Here Comes Grease

Early this year there was an interview and a few really interesting live recordings of the Hampton Grease Band. The band only released one album Music To Eat, which is now considered a classic. The record is in the same sort of genre as Captain Beefheart and weird early Zappa. It has been reissued over the years but was still elusive up until recently where it is now available on Spotify, and of course on this PHC podcast as well.

Earlier this year an interview of the band on WKCR on 8.30.71 magically appeared on the internet, revealing the band’s experiences in New York City dealing with indifferent audiences and talking about their influences in a dada absurdist tone that was their trademark. It really provides some much-needed context of the band for the time and their attitude towards the art that they were creating. An entire concert of Hampton Grease Band at the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival was also uploaded, as well as a couple of other live tracks.

All of this comes at a very productive time for Col. Bruce Hampton. He has a movie coming out on April 3^rd called Here Comes Rusty. He has also just done a reunion with Hampton Grease Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit (Including a sit in with John Mclaughlin from Mahavishnu Orchestra) and there was a recent documentary on him called Basically Frightened. On top of all of that his most recent 2014 Pharoah’s Kitchen was really good. He’s been at it as long as anybody, and still continues to make interesting and challenging music. 

If that's not a total information overload, here is a really sweet recent article by Glen Phillips, founding member and guitarist of Hampton Grease Band.

Sun Ra ESP Radio Tribute Pt. 1

This is a rebroadcast of part one of the Sun Ra ESP Radio Tribute by “The Good Doctor” and Sun Ra archivist, Michael D. Anderson. This extensive six-part fourteen-hour career retrospective was produced for the Sun Ra centennial in May of 2014. Over the year I will periodically release all six episodes. It is an incredible series with lots of interviews and music spanning Sun Ra’s prolific career. Last month PHC highlighted what is going on lately with the recent massive upload of Sun Ra remasters by the newly formed label, Enterplanetary Koncepts.

Don’t forget to check out ESP-Disk, a record label that was reformed in the early 2000s. ESP-Disk nurtured many avant-garde artists in the 1960s and 70s. Now they are reissuing many classic releases from their back catalog, as well as new releases. Check out the recent book by Jason Weiss, Always in Trouble An Oral History of ESP-Disk: The Most Outrageous Record Label in America. The book is an extended interview with ESP-Disk founder Bernard Stollman on the rise, fall, and rebirth of the label. The story is complete with the assertion that the label was under surveillance by the CIA and was sabotaged when Stollman wouldn’t accept a buyout. The second half of the book interviews artists that were involved with the label including how The Good Doctor was appointed by Sun Ra as the official band historian.

Kicking Around on a Piece of Ground in Your Hometown

In Cloud Orbit’s sound expands into an infinite dreamscape twisting and folding through a vast matrix of possible meanings and perceptions that are left for the listener to interpret. Part of the charm of In Cloud Orbit is the sensation of being dropped into the wilderness of human experience while making the journey to find meaning and peace of mind.  The ultimate truth is, that there is no ultimate truth, but only the universal struggle that every conscious entity faces.

If you’re a musician you know the drill. Often the best part of being in a band is the planning stages. It starts as an idea. A great band name is a reason to start a band. But then anything past that point is less fun, and then you have other people involved and they all have something to say about it and day jobs, kids, and obligations…if your lucky you get to the point where you put out an album. There are so many things to derail a band. Even if you are a genuinely good band with good songs, the odds are that it’s not going to work out. In the end if you write a few good songs, that’s not too bad. You can always take those songs to another project. The moral is persistence; you have to keep at it.

I actually forgot about this conversation that took place in the spring of 2015. It featured friends of mine in a local Detroit area band called In Cloud Orbit. We had big plans, a record in the works, I was writing some copy for the band and planning singles, press releases, and bios and then things sort of fizzled out as they tend to do sometimes. The good news though is that as bands and projects get named and renamed and different people contribute and move on, the main thing is persistence and I’m happy to say they are still at it, though I’m not sure to what official capacity or what “it” is called, but the point is they are still writing and recording music and growing as artists and that is all that matters.

In Cloud Orbit is less of a band, than an introspective journey through the collective unconscious via sound. Their sound carelessly floats by painting different shades of color across the sky casting different hues of color and shadow that are unique to each person’s perspective. They defy traditional songwriting by putting the lyrics second and using the vocals as an instrument to evoke the desired emotion. Guitar player and vocalist Jeremy Ravezzani explains: “I like to put effects on my voice to slightly hide what is being said in some parts. That way, you can lose yourself in what is being created and not necessarily in what is being sung.” A band like In Cloud Orbit could only come out of a small town where noticing the careless surrounding natural beauty is ingrained in your DNA. The band is from the small hamlet enclave of Romeo, north of Detroit, a town that prides itself for hanging on to it’s farming roots. Keyboardist and guitar player Alex Smith explains, our location has isolated us from a lot of the music scene around us, so we’ve never really paid attention to any trends happening around us and focused on making music that came naturally.” Ravezzani explains further about the philosophy about what drives him to create music:

My inspiration is my spirituality and constant endeavor to get through the layers of being a human being and remember that I am an infinite conscious frequency. Being a yogi, I am practicing the art of transforming myself through self-awareness. These thoughts and practices are what I personify through my music. I use the battle the ego wages on our pure soul as material to almost transmute the turmoil within into music…In my belief that everything is just flowing through different levels of frequency and vibration and the music that I create is also creating a frequency and its own vibration, I can use this to heighten my connection to something greater, something beyond me.

I put a few tracks from a bootleg of a hometown show into this episode where In Cloud Orbit has their “Beatles rooftop moment” playing at a gas station corner in downtown Romeo. You can hear all of the motorcycles and fireworks in the background adding a real late summer flavor to these recordings making them one of my favorite fly-on-wall recordings of all time.

All proper contextual Background aside, below is an excerpt of the conversation that we had. Ravezzani discusses his lyrical approach (Transcribed from the conversation):

My own opinion, like when certain bands capture me I’m either trying to figure out how they’re creating their sound and I know a lot of people prefer to hear a story or lyrics or something they can relate to mentally. Let’s say they hear me say, “I was in a sad spot one day” or whatever and they say, “oh so was I” and they’re thinking that.  Then they’re not feeling the emotion of what we’re creating musically. I feel like that’s the bigger thing. I like using my voice to sing less words and use it more as an instrument to make an audible noise of how I feel rather than having words.

People attach to bands that emit a feeling or resurrect something they’re unaware of like happiness, joy, or depression or whatever, it is people. Humans want to express whatever feeling they are feeling and I feel a lot of times when they find a band maybe I’m just being pretentious when I find a band, I want them to be mine. I found them when I was in this spot in my life...I love when you find accurate lyrics for bands because you start hearing things through that song your like, I think he’s saying this because I was in this mode, this moment of when I was listening to them and I almost heard him singing that to me so it’s almost like he’s finding you or she’s finding you whomever you are listening to, and I want to recreate that, I want to recreate more of a personal experience rather than everyone just knowing the lyrics. Know what I mean? I don’t know if that is weird or not.

In Cloud Orbit on Facebook

In Cloud Orbit on Soundcloud

ICO on the Archive:

PeachFest 8.31.14

6-7-15 YpsiArboroo

Renaissance of Ra

Omniverse is the totality of all the universes and you are welcome to be citizens of the Omniverse.  

Sun Ra

The Sun Ra media machine is up and running. In a time when the demand for content is endless, the indeterminately vast discography of Sun Ra begins to unbury its treasures. In May of 2014 The Sun Ra Music Archive commemorated the Sun Ra birthday centennial by announcing they would reissue 21 classic Sun Ra records and that they would be remastered from the master tapes under the label Enterplanetary Koncepts. A year later in May of 2015 Enterplanetary Koncepts announced that there would be another series of releases in the fall of 2015. This time though, they also announced a distribution deal with the Manimal Group.

The amount of Sun Ra merchandise continues to grow at an exponentially increasing rate. Along with the 50+ mastered for iTunes releases, Strut records just put out a slick double vinyl of tracks compiled by British broadcaster Gilles Peterson. Harte recordings just released a 40^th anniversary box set release of John Coney’s movie Space Is The Place accompanied with a cd and DVD. The Virtual Label is planning on releasing Sun Ra’s back catalog records on CD and LP along with the early 2016 announcement that Modern Harmonic has plans to release at least three new Sun Ra records that they are remastering from the original tapes. Along with all of these releases are new books like Hartmut Geerken’s reissue of Sun Ra’s Omniverse, The Execution of Sun Ra by Thomas Stanley, The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra by Chris Raschka, and Robert Mugge’s 1980 documentary a Joyful Noise has been reissued.

Over the years there have been many reissues of Sun Ra records both by legit labels and by bootleggers. The difference now is the partnership between the Sun Ra LLC and Sun Ra Archivist Michael D. Anderson. Anderson was a drummer for the Arkestra in the 1970s and has remained the archivist ever since. In fall 2013 Anderson sought assistance with the management of the Sun Ra Archive and introduced his friend WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid to Thomas Jenkins, Sun Ra’s nephew and lawful heir to the estate. Jenkins appointed Chusid as an administrator to oversee the business of the newly formed Sun Ra LLC. In an interview with Christopher Eddy from the blog Sun Ra Arkive Chusid explains the importance of the alliance of Anderson and the Sun Ra LLC:

Michael, who played drums for Sun Ra and lived at Saturn House during the 1970s, was Sun Ra’s designated tape librarian. Michael has devoted his life to the safekeeping of those reels and the historic sounds embedded on magnetic plastic film. He’s compiled a meticulous database of what’s on the tapes. He’s very protective of this collection and has a spiritual connection to the music. He doesn’t have a “job”—he has a commitment. There’s no way this material could be commercially developed without Michael’s involvement. He is irreplaceable because he doesn’t just know the music and the contents of tapes—he knows the history of Sun Ra and the various members of the Arkestra. He can put everything in context, including people who have been involved with the catalog over the years but aren’t directly connected to Sun Ra or the Arkestra. Some of this history is documented on paper, some is in his computers, and a lot of it is in his head. I love Michael for who he is and what he does. But I worry about him—his health, his moodswings, his ability to pay the rent. He has become extremely reclusive.  

There has long been a tacit understanding between the family and Michael, each acknowledging the other’s involvement and role, neither interfering with the other, but with little communication and no coordinated effort to run a business. It was obvious to me that these two sides were dependent on each other, and each had an essential role. Business and art. When ownership rights are disrespected or threatened from outside, both sides need to cooperate to protect the realm. Hence, the new alliance. We now have a team with coordinated goals.  

And just to clarify one common misunderstanding: there is no “Sun Ra estate.” There was, but it was closed in 1999 and the executrix, Marie Holston (a niece), was discharged. The estate was replaced by Sun Ra, Inc., with Jenkins as managing director. That ‘S’ corporation was dissolved in 2005 and replaced by Sun Ra LLC, again with Jenkins in charge. Same family principals in each case, with heirs replacing decedents. 

Throughout the interview Chusid explains the difficulties in cleaning up all of the legal entanglements as well as the process of working with Anderson. Chusid also goes in-depth about what his personal sonic aesthetics are when remastering the audio. All of the iTunes releases are 24 bit, making them superior to the 16 bit cd formats. In addition to all of this they are planning on finally building a legit Sun Ra website.

Sun Ra’s prolific output and DIY releases are highly valuable fetishized items by record collectors. The good news is that much of that rare music is now available online. Some of the new releases like Paris 1983 and Sun Ra at Inter-Media Arts 1991 are excellent quality, far surpassing any existing bootlegs of those shows. As Anderson continues to digitize the Sun Ra Archive there is a real grassroots vibe to these mass on demand uploads of data. It’s as if Anderson is taking fans on a digital tour of Sun Ra’s secret library. It’s also just two people doing it. One being Chusid, a champion of outsider music with a really good weekly show on WFMU. Chusid seems equipped to handle the complicated recording past of such a prolific globetrotting self professed man of mystery. Then there is Anderson, who has the best Sun Ra collection out there, including never before released albums and fly on the wall recordings. He’s been busy the past couple years as the releases continue. All fans have to do is binge on Sun Ra as it becomes available and wait for more. Who knows how big the Sun Ra Archive is. Especially when you hear firsthand accounts like the one in Thomas Stanley’s book The Execution of Sun Ra where he claims to have:

Seen Marshall Allen, a pair of spectacles hanging from his nose, pull cassettes from a large plastic bag full of similar, hastily labeled, recordings made, I presume, during the hundreds (thousands?) of hours of rehearsals in the Philly rowhouse. There is more than one large bag like this.

Another great point that Stanley makes is that there is still so much music that Sun Ra wrote and rehearsed with the Arkestra that was never performed live or released on an album. Stanley offers this quote from former Arkestra member Michael Ray:

We always had new music to play all the time. We really never played the real music in concert—Sun Ra had so much stuff that we would rehearse but didn’t even play live, because he’d say, ‘I’m just putting this out for people to steal stuff from,’ and he’d keep a lot of it from even being played in public at all. Suitcases full.

Or as Stanley puts it in his words, there is: “A pharaoh’s ransom of potential future releases hidden in the miles and miles of tape that Sun wrapped around our planet like copper wire in an electric pickup.”

It is a great time to be a Sun Ra fan, new reissues are around every corner and they sound really good. I’ve listened to a lot of the new releases and have gravitated to a few that I listen to over and over. I love Sun Ra bootlegs of live performances but it does get tiring listening to lo-fi hissy quality. Sometimes it is great but all of this new stuff that keeps showing up in Spotify is really enticing.

So far my favorite releases are:

Celestial Love (1982) Enterplanetary Koncepts

Nice mellow late night small group jazz. The album is anchored by two solid vocal offerings by June Tyson in Sometimes I’m Happy and Smile. To me this is the definitive version of Sometimes I’m Happy.




I Roam The Cosmos (2015) New Release Enterplanetary Koncepts

This is the ultimate version of I Roam The Cosmos clocking in at fifty-one minutes. The track tells a story via the call and response of Sun Ra and June Tyson. The quality is unbeatable for a 1972 recording.

Paris 1983 (2015) New Release Enterplanetary Koncepts

The quality of this show is amazing and it’s a great show. There are a lot of swinging standards stretched out by the Arkestra as well as a great version of Carefree and a brooding terrifying rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

Sun Ra at Inter-Media Arts 1991 (2016) New Release Enterplanetary Koncepts

This is another excellent quality live performance from Sun Ra’s later years, meaning that it is very accessible but still top notch. That being said the chromatic perversions jump out in unexpected places with master precision. The versions of Friendly Galaxy, Mayan Temples and Space Loneliness are outstanding.

The Pit-Inn 8-8-88 (1988) Enterplanetary Koncepts

                 
I’ve always been a fan of this show. It’s a great late era Arkestra performance featuring June Tyson and the guitar playing of Bruce Edwards. Also, the new album art is one of my favorite Sun Ra album covers.

Gilles Peterson Presents Sun Ra and his Arkestra: To Those of Earth…And Other Worlds (2015) New Release Strut Records

This double vinyl was released last fall. Real cool artwork, nice quality vinyl with some really cool tracks like Dreaming from a 45 that Gilles Peterson says he got from John Peel with the band name: The Cosmic Rays with Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Blackman is also a great track, you can hear the barely restrained chaotic cathartic pain of June Tyson’s voice. It’s overall a broad yet flowing collection of songs though the online release has lots of extra songs producing a way different experience than the vinyl release.

Interstellar Low Ways (1966) Enterplanetary Koncepts

Interplanetary Music No. 1 is a strange yet catchy chant singing. It also contains really good versions of the Arkestra standards Space Aura, Space Loneliness, and Rocket Number Nine. 

The Magic City (1965) Enterplanetary Koncepts

This is a challenging record that marks a departure by the Arkestra, as they got more and more avant-garde. The twenty-six minute self-titled opening track is very experimental and minimalist but an adventure worth taking.

Aurora Borealis (1981) Enterplanetary Koncepts

This is a quick Sun Ra solo piano record featuring some very “out” Sun Ra piano playing. The opening Ra Rachmaninoff is exquisite.

Solo Piano Venice 1977 (1977) Enterplanetary Koncepts

This record is a solo live performance starting out with improv and then showcasing old jazz standards like Take The A Train and St. Louis Blues. My favorite moment is Sun Ra playing Angel Race and singing (not on mic) the lyrics to Angel Race.