ep1str0phy

Some info is posted at ayler.org, but it doesn't give too much away. I'd be interested in hearing what you think (that is, if you find the stuff...).

I think it's a great album, but again the BN juju often positions it on the "masterpiece" end of the spectrum versus a lot of his other works (and we should mention Conquistador, too, because that's perhaps the most digestable and well-liked "post-standards" Taylor will ever get). I'm not sure it's any more valuable than Nefertiti, Air Above Mountains, the New World Stuff, or some of the FMPs toward understanding Cecil's bag (which is a fluid thing, really).

As much as I enjoy the 60's and 70's Impulse catalog, I question whether it's really the place to look for any sort of "deep" representation of the various scenes it (quite haphazardly) recorded. It's diversity is, in effect, it's failing point; as a label of "broad" interests, it risks coming across as a sort of facile gloss on the idioms it champions (jack of all trades...). There's a sort of presumptuousness about the The New Wave of Jazz is on Impulse! thing--especially in that, barring Trane, Shepp, Pharoah, and a scarce few others (and to a much lesser extent), a lot of the most invigorating "New" music of the era was being recorded elsewhere (ESP springs to mind). I won't begrudge Blue Note any sort of "sameness" in that it not only had an identifiable label sound, but also a deep, thoroughgoing understanding of at least a couple "sub-idioms" of the day (the Messengers hard-bop thing, the Miles clique).

Maybe it was the MB diet...

A straw man... The messenger piece...the way you put it...is yours. Ayler was a player and the message is in the playing. If you think he wasn't in the middle of it...you didn't see him walking down Eastern Parkway with vaseline on his face. Nas or whoever can posture about shooting dj's till the cows come home...or till the next time there's a raid at Kahlua's... But neither him or any of his boys have any words with the power of Albert's notes... And nobody is going to raise up with Nas's posturing. It takes more than music... Albert played is ass off... That's all the message that anyone has. Nas... Huh... Not that I disagree with you specifically (or clem, for that matter)--and with all due respect to the very respectable parties herein involved--but the strong dualism among music communities, genres, idioms, interests, etc. isn't doing anyone any favors. I wouldn't agree with clem on that point, either, but that put-downs beget put-downs (and I'm not entirely sure that clem's statement--correct me if I'm wrong--was so much a put-down as it was a probably-not-entirely-unfounded interpretation of the Ayler ethos) is a drag.

You'll acquire most of it. Whether it's more significant is questionable (it's all from the same span of a few months, anyway).

Killl yer idols, brownie. Kill yer idols.

Blasphemy!(?)

Copenhagen is readily available, but you should be able to find the others (in some form) from DMG. NYEaEC fits between Spiritual Unity and Copenhagen (note the presence of Cherry on NYEaEC, as he would join the band full time for the European tour).

Thanks for the heads up, Dana.

I'm with you on all of those, Rooster (notwithstanding Blue Train).

I was frankly hoping that more people could fill us in on that, although I have heard about the MPS (haven't heard it, but heard of). I'm astounded that we've got all the history on the 'net and virtually no accounts of this group.

HEY-OH! felser--agree with the intent (breaking through the brand name hero-worship thing, which seems to blind us to honest critical appraisal at times), but this kind of thread seems to have been attempted before--and, as you said, this is the stuff that leaves us cold (as in us v. them). And it's true that, if you run through the archives, almost every BN will be hailed as a masterpiece (but by a different cat each time?). It's nothing with the "general" consensus on the albums themselves (i.e., I like Components, as do a few other folks on this board, but you'll probably find just as many or more guys who don't--we're just vocal in the defense; in other words, you'll find far fewer people speaking in those "hushed tones")--just that someone here is bound to think that something that someone doesn't like is really something, dig? In the spirit of the spirit, then: I don't know what the deal with Am I Blue? is, nor why it was elected for an RVG.

Inevitably, I'll add, this winds up being a "favorites/I like/don't like" thread. Someone out there thinks that too much praise is heaped on Speak No Evil.

Almost all of these are among my favorite BNs. Including 'Bout Soul--but then we get into questions of aesthetic, and I can't remember too many other people who swooned over this BN quasi-free thing. I'm not the biggest fan of Maiden Voyage, especially in light of the greatness that is Empyrean Isles.

I forgot about the Wilson! Hopefully, we'll see a decent translation in our lifetimes (alongside the scores of Euro improv books that are as of yet inaccessible to the better part of the American community...) Good music on the ESP box, although it's (from what I can gather) another one of those 'sordid' licenses... Danas... is good on that point. By most accounts, nothing we've got will capture what Ayler was like live--so there's some stuff that's more lauded than others (in terms of recorded output), but, sadly, we'll never get around to seeing the cat blow holes in walls with his horn. And Clem--Nas and Ayler come from and go to very different places, but the Black Revolutionary Continuum is pretty big, no? (and the Olu Dara connection drives it home...) As far as Ayler is concerned--I think the transcendental "quest" thing has a lot more depth given the fact that it's coming out of such dystopic circumstances. The opposite might be Shepp, who is still (dependent on whose words you court) a misanthrope, although not quite down.

Great advice, Ed, but warning about the Copenhagen date--what isn't included on the HB boxed set isn't that much material (just three or so fairly cuts, if I remember correctly). Before HG, the Copenhagen album was one of my favorite dates--and it remains top notch--but the doubling was frustrating (I mean, the Ayler album is still in print).

Wow. Thanks for the heads up, B.

Well, a personal favorite Cherry quartet session of mine (having not gotten to know Hilversum) is Vibrations (also known as Ghosts, with Peacock, Murray in tow). There's an interview somewhere where Ayler says that it was the only time that his group got recorded right (which seems arguable), but, whatever the case, it's one of the bess cross-sections of Ayler's small-group music and compositions that we've got. Cherry just kills it on this one.

The HG boxed set is a great document, not least because the book is one of maybe three solid compositional documents we have on Ayler at present (the others being the Jeff Schwartz biography online and the Wilmer chapter in As Serious As Your Life--which is actually included in the book). Also, the boxed set gives a great overview of Ayler's career, and follows through essentially all of the important strains in his recording life. I'd say, ultimately, that it's worth however much money you can get it for (around $90-95 seems to be the basic price). I'm not sure how great it is as a starting point, though, because, as a claimed "rarities" set, it doesn't cover the major recorded junctures (i.e., it gets the periods in there, but it doesn't include many of the pivotal documents that have shaped our understanding of Ayler over the years--the ESPs, the Impulses, etc.). So it's really the choice of the listener--you can come in headlong (and collect the supposedly most "important" documents later on), or you can take the well-tread, if less ambitious steps with the "classic" material. Either way, if you end up loving this stuff enough, you will need to hear all of it.

Go with the ESPs--especially Spiritual Unity--to get some sense of what Ayler could do in a longer-form small group recording. These recordings (w/Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray, and Don Cherry made it a quartet) are, for me, just as important as the "string" band albums toward "getting" some sense of Ayler's overall approach to improvisation and spiritual "ethos".

Hey, whatever the whys and wherefores, at the end of the day, I think the New Grass recording of "Heart Love" is awesome.

..and that was part of the revolution, no? Like Air Lore (like MG suggested, a modern band w/"old" tunes) was pretty much an AACM joint, and Lester Bowie was the preeminent trumpeter of the pre-Wynton generation (and afterward, in my estimation, although the situation gets more ingrained toward the 80's...). But, on a different perspective, just because we're caught up in the connotations doesn't mean that we can't struggle. In fact, I think it might do a disservice to the struggle to say that subconscious predilections can be so easily subsumed--and we struggle against our prejudices, in everything, both because it's hard and because we want something else. But sometimes the hot-wiring is too strong to write off as simple close-mindedness, and then you can look for different ways to deal with it... Brass Fantasy is a perfect example. Under a certain revolutionary structure, you can turn the tools of convention in upon themselves. Part of a reason that that group's revisionings are so potent is that we can't write the preconceptions out--and here are some cats telling us that what we think a song is is perfectly alright, so long as we know that, simultaneously, it can mean something else. And it's terrifically humbling knowing that, even if I still reel whenever I think of "Save the Best for Last", it's possible to take those same connotations and parse out the beauty, and maybe the art. Not to whine about the idea that it's "too hard to open up your mind"--only that, while we're struggling to do so (and we can play the music, but we'll still be biting our lips trying not to grimace), there's something to be said for the confrontation itself. I'm with MG, at least, in saying that it's unprofessional to let prejudices shape your choices--now that's being a whuss.

(Referring to New Grass when you say "kind of a mess?" Because I don't think that Love Cry is anywhere near the oddity that the "R&B" sides are--"art" and "commerce" is right, and was surely what the Ayler/Thiele camp was aiming for on some level, but there were doubtless elements--marketing, preconception-wise, etc.--that got in the way.). Agreed on Vestine, as I think the "drone" piece is just as interesting and ambitious for the period as anything that any of the great free music guys were putting together. Strangely, I find that the sax quartet pieces on the last couple of Impulses are generally the less involving spots (Ayler seems caught in this Stellar Regions sort Coltranish vibe--maybe a commercial suggestion?--and only seldom pops into his more hardcore self)... but the guitar pieces, and even the Mary Maria tracks, are quite unusual and, in their own way, innovative. There's talk, at least, that Ayler was among the first (in Europe in the early 60's) to do the whole sax-vocal poetry thing--too bad the evidence is only in account, and that we'll never have recordings. As far as the "old time religion" thing--sure, his craziness could have been expressed in secular terms, but then he would not have been Ayler. At the very least, we would not have the same arc, and surely not the same music (tho that's a marginally different issue)--now, whether or not religion was the corrupting force is one thing, but I'm with the earlier statements in holding that Ayler's story has a sort of morbid poeticism about it that couldn't have happened any other way. I'm not sure we'd be celebrating his music with the same sense of mythological worship had he not taken the plunge with such a conscious sense of messianic redemption (and the whole Holy Ghost thing--spirit box, flower and all--would only be a quoted footnote, and not a legacy). In the end, maybe the "sacrifical arc" just makes us a lot more fetishistic about an intrinsically talented artist, whose music could have gone on being just as spiritual without the horrendous death. As it is, we've got not only an innovator and a genius, but also a legend.

On an operational level, thinking of a so-called "crappy pop song" generally arouses memories of an associated crappy recording (and vice-versa with "great songs" of any color and great recordings). So yeah, I would agree that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with, say, anything that Tom Jones sings, but whenever I think "Young New Mexican Puppeteer", I think cheese. Like Otis Redding kills "Try A Little Tenderness", but, in certain hands, it can been an irredeemable, sentimental mess.