Gas Giants

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* There's a lot of stuff about John Byrne on Youtube, but this funny, gentle interview catches the man at his best...

* Think the episode where the band go to Buckie is far-fetched? Check out this story...

* An interesting interview with the cast of the stage adaptation

* Before doing Tutti Frutti, Thompson and Coltrane were involved in a sketch show called "Alfresco"

* Here's a news report from BBC Scotland about Tam White

* We've no idea how long this is going to stay up, but Tom has uploaded a few clips of Janice and Eddie Clockerty

Owning Tutti Frutti

If you look for this online, be prepared to come face to face with the ludicrous eighties gameshow with topless girls. Assuming that you don’t give up there, as of writing I think one episode is up on Youtube. It is possible to buy a region 2 DVD of the show for a reasonable price, but we have to ask why it isn’t available on a streaming service

Suicide

When life is difficult, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year. In the Uk or ROI you can call them for free on 116 123, email them at [email protected], or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.

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Here's a taste of what's coming up...

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* Node recordings on Discogs

* 2020 interview with Dave Bessell

* 1995 interview with Ed Buller & Gary Stout about the making of the EP

* 2014 Interview about the making of Node 2

* David Bessell's Youtube Channel has a few videos of Node in the studio

* Terminus

* Olivine

* Here’s a TV feature about the whole event

*

* The only way to own the Media is to search around for a second-hand copy, however Tom had some FLAC files and loaded the up to YouTube. Let’s see how long they stay up there!

* After the 1995 EP and album, Node made a second album in 2015 that is on Spotify etc. and there’s a recording of a concert at RCM. That’s all folks!

* Hold the press. what’s this!?!?

Speaking of trains

Hautologists on Parade - Who’s getting spooked by the ghosts in the machine?

* Radiohead discover the Ondes Martenot

* LCD Soundsystem like a blend of new and old, it seems...

* See what I mean...?

* Hot Chip, a band that looks like the staff-room of a mid-seventies comprehensive, also like a blend of old and new

* ...but how did they get the hottest girl in school to play drums with them?

Three examples vintage-synth nostalgia-pop

Not to imply that Node sounds like pop music, ofc.

That Minimoog solo style

In which, for only a few seconds at the end, Coldcut deploy that rapid legato Minimoog solo style with pota, mod and filter sweep, so popular with certain players in both jazz and rock.

Do You Mean Like This, Tom?

We couldn’t leave this discussion without some honourable mentions…

This, obviously…

…and here’s the Turangalila that Gav was talking about…

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Billy Berg’s

The Club as it might have appeared at the end of 1945…

….it was no party running a Jazz club back then.

All that remains of the Finale Club, where Parker organised a steady engagement after Dizzy and the rest of the band went back to New York. The club closed soon after as a result of LAPD corruption, then tried to open again as a kind of musician’s cooperative. Quite a few of the bootleg recordings of Parker in California were made at the Finale.

The Recordings.

* A recording from Billy Berg’s does exist, a take of “Salt Peanuts” done for the radio station WEAF on the 24th of Jan, but I couldn’t find it. It’s out there if you really search.

*

Bird & Diz in light-hearted mood with Slim Gaillard, 29th Dec 1945.

”Got to cut out? Gotta make a Jubilee? Well, All Reet!”

Compare it with this version after Camarillo..

The solo from Moose the Mooche…

The Alto break from Night in Tunisia…

…then it all goes wrong.

After Camarillo…

Camarillo State Mental Hospital

The hospital then…

…and now, as California State University Channel Islands.

Did Bird get Electro-shock treatment? Russell says no.

* Tom interjects to ask: So what if he did?

Some of the other characters in the story.

Surely William “Bill” Claxton needs no introduction, but here’s the original of the photo in the book.

Julie Macdonald’s haunting sculpture of Bird from 1956.

Jirayr Zorthian with one of his sculptures.

An article about the Zorthian Ranch.

The recording of the jams at the party at Zorthian Ranch in which Charlie Parker takes part.

The by now famous image of Bird and Diz, with Trane waiting in the wings….

Here’s Trane’s second recorded solo, with Dizzy Gillespie from 1951….

Bird with the young Ross Russell.

Maybe we should leave the last word to Sonny Rollins…

Not quite final, sorry Sonny, ‘cus Tom did manage to identify that comic book serious graphic novel about nuclear war in the UK in the early 80s was Raymond Briggs When the Wind Blows.

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Is “Gulpful” a word?…I suppose it is now.

Not everybody loves you…

not even Orson…

Spike Lee Likes you, though!

Andy Griffith explains the fascination with Lonesome Rhodes…

Some Vitajex, anyone?

Watkins explains how they mess with your head…

The Elder Paul Jones on the UK Sunday night TV show “Songs of Praise”

If you, like Tom, want to check out The War Game, you’ll have to buy it; the equally shocking Punishment Park could be easier, however. Here’s the trailer; depending on where you live you might be able to see the whole thing on Youtube.

Here’s a career ending moment.

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A slow afternoon in the Interzone…

We talked about A LOT of music on this episode…all of it is worth further investigation, but if you just need a place to start, here’s a playlist.

Ornette Coleman talks about sound as language.

The Other’s Language: Jacques Derrida interviews Ornette Coleman, 23 June 1997. In this fascinating conversation, Ornette Coleman asked Jacques Derrida “Do you ever ask yourself if the language that you speak now interferes with your actual thoughts? Can a language of origin influence your thoughts?”

Just by the way, does Derrida here explain why the French can’t do jazz?

Revisiting the Master Musicians, a very interesting article on the blog On An Overgrown Path.

Ornette Coleman and the Circle With a Hole in the Middle, by Robert Palmer, in The Atlantic 1972.

Beginnings…

Howard Shore gets his first break…

The first stirrings of Free Jazz?

Does this explain anything?

Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine with the Master Musicians of Jajouka

Interestingly, just as we were about to drop the episode, this happened...

Brion Gysin doing scary Be-Bop with Steve Lacy. Everything is connected.

In 2010 Ornette was a surprise guest at Sonny Rollins 80th birthday party concert in Now York, heard here in a 20-minute long workout of Rollin’s Sonnymoon For Two.

Ornette jams with The Greatful Dead in 1993 (The Internet Archive)

…How this all started…

This sparked off a search for alternatives..

This is Buchla 200e synthesizer…

Morton Subotnick made Silver Apples of the Moon in 1967 using the older Buchla 100 instrument. Sam Shepard made Promises in 2021 using Pharoah Sanders, the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra, a Piano, a Harpsichord, a Celesta, a Fender Rhodes, a Hammond B3, an Oberheim 4 voice, an Oberheim OB-Xa, a Solina String Ensemble, a Therevox ET-4.3, an EMS Synthi, an ARP 2600, and a Buchla 200e, ffs.

This was one…

Frank Zappa reads the man who taught his a*****e to talk, the very same that Bill Lee recites in the movie.

Just for the Hell of it (!) here’s Burroughs narrating a Swedish Movie with a great Jazz Soundtrack about witchcraft.

The fascination for a particular author's typewriter is explored futher in this extremely imaginative and well crafted Hörspiel from the WDR

...and here's a typewriter that could have kicked the s**t out of all the others

Tom’s specific Naked Lunch special interest

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22

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Oskar Kokoschka - The Power of Music (1918/20)

Thomas Bernhard

A Scrupulous Fidelity, On Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser – The Brooklyn Rail

A short extract from a staged version of the novel.

Thomas Bernhard as a patient, described by his half-brother.

Losers, f**k-ups and vampires

You know the types…

The Glenn Gould less Travelled….

Gould as a cultural critic…

Gould and Liberace - The Music Show - ABC Radio National

Gould and his Nemesis…..

Gould as a Sound Artist…there’s a version of this with images as well.

…and finally, Gould slips into another persona the better to take on Mozart.

Speaking of which…

…and the one more traveled.

Owning Der Untergeher.

* In German Der Untergeher. Buch von Thomas Bernhard (Suhrkamp Verlag)

* In English The Loser - Thomas Bernhard Reissues - Books | Faber & Faber

* Em Portuguese O NÁUFRAGO - - Grupo Companhia das Letras

Suicide

When life is difficult, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year. In the Uk or ROI you can call them for free on 116 123, email them at [email protected], or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.

For international helpline numbers, please visit Befrienders Worldwide: 

* https://www.befrienders.org

Search keyword suicide returns support phone numbers in

* Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=suicide

* Duck Duck Go: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=suicide

* Bing: https://www.bing.com/search?q=suicide

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PANIC - The Dithyramb Dissected

Where it all started…

The Concert used on the CD, (thanks to Casa da Musica), complete with the score, (thanks to Tom)

Poetry and Influences ( Some Dubious)

The Poem the H.B. used as the initial inspiration for the work.

At the beginning of the 20th century, many composers turned to the folk music of their countries in a search for a national cultural identity. In Britain the folk music was inextricably linked with the pre-Christian, or pagan past, which gave rise to quite a few pieces in which Pan appears, like this…

or this…

…and perhaps this takes us too far afield, but isn’t it interesting to see the Saxophone turn up in the role of one of Job’s comforters in Vaughan William’s “Job - A Masque for Dancing”?

Some background to the great God Pan. Contains a discussion of Occult matters.

Arthur Machen’s masterpiece “The Great God Pan” , that H.B. specifically told Gav he’d never heard of, let alone read.

…from there it’s just a short step to The Fall’s Leave the Capitol, with many Pan references. I’d put money on Birtwistle being completely unaware of this.

The Dionysian Saxophone, a Short Study

Paul Gonsalves’s 27 choruses of Crescendo and Diminuendo in Blue at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival are a good example of Dionysian energy embracing an entire crowd. Even with the sound quality and lack of image, it’s still quite easy to hear how the audience is gradually moved out of itself into an ecstatic state.

Newport again, but a very different Saxophonist. Out of all of Coltrane’s outpourings, this is one of the closest to the Birtwistle, I think. It’s not difficult to imagine Trane as the Great God Pan

…Or maybe this. This is certainly the acid test for me to see if a piece of Contemporary Classical music is any good.

Then again, it’s not just Coltrane. One of the most shamefully overlooked players in this field was Sun Ra’s tenor player John Gilmore. Listen to how this solo builds into an ecstatic explosion…

Other Notable mentions should include…

…and also this. Is this why Birtwistle wrote for the alto instead of the far more expressive tenor saxophone?

Night’s Black Bird (2002)

Albrecht Dürer’s Engraving featuring something that looks suspiciously like the Casa da Musica on it’s side…..everything is connected.

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs! Exiled for ever, let me mourn; Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings, There let me live forlorn. Down vain lights, shine you no more! No nights are dark enough for those That in despair their last fortunes deplore. Light doth but shame disclose. Never may my woes be relieved, Since pity is fled; And tears and sighs and groans my weary days, my weary days Of all joys have deprived. From the highest spire of contentment My fortune is thrown; And fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts Are my hopes, since hope is gone. Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell, Learn to contemn light Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite.

Why Ken Ueno?

Tom and Ken were once in a band together with Jon Whitney called Blood Money

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Spotify Playlist

Unfortunately, neither the Scientist Record, or Felix Kubin’s release were available on Spotify, so I chose other tracks by these artists to make sure they were represented.

List of Purchases

Oxfam - Byers Road, Glasgow

* Archie Shepp - Fire Music. Impulse IMP 158

* Art Tatum - The V Discs. Black Lion BLP 30203

Love Music- Glasgow

* Scientist - Scientist At The Controls Of Dub. Jamaica Recordings JBLP029

Mono- Glasgow

* Felix Kubin - 1:17. Gargarin GR2032

Vinyl Planet UK-Macclesfield

* Bill Bruford - The Bruford Tapes. EGS 106

* David Bowie - Young Americans. RS 1006

* Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids. Virgin 202.968-320

* Lester Bowie - The Great Pretender. ECM 1209.2301.209

Ändrä - Dortmund

* Joe Harriot Quintet - Jazz For Moderns. Gearbox GB1503

* Gordon Beck - Seven Steps To Evans. Stop Jazz JS-073 (H)

* George Adams/ Don Pullen Quartet - Earthbeams. TI SJP 147

* 50x Plastic Sleeves.

* (We never got round to discussing the Gordon Beck LP.)

* It’s also worth mentioning that I bought a copy of The Wire which included The Wire Tapper 56 and the great guy at MONO, (Tom could be more enthusiastic about the NAME, at least), gave me a free compilation CD called Muscles of Joy. It seems to comprise different works written and recorded over several years. Thanks again, MONO!

*

The opening of Mahler 9…

…and a strange similarity with this track.

Japan live…

Joe Harriot In a Sentimental Mood….

…and if this doesn’t brighten your day, nothing will!

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