically generated culture is that it lives to serve and then dies when service is no longer needed, its fire is there as long as it has fuel upon which to feed. Commodity offered, commodity used, In, out, over, and done with, here when you need it, gone when you don't. Out of mind, out of sight, ut of business, out of everything.

The beauty - and the danger - of this music, this creational music, is that it will live no matter what. It might go away and become invisible, and when it becomes visible again, people might need to make up what they think they're seeing in order to actually see it, it might well go unperceived for half an eternity or three, but by god, it stays alive, It's always there, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, but are the physics of Bird, Trane, Ayler, etc/you name them, are those physics, hell were those physics, ever not there? Were they ever not here?

"Out" is not out, out is IN! There is HERE! Where has everybody gone? Out to the movies, out to lunch, out of gas, out to everyplace but here, If out is where most folks are, then out is no place to go to, its someplace to get OUT of! Get IN! Get in HERE!

But if everybody was in here, could here hold it all? Or is all that is here already here, and that will be how it must be? No room at the in, no room for squares, can't square the circle, shouldn't circle the wagons, way out west, out there, in here, here, there, everywhere a quack-quack, duck AND cover, and then what, wrapped up. in too far. UH-oh.

I'm telling you, if there was ever a true "popular understanding" of these things, these physics and the ability to truly replicate them, we would not be living on the plane we now live on. People talk "transformational" and shit, yeah, I can dig that on an individual level, perhaps even on a community level. But on a "popular" level? Shit, here we are. We might have "progressed" but have we "transformed" We?

Ok, that's bullshit, this is all bullshit I'm talking, but only for as long as it is.

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I'm telling you, if there was ever a true "popular understanding" of these things, these physics and the ability to truly replicate them, we would not be living on the plane we now live on. People talk "transformational" and shit, yeah, I can dig that on an individual level, perhaps even on a community level. But on a "popular" level? Shit, here we are. We might have "progressed" but have we "transformed" We?

Ok, that's bullshit, this is all bullshit I'm talking, but only for as long as it is.

No bullshit detected--that's some real truth--words I've been mulling over for the past day or two. As an aside, I'm deeply grateful for the positive feedback and reinforcement bouncing across this forum. No two tastes are alike, and there is a hefty and healthy amount of disagreement on here, but I think that this board is united in that every person seems to be trying to "get" to the music in a different way--and, in a microcosm of what Jim is talking about, that's a pretty deep thing.

Since the doors have been blown wide open, I hope some abstract and hopefully not wrongheaded philosophizing is acceptable:

As someone who has taken an active role in street level creative music these past several years, the reasoning and meaning behind creative music/free improvisation/etc. can lose me. I can only imagine what it's like for people who have been doing this for decades. If you can get past the alienation, danger of marginalization, and financial ruin, you're still looking at a continual process of invention and dogged creativity, which is itself unrelentingly draining and both mentally and emotionally taxing. You can't really feel the "As Serious As Your Life" thing unless you've lived it, even if peripherally.

Digging into these Bowie and Lowe albums reminded me a bit of why I got into this, and weirdly helped validate a lot of musical directions and personal interactions I've had as of late. The notion of "an experimental music" as creative, active, free, and other such suggestive descriptors has no intrinsic value in an idiomatic sense--what you're essentially dealing with is music that expands the limits of what can be felt or, yeah, understood as meaningful and/or beautiful and/or personally resonant.

I'm reminded a bit of Mal Waldron's liner notes to Free at Last, wherein he defines music as "organized sound." This is contestable and digs into some truly abstract rhetorical territory, but the point is that, to Waldron, coming to terms with free jazz was as much about stricture as it was about "opening up"--his free music is proscriptive, expanding its breadth while further defining its conceptual parameters. In Sun Ra terms, "freedom is an illusion"--or, rather, some of even the most scatterbrained music is in fact organized as shit.

This is why Jim's words are so intense to me. A "popular understanding" of this music entails so much work and change, and this effort can have a reciprocal affect on people and communities that is truly beautiful. Getting to the multi-idiomatic music Frank Lowe, or listening to the bizarre treatment of "Hello Dolly," Hemphill's 70's soul jazz breakdowns, and Bowie's perverse march concepts on Fast Last!--that's listening to creativity that is reaching for a broader definition of music, people, and art, and it's both worthwhile and truly deep for even going there and suggesting that, again, there is a "there" there.

This isn't to say that music needs to be as broad as possible, as dissonant as possible, as futuristic or anachronistic as possible, etc.--and in practice (and speaking for myself, of course), "extreme" music that operates on the unrelenting fringes is often alienating because of how parochial it is, rather than how open. That being said, the process of negotiating "understanding" is itself as worthy as lot of art that is digested and canonized, and for some people, that's just about enough reason to get up in the morning.

Edited by ep1str0phy
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Jeez!! Please keep this going guys. As a witness/participant of the era in question, I find the discussion fascinating and it really makes me feel old.

I was recently interviewed for a BBC show about Coltrane and wondered why I was contacted - the answer was "we wanted to speak with someone who actually saw the great man." As I described the era I am sure my answers were not understood. This made me feel like an intruder from another planet. They only used a partial of one answer.

Edited by Chuck Nessa
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In terms of the Fresh/Bowie Muse discussion, this does raise the most interesting boring question in the world--i.e., how does the availability of documentation affect the reception of an artist's work, and (pt. 2) isn't availability a two-sided thing?

It suddenly appears to me that the same question is relevant when dealing with any "episodic" medium. I mean, there's 80 episodes of the original Star trek series, and it took, what, three years to get it all out in real time? Now, if I got really pumped, I could compress that all down to about three days, or, using the once a day, five days a week syndication model, 16 weeks, about four months. What is that, a 975% compression of experience time, just doing it once a day, five days a week, is that math correct? Or at least close enough for illustrative purposes?

So yeah, apples and oranges, but only up to the point where it's time to make fruit salad. If the claim is to be made that both experiences are not equally vaild, even if possibly polar opposite ways, I'll not be the one brave enough to make it!

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