This is pretty close to where my head is at this afternoon.
As always, let loose a primal scream and press pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.
Last Exit - Destination-Out (1986)
Frankfurt TV gig. Sonny Sharrock - guitar; Bill Laswell - bass (guitar w/octave divider?); Peter Brozman - sax; Ronald Shannon Jackson - drums.
Are you hip to Sonny Sharrock?
“I’ve had guys come up to me… and tell me how they were inventing new horns to get a new sound. But they never said anything about getting some new feeling… I’d ask those people, ‘Don’t forget the feeling. The music is about feeling.’ …You have to think like Coltrane, you know, and just say, ‘I’m gonna blow my heart out in this horn – every night.’ And that’s what music should be about.”
From the Last Exit wiki.
The band was known for its uncompromising musical ferocity, fueled by the band members’ confrontational attitudes. Greg Kot writes that they brought a level of “volume and violence that makes most rock bands sound tame.” Their music was largely improvised; John Dugan writes “Granted, one person’s free improvisation is another’s tuneless chaos, but Last Exit, due primarily to the skill of its individuals, only infrequently fell off the precipice into the netherworld of arty wanking … The playing is intricate, wildly adventurous, frequently funny, and, perhaps most important, a tribute to musical democracy in action.”
Related posts
Tags: bill laswell, Guitar, improvise, Peter Brozman, ronald shannon jackson, sonny sharrock
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
— Live performance like which will stop you in your tracks like a deer in the headlights… how do I know?
I am not an illustrated encyclopedia of musical performance like some of you, BUT, these names are very familiar to me for some off base reason… and it is because I think I heard these players — or some combination of these musicians — all at the Jazz Festival on Navy Pier in Chicago over the years 1983 to 1999.. ? I don’t see any Navy Pier references, but once I “experienced it” precisely that sax player in the utube, I never blew my clarinet the same way again… so there.
thanks again for digging up one of my filed away subconscious memories, there Raymond.
Link | September 14th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
J wrote,
Good Lord! That video reminded me of my brief tenure as a high school substitute teacher…(talk about dissonance!)
Link | September 14th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Kenski wrote,
“only infrequently fell off the precipice into the netherworld of arty wanking”. Good lord. I think I may well have stumbled into that precipice, many a time. Admittedly, I probably approached it from the other side (ie the arty w**king was the bit that sounded like I knew what I was doing)
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Sans Direction wrote,
I’m more likely to stick around artless wanking, myself.
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Thomas Jefferson on Experience: “Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.”
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Pribek wrote,
J and Kenski-that was two “Good Lords” in a row there. When was the last time you heard that kind of reaction after a hymn?
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
J wrote,
Why just this past Sunday, when I started the first hymn in the key of the facing page…
Salvation may just be a half-step away, but when everyone knows the hymn, it seems more like a mile.
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Pribek wrote,
Too funny-did you still do a modulation after that or, did you think that they’d been through enough already?
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
J wrote,
The choir spooks easily, so I don’t usually modulate the last verse of hymns; –that’s too “Protestant” for those good folks.
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Pribek wrote,
For kicks, you ought try the Conway Twitty thing on them; drop a step every verse. I bet that would be a hoot.
Link | September 15th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Salvation may just be a half-step away, but when everyone knows the hymn, it seems more like a mile.
*[worth a repeat.. singing in mile long half-tone-gues?]
Link | September 16th, 2008 at 3:52 am