new Project: the 1960s

[ep1str0phy]

Oh yeah--Gong (the early incarnations of which date to the late 60's and interacted with the free jazz diaspora in the Euro/BYG camp), Musica Elettronica Viva, Third Ear Band, Taj Mahal Travellers, Yoshi Wada, Yoko Ono--just following different threads (Japanese Fluxus, Euro prog/avant rock).

Interesting discussion a little ways up--there are plenty of artists whose work began in the 60's but peaked (in terms of both creativity and timeliness) in the 1970s. I've always understood a lot of paradigmatic Euro free improv--and even some American restructuralist music like the Art Ensemble--to be fundamentally 70's or 80's in character. It's interesting how some of Brotzmann's most lucid and aggressive work was essayed in the late 60's, even though his music (as Niko notes) has a very post-60's feel to it: not so much "free" and "consciousness-expanding" as it is dark, cynical, and at times strikingly internal.

I'm really moved by the trio with Harry Miller and Louis Moholo for this reason--it's inebriated, wounded music, sort of subsisting through the shit rather than actively combating it. Granted, guys like Moholo were truly and actively combating something--Apartheid--but these guys are different sorts of warriors from truth-is-marching-in Ayler or even melt-your-face late 60's Brotzmann and Blue Notes. It's almost as if the "fight" in this music is in the mere fact of its existence. It's not building something up out of the 60's (or "with" the 60's, as real recombinative music like the Art Ensemble or Braxton does)--it's played squarely in a format pioneered like a decade and a half earlier, and it's fighting against the notion of (to put it harshly) its own political and social fecklessness. This is the music of its era in the way that Ayler was a 60's joint (and, for that reason, maybe did peak much later than its inception, as Clifford mentions).

[Don Brown]

Carla Bley

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, it's definitely hard to imagine the Brotz/Miller/Moholo trio happening at any time other than it did. Those records are intense, but their vibe is definitely not of "breaking free" in the same way - "subsisting," slogging, workmanlike as you put it. Also, Miller's amplified bass is so springy, taut and aggressive-sounding that it really contributes to an unhinged rhythm-section vibe.

You mention a lot of stuff I really like, but I have a hard time imagining how it would fit in a book together without the book melting and/or exploding!

[ATR]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Eye_and_Ear_Control

There's always a problem when you try to limit the discussion to a particular period of time. Human creativity doesn't work that way.

The rock bands mentioned make me laugh. Rock is just never avant garde to me, unless it's The Beatles, Bob Dylan, or The Beach Boys. Most everything else, even Frank Zappa, is appropriated from classical music and jazz. Psychedelic? Sure, whatever that means. Avant garde? No. Not saying I don't enjoy listening to it, though.

Edited October 19, 2011 by ATR

[ATR]

I've been contemplating whether to get these 6 3XCD sets from the Wergo label for some time now. This was the avant garde of the 60's. Everyone is pretty much represented.

http://www.jazzloft.com/p-50769-earle-brown-contemporary-sound-series-vol-1.aspx

I have all those on Time/Mainstream LPs and the music is great. Definitely worth picking up.

I will put these on a wish list somewhere and pick up a few with my anticipated birthday and holiday gift credits. Would have recommended the Cage 25 Year Retrospective box set, but it covers more than 10 years. Best album cover and design ever, maybe.

Questioning why I left out the AACM. Numbers 1&2 and Three Compositions of New Jazz are both from the decade under consideration. A mistake to leave them out.

[JSngry]

I think you could make a case that both Joe Meek & Phil Spector were "avant-garde" in that both viewed "natural sound" as raw materials to be broken and bent at will to be twisted into something wholly "unnatural" - which then became a "new natural" - instead of as ends unto themselves.

The tools being used were definitely basic, commercial in the extreme, at times even crap. But the methodology at work and the esthetic at play was very much "avant-garde", especially in 1960s terms.

Just my opinion.

[ep1str0phy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Eye_and_Ear_Control

There's always a problem when you try to limit the discussion to a particular period of time. Human creativity doesn't work that way.

The rock bands mentioned make me laugh. Rock is just never avant garde to me, unless it's The Beatles, Bob Dylan, or The Beach Boys. Most everything else, even Frank Zappa, is appropriated from classical music and jazz. Psychedelic? Sure, whatever that means. Avant garde? No. Not saying I don't enjoy listening to it, though.

That's certainly true for certain "self-conscious" avant rock acts like early Gong or even Yoko/out John Lennon, but there are certainly a number of so-called prog or avant rock bands that wound up interacting with and/or engaging in unprecedented sonic innovation. Hendrix for one. Henry Cow (a more obvious "avant" suspect) is another; while drawing heavily from blues and classical traditions, they spawned at least some music that was the first of its kind (Fred Frith--who, fully disclosure, I've studied under for a lengthy period--and yes, this probably does color my opinion, but in this case we're dealing with a common opinion/sentiment--was one of the key innovators of free improv guitar/prepared electronic instrumentation alongside Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe, among others. I reference the ongoing and actually pretty inane debate regarding who used alligator clips as guitar preparation first--Rowe or Frith... prepared/extended electric guitar certainly did not originate in jazz or classical any more than outre/extended drum kit--emphasis on drum kit and not percussion--started anywhere outside of free jazz.)

Also--yeah, Sonny Sharrock and James "Blood" Ulmer--and, really, just Sonny here, since Blood was technically later--but Sonny is/was special--a total anomaly whose innovations (unlike Ayler's) were not immediately adopted by his contemporaries and whose personal technical extensions did not really come out of jazz (more an extrapolation on R&B/rock chording inspired by free jazz saxophone). Larry Coryell, certain elements of Jim Hall, and early John McLaughlin were pretty out, too, but none of that was really "extended" stuff that wasn't already informed by rock innovations (namely Hendrix in the first and third casees).

Edited October 19, 2011 by ep1str0phy

[cih]

Rock is just never avant garde to me, unless it's The Beatles, Bob Dylan, or The Beach Boys.

For me one feature of 'Avant Garde' is when an artist is trying to expel from himself as close a reproduction of himself as possible, that is, the creation with the least possible artifice or superficiality, with the belief that the more genuine it is the more it will resemble everybody else also - and can therefore be separated from its creator, more so than either those superficially and traditionally ‘representational’ works grounded in previously successful (popular) methods, or other more intentionally 'weird' or wilfully obscure stuff. As such it’s also often linked with an impulse to destroy ‘art’ - both high and low, and as people have always discovered the act of detruction also creates anew. To me the Beatles were too interested in making superficially ‘different’ recordings in order to maintain their success and actually imploded because of their different outlooks on the avant garde.

[clifford_thornton]

The fluxus-dadaist ideal of destruction bringing the new is certainly an important philosophical construct, but from my perspective/experience with avant-garde music (or that which was termed avant-garde), very few (if any) musicians had any interest in wiping the slate clean of "tradition." Someone like Ornette or Bill Dixon is/was very engaged with tradition, respectful of it, even viewing their music as part of that tradition. Destroying what Cootie Williams or Louis Armstrong or Tab Smith did/represented was not an interest. Playing what you not only wanted to play but had to play - that's what was important. If it turned out to be viewed as "avant-garde" well, hey, that's all fine and dandy too.

I was watching a DVD from German TV that my friend had with a panel of critics dissecting live performances by Klaus Doldinger and Peter Brotzmann. In no way was Brotzmann trying to "wipe away" the traditional forms - by his own statement, anyway - he and his group were doing what they felt a need to do and express themselves fully, simple as that.

[sidewinder]

Howard Riley as well. Maybe Terry Riley too? (you could do a 'Rileys' disk).

[Alexander Hawkins]

1968 was a pretty extraordinary year...giving us both 'Machine Gun' and 'Karyobin'. I think an important record in any survey might also turn out to be Lacy's 'The Forest and The Zoo'...

[AllenLowe]

that's also the year they almost brought down the French government.

[ep1str0phy]

Absolutely--those all strike me as "waning 60's" albums. I only have a general sense regarding whether or not Trane's death had an immediate and brutal impact on the course of improvised music at the time, but it did sort of coincide with the peak of the 60's counterculture. All the "major" 60's albums after that seem to be either assessing the foregoing decade or offering possibilities for the future (seriously--Brotzmann, SME, The Blue Notes, The Art Ensemble, Braxton, etc.)

Think about two of the key Trane acolytes--Shepp and Pharoah. Shepp's first album (someone please correct me if I'm off base) post-Trane is entitled The Way Ahead, for heaven's sakes--and what ensued, in that cat's catalog, at least, was a slow scramble for thematic and idiomatic coherence--sort of a trainwreck when you considered the brute focus of stuff like Four For Trane or Shepp's last album prior to Trane's passing (The Magic of Ju-Ju). It's of course often wonderful music--and I know at least Jim has extolled the virtues of this period--but I think a lot of that has to do with the sense of confusion rather than in spite of it. Pharoah, too, seemed to alter his aesthetic trajectory in the wake of Trane's passing--evolving his spiritual abstractions into these monolithic, immoveable, cyclical swaths of modalism--and, really, stuff like Izipho Zam and Karma does sound like it's trying to reconcile the preceding decade's pull toward openness and "outward motion" with the exact opposite (closed cycles, musical that always pulls "in").

[clifford_thornton]

Actually, the Donaueschingen performance issued on Saba with "One for the Trane" was in between those two Impulse LPs' recording dates. Shepp was touring Europe that fall with the two-trombone lineup and apparently those marathon performances were quite an experience over there, too. 1967 was the year of some of Shepp's most intense music, but I'd argue that he's always been somewhat programmatically diffuse from the get-go, and that's part of his charm.

[ep1str0phy]

Thanks for calling me out on that--and also, well, there you go--and that band had Jimmy Garrison, too, yes? That's the last time, for me, Shepp ever hit as hard and as directly as when Trane was alive (excepting the '71 stuff with Alice Coltrane--which never really recorded and was really guided by the old master's ghost). The BYG/Actuel stuff is extremely diffuse--free, yes, but creatively all over the map. I could be reading too much into things, but I get the distinct sense that those few years after '67 were a "coming to terms with Trane's specter" time for everyone.

To put things another way--that Jimmy Garrison interlude on Attica Blues always struck me as extremely referential, in a postmodern sort of sense. It's like, only a handful of years after the fact, Shepp was having Garrison play an artifact of himself, bridging the gap between this new sort of hybridized R&B/free jazz/pop muchness (a spiritual cousin to what Pharoah or even Ayler, briefly, were doing at the turn of the 70's) and "classic" free jazz by self-consciously invoking the sound of the 60's. It's a really "you can't go home again" kind of moment, to my ears.

Edited October 19, 2011 by ep1str0phy

[cih]

The fluxus-dadaist ideal of destruction bringing the new is certainly an important philosophical construct, but from my perspective/experience with avant-garde music (or that which was termed avant-garde), very few (if any) musicians had any interest in wiping the slate clean of "tradition." Someone like Ornette or Bill Dixon is/was very engaged with tradition, respectful of it, even viewing their music as part of that tradition. Destroying what Cootie Williams or Louis Armstrong or Tab Smith did/represented was not an interest. Playing what you not only wanted to play but had to play - that's what was important. If it turned out to be viewed as "avant-garde" well, hey, that's all fine and dandy too.

I was watching a DVD from German TV that my friend had with a panel of critics dissecting live performances by Klaus Doldinger and Peter Brotzmann. In no way was Brotzmann trying to "wipe away" the traditional forms - by his own statement, anyway - he and his group were doing what they felt a need to do and express themselves fully, simple as that.

I didn’t mean that they intended the destruction of the achievements of their forebears, but that the destruction of the boundaries of the art is essential – both the narrow ideals of the highbrow, and the commercial necessities of the mainstream - which is presumably only possible by taking apart the art itself, losing the elements that people have hung their hats on. Also maybe the attitude that somebody outwardly expresses for what’s gone before might depend not only on how their work is directly descended (or not) from it, but also on whether a sense of kinship or brotherhood is important or needed at the time and place – which it was in the sixties…

you rightly observe that I am more familiar with the likes of Dada, and I'm learning stuff here from you guys as a beginner, but when I listen to and read about Albert Ayler with ears more used to pre-war blues & Monk & co. I struggle to make a link* which doesn't include a hell of a lot of deconstruction so that I can hear the individual bricks much more clearly, rather than everything being 'invisible' within the whole - and I get the feeling he is seeking something essential which has been obscured, reaching back to the distant past too, away from his immediate education in R&B back to the spiritual – and the things which I would interpret as his ‘personal’ expression obviously included for him something else – from God… so when he said that Coltrane was not playing like him, but that they were both just playing what they both felt themselves – it was (to him) something coming from outside of themselves too which shapes not only the form of the music but physically how he attacks it (as with old gospel records)

*no struggle in enjoying it though

[clifford_thornton]

Thanks for calling me out on that--and also, well, there you go--and that band had Jimmy Garrison, too, yes? That's the last time, for me, Shepp ever hit as hard and as directly as when Trane was alive (excepting the '71 stuff with Alice Coltrane--which never really recorded and was really guided by the old master's ghost). The BYG/Actuel stuff is extremely diffuse--free, yes, but creatively all over the map. I could be reading too much into things, but I get the distinct sense that those few years after '67 were a "coming to terms with Trane's specter" time for everyone.

Right, a real freedom from/freedom for thing too - without Trane around, things were opened up hugely, yet the loss was also extremely significant because his presence and dedication was a focal point for a lot of players.

Yeah, Garrison and Beaver Harris. What a fucking band. The program starts with a lengthy Garrison solo that's just out of this world. I honestly don't know if he was being hired on for "referencing" Trane or just because he was an incredible bassist who could do some really special things with grounding an otherwise not-so-easy-to-ground music. For example, he's the linchpin on the Clifford Thornton LP Freedom & Unity, recorded the day after Trane's funeral. That said, I haven't listened to Attica Blues in a while and I certainly wouldn't put it past Shepp to write some sort of "commentary" structure around a player. He thought "theatrically" about the music as well as historically, politically and immediately.

[brownie]

Shepp was touring Europe that fall with the two-trombone lineup and apparently those marathon performances were quite an experience over there, too. 1967 was the year of some of Shepp's most intense music, but I'd argue that he's always been somewhat programmatically diffuse from the get-go, and that's part of his charm.

I was lucky to hear that two-trombone band on several occasions and it was an experience!

Also it was the last time I heard Shepp reach that intense level!

[mracz]

I'm late to the party as usual. I'm thinking about earlier posts about artists whose creative output centers on the 60s (although many of them are very busy and signficiant both before and after).

Trane

Miles

Ornette

Ayler

Cecil T (Into the Hot, Candids, Blue Notes, Paris Concert, even if the 70s is arguably the peak of his solo playing and some of his best ensembles)

Sun Ra

Stockhausen (busy for 60 years, but center of gravity always seems to me to be in this decade; think Momente, Telemusik, Hymnen)

Berio (ditto, think Sinfonia, O King, etc)

Roscoe Mitchell (arguably the center is later, but Sounds and the early AEC stuff seems so central as late 60s interrogations of the decade)

Braxton (ditto For Alto, but the center is certainly later)

Reich,Riley and Lamonte Young (even though the heyday of minimalism is later, the essential planks of the style start then).

Some of my favourite musicians/composers are active throughout the sixties, but for probably irrational reasons I tend to place them before or after the decade (Feldman,Carter,Lacy). Boulez relatively dormant in the 60s after Pli selon Pli. Ditto the European jazz giants active from 66 or so on, but really coming into their own as the next decade unfolds. On second thought, I'd be tempted to go along with Alexander Hawkins and put Karyobin and Machine Gun down as opening particular doors in epoch-making ways.

I'm sure that I'm missing lots of obvious stuff, but that's the nature of these conversations I guess, and it's time to get back to work...

[AllenLowe]

just to make things more complicated, I'm thinking that I may integrate the '60s thing as part of a larger timeline of American music that I was thinking of doing - and thanks, everybody, for the engaging responses so far.

[mjazzg]

Just to echo Allen's comment - this thread is just such an entertaining and informative read - such knowledge worn so lightly and shared so informatively.

I'm off to listen again to much of the music mentioned and to hunt down others that I haven't heard previously.

As for the eventual project - it should be marvellous with this seedbed of ideas - can't wait

[felser]

Paul Butterfield because of one landmark song which changed everything forever ("East/West"); Country Joe & the Fish (first legit album); John Handy (Columbia period); It's a Beautiful Day (first album). Soft Machine (third album).

Paul Butterfield - East West

Edited October 20, 2011 by felser

[AllenLowe]

I agree on all of the above -

[king ubu]

How about Chris McGregor, the Brotherhood of Breath?

[AllenLowe]

good idea.