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"Punk" jazz / improv from the late 70s/early 80s


Rabshakeh

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This question relates to a very specific era of the jazz / improv avant garde that I think is very under-discussed. 

I have this year read Teruto Soejima's Free Jazz in Japan and Bill Shoemaker's Jazz in the 1970s. 

Both books spend a significant amount of time discussing a very specific period of jazz that emerged in the late 1970s and grew out of the developments of the 1960s and early 1970s, but which defined itself against that earlier era by, among other things, taking an irreverent stance and exploring concepts like "play" or aleatoric devices.

To me, this appears to be a free improv analogue to punk / new wave that was also ripping through mainstream music at this time. 

Shoemaker calls this the "Second Generation" of Free Improvisation, and he points to musicians like Steve Beresford and John Russell as examples of the English scene.

Soejima for his part talks (in the English translation) about the "Pop Avant Garde" (presumably "pop" here is in the sense of pop art rather than Madonna) that is exemplified for him by the work of musicians like Hiroaki Katayama and Kazutoki Umezu, but also by the work of Cobra-era John Zorn. 

I do not know much about the work of any of these musicians, save for Zorn's later work, which, before he got sidetracked by staring into his own pupik, appears to develop some of these ideas.

Many of the English musicians mentioned by Shoemaker appear on Bailey's Company releases, and show up playing with other artists from a similar time, like Sabu Toyozumi, Fred Frith, Toshinori Kondo and George Lewis.

Clearly, they were very present on the New York, Tokyo and London scenes at the time. I would expect that other European scenes would also have had similar groups, particularly since Soejima stresses that the Japanese artists were very popular in Germany.

However, given their significant presence in both of these books, I am surprised at how little they, or similar musicians, are discussed generally by fans of avant garde jazz.

Possibly this is because aleatoric compositions or concepts like "play" don't make for satisfying records. Alternatively, they might not have had much influence. I also note that many of the album's are released collaboratively, rather than under one me or a stable group, which often reduces retrospective visibility in jazz.

Anyway, I would be interested in hearing from anyone who lived through this time or knows about these artists or similar artists, both with their views and with any records that they think stand out.

Edited by Rabshakeh
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I would also throw into the mix the so called "first generation" American free improvisors: Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, Polly Bradfield, Anne Lebaron, Tom Cora et al on the east coast/US South; Eugene Chadbourne, Randy Hutton, Henry Kaiser, Duck Baker et al on the west coast, Milo Fine, George Cartwright, David Moss, Michael Lytle in the midwest, etc ... lots of overlap there.

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Me and a group of like-minded frieds were equally inspired by both Punk and Dancing In Your Head. We formed a band call The Dirty Sphincter Band, played a party, got the cops called on us, and that was that. We did a few original that were definitely punk-based (like, written and rehearsed all in an hour. I sang them!) The two that please the people were "Only Love" and I Need Some Drugs. Other than those few things of that type, the rest was an endless jam on "Theme From A Symphony", like if Blood Ulner had been in the house. It lasted a couple of hours, and that's what got the cops called. We kept playing while the cops told us it was too loud, so we just played sofer, asked the cop was that ok, he said yeah, and that was that.

There were a LOT of drugs at that party, so we got lucky. But I've heard through the grapevine that some people who were there still remember it.

Quite apart from my personal story, the real story here is that "Dancing In Your Head" got ears from a totally new set of players, players who were already embracing a "punk" approach. And then you got the whole "No Wave" thing...James Black/White, god bless him for trying. Stuff like that.

 

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49 minutes ago, colinmce said:

I would also throw into the mix the so called "first generation" American free improvisors: Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, Polly Bradfield, Anne Lebaron, Tom Cora et al on the east coast/US South; Eugene Chadbourne, Randy Hutton, Henry Kaiser, Duck Baker et al on the west coast, Milo Fine, George Cartwright, David Moss, Michael Lytle in the midwest, etc ... lots of overlap there.

I know three names from this mix: Chadbourne, Baker and Kaiser. 

Are there any records of theirs that stand out to you?

29 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Quite apart from my personal story, the real story here is that "Dancing In Your Head" got ears from a totally new set of players, players who were already embracing a "punk" approach. And then you got the whole "No Wave" thing...James Black/White, god bless him for trying. Stuff like that.

Yeah. Even retrospectively, those two scenes shine out - the Coleman/Ulmer connection. Great stuff.

At least those guys are fairly well known though. The more free improv artists from this era seem to be never mentioned. It's like there's the early era of Derek Bailey and Masayuki Takayanagi, then a gap, and then people start to pay attention again from the mid-80s. The Beresfords and Chadbournes are mostly still with us, and it's weird how noone talks about them.

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On 31/12/2021 at 3:53 PM, colinmce said:

I would also throw into the mix the so called "first generation" American free improvisors: Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, Polly Bradfield, Anne Lebaron, Tom Cora et al on the east coast/US South; Eugene Chadbourne, Randy Hutton, Henry Kaiser, Duck Baker et al on the west coast, Milo Fine, George Cartwright, David Moss, Michael Lytle in the midwest, etc ... lots of overlap there.

I know nothing about this sort of music, but I did spend a few days in the company of Eugene Chadbourne in Calgary, Alberta in1973 when he was aged 19. I was visiting my old school pal and jazz and blues pianist Paul Woodrow (RIP) who had emigrated to Canada and was teaching art at Calgary University. Paul invited Eugene, who was living in Calgary -understandably to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam war - round to his house and to bring his guitar. I recall a lot of the talk was about blues favourites - John Lee Hooker, Lightning Hopkins, T Bone Walker, etc - and Eugene astounded me by playing a perfect imitation of each of these as soon as a name was mentioned. Paul and I were very critical of our wives who chose to go to a neighbour's house to watch Elton John on television during all this. (Gives you the period feel.) The following year, back home in England, I tuned in as usual to Humphrey Lyttelton's show at 8p.m. on a Monday. When he announced a new album from Pharoah Sanders and I heard Eugene's name in the lineup, I exclaimed, "The boy's made it!"

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