jazz odyssey

listening to an old bootleg of fm at an art gallery in toronto doing a live soundtrack to "un chien andalou" and am pondering how many "mainstream" bands have pasts like this. journey, kansas, devo, living colour all started out doing kind of freeform experimental music before making songs people might actually want to listen to. i'm sure there's many more. what are your faves?

http://i.imgur.com/avzHHr8.gif

Kansas???!?

where are the freeform experimental recordings of living colour?

or journey for that matter.

(though i am a huge fan of early journey don't get me wrong. and the pre-album demos and live material.)

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0003/248/MI0003248709.jpg

maybe journey is a stretch but i feel like it's kind of a long way from caravanserai-era santana to don't stop believin'.

living colour started out in '84 with a completely different lineup except for vernon reid doing stuff very similar to his work with ronald shannon jackson, stuff like "i have no mouth and i must scream". the only song from this era to survive to their first album was "funny vibe".

same thing with kansas... back in '71 they had a completely different lineup except for livgren. oh, they were still weak-sauce christian, but they would then go into lengthy noise-rock guitar solos and van der graaf generator-style sax freakouts. there's an album of this stuff on cuneiform but they changed the name to "proto-kaw", even though at the time the recordings were made went by "kansas".

I dig early Devo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k95VvHRd4is

That "Proto-Kaw" stuff (here) is pretty weird and great.

I'd love to hear that early Living Colour material. Are there bootlegs?

Ray Russell went from this to composing music for TV shows like Touch of Frost and Bergerac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpVBwPjKvhg

Dunno if this really counts, but this was Bob James' first record (includes a collaboration with Robert Ashley). Pretty far cry from the theme from "Taxi." As far as I know, he never revisited this area of music-making.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8qehbNleTg

need to find a copy of that. similarly: gato barbieri... though never heard any of his later smooth jazz stuff (maybe it's even good?)

"I'd love to hear that early Living Colour material. Are there bootlegs?"

there are, but they're not nearly as widely distributed as they should be (like, not on youtube or anything). they've been on dime a couple times.

hell, yeah, electroacoustic to smooth jazz counts- doesn't have to be aor, any kind of "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) music will do. i'd also count the krautrock record with james (sorry, "jimmy") galway on it. hell you could even throw chicago in there- i mean, they were never full-on freaks, but "free form guitar" sounds like john fahey jamming with the red crayola, and even as late as the record where they put out "wishing you were here", half of that record was weird fusion instrumentals like "devil's sweet".

Ray Russell went from this to composing music for TV shows like Touch of Frost and Bergerac

Hmm, re: Bergerac:

The evocative theme tune, composed by George Fenton, featured a reggae and accordion refrain.

http://rayrussell.co.uk/?page_id=9

He didn't write the theme song for Bergerac, just nine (!) seasons' worth of incidental music. But then I never said he wrote the theme music.

I knew trying to claim knowledge on a jazz thread would be a mistake.

There is a funny bit about that at the beginning of the Tony Visconti autobio, although I don't know if he ever reveals the nature of his mistake to those who aren't in on it as I haven't read that far yet.

it's ok, ledge, we're not talking about real jazz anyway!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuKJkghC2u0

I love that Bob James record. And it was on ESP Disk!

Hey folks, we just had a big discussion on the subject in this thread, no need to start a new one:

Artists who moved from experimental realms towards the mainstream

I remember reading the review of Davey Henderson's band Win's stage debut which was supposed to be a freeform improvisation before he went onto hook laden pop. He had started asa Fire Engine and then went onto Nectarine no 9 who are both considerably more left field

"Hey folks, we just had a big discussion on the subject in this thread, no need to start a new one:"

whoops, sorry! go ahead and merge if you can (particularly as, looking at that thread, i'd be scared shitless to revive...)