RE: (TV) Mark Ribot/Albert Ayler with mention of Verlaine

["Jim Kauffman" <jkauff@verizon.net>]

 > -----Original Message-----
> From: tv-owner@obbard.com [mailto:tv-owner@obbard.com] On
> Behalf Of Graham Urquhart
> Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 3:18 PM
> To: tv@obbard.com
> Subject: (TV) Mark Ribot/Albert Ayler with mention of Verlaine
> ...I don't think
> many people in the audience back then - many of the fans of
> Verlaine or Richard Hell - went back and made the same
> connection, but the players were certainly listening to free
> jazz, and it gave them and all of us who followed permission
> to do what was done....

I think it's worth mentioning that during the late 60s and early 70s, most of
these players-to-be worked in record stores or had close friends who did.
Record company policy in those days was to allow the return of any and all
opened records as "defectives", no questions asked. That meant that those of
us who put in the long hours behind the retail counter got to open and listen
to pretty much any record in the store. In northern Ohio, the most complete
stores were the Disc/Discount record chain. Peter Laughner, David Thomas, Jim
Jones, Jamie Klimek--all of them worked at the big Discount Records store on
Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. That's how so many of us discovered ESP Records
(Ayler's label), Delmark Records (home of Joseph Jarman and the other Art
Ensemble of Chicago players), and of course the major label artists like
Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Don Cherry. Not that our interests were
limited to free jazz--we also discovered the Velvet Underground, Captain
Beefheart, the Mothers of Invention, Van Dyke Parks, Soft Machine, Fairport
Convention, Charles Ives, John Cage, and many more.

The fascinating thing about free jazz is that it sounded like anyone could do
it. Lou Reed couldn't play Cecil Taylor on his guitar, but it didn't stop him
from trying. Beefheart couldn't play his soprano sax in the conventional
sense, but he sure could wail. David Thomas followed suit when forming Pere
Ubu. That attitude and the long history of garage bands in the midwest formed
a lot of the creative ethic that got publicized when it hit NYC in the
mid-70s. Some folks were even inspired to acquire real jazz chops--Ralph
Carney, Marc Ribot, Kramer, Mars Williams, John Lurie, Arto Lindsay, and
various other folks who hung out in the Zu Club (and later the Knitting
Factory) scene downtown.

Jim K.
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