Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of breath: where do i start?

I do mix it up with some ROCK. as well as jazz I heard some swans and pere ubu over the week.

Do write up the takayanagi if you can (I have to revive that as well, actually).

Anyway, quick BoB checklist:

Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath (RCA Neon, 1971; reissued on Repertoire CD, 1994)
McGregor (piano, African xylophone); Harry Beckett (trumpet); Marc Charig (cornet); Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet, Indian flute); Nick Evans, Malcolm Griffiths (trombones); Mike Osborne (alto sax, clarinet); Dudu Pukwana (alto sax); Ronnie Beer (tenor sax, Indian flute); Alan Skidmore (tenor and soprano saxes); John Surman (baritone and soprano saxes); Harry Miller (bass); Louis Moholo (drums, percussion).
One of the crucial records of the last 50 years; Africa meets New Thing meets London. "Mra" is a hit single waiting to happen (and I remember them actually performing it on TOTP!). "Davashe's Dream" is where Johnny Hodges meets Ayler - diseased and beautiful. "Night Poem" takes up most of side two and is up there with "Space Is The Place" for psychedelic jazz axiomatics. Joe Boyd produced.

Brotherhood (RCA, 1972; currently unavailable on CD)
Same line-up as above minus Surman and with Gary Windo (tenor sax) replacing Beer.
Why has this never been reissued? Considerably freer than the first one, has McGregor's greatest recorded piano solo on "Joyful Noises Of The Lord" and shows Osborne and Skidmore at their most enjoyable bad-tempered ("Do It" and "Think Of Something").

Travelling Somewhere (Cuneiform CD, 2001)
Live Radio Bremen broadcast, January 1973. Same line-up as "Brotherhood" except Evan Parker (tenor sax) replaces Skidmore.
BoB in exceptionally ferocious form, even for them; they were always better live. Contains extensive versions of tracks from both RCA albums; despite the sleevenote, Feza doesn't solo anywhere on the record. Worth it just to demonstrate how feral Evan Parker's playing can become when taken out of its usual pure Improv context.

Live At Willisau (Ogun, 1973; reissued on Ogun CD with six extra tracks, 1996)
Line up as "Travelling Somewhere" minus Osborne, and with Radu Malfatti (trombone) replacing Griffiths.
Note the continued gradual takeover of the band by the Improv massive. Actually recorded a month before "Travelling Somewhere" and sounding as though it were recorded at the back of the proverbial bus, but this was Ogun's first album release, and a mighty thing it remains too. Feza's solo on "Tungi's Song" might well be his best recorded one, and the Parker/Malfatti-led freakout on "Do It" has to be heard to be believed.

Procession (Ogun, 1978; still available on vinyl, but awaiting transfer to CD)
Live in Toulouse, May 1977. McGregor (piano); Beckett, Charig (trumpets); Malfatti (trombone); Osborne, Pukwana (alto saxes); Parker (tenor sax); Bruce Grant (baritone sax, flute); Miller, Johnny Dyani (basses); Moholo (drums).
There was an unreleased third studio album recorded for Island in 1974 which included Elton Dean and Lol Coxhill in the line-up - they were BoB regulars but never appeared on any of the records. Meanwhile, this record shows that McGregor was slowly tightening up the structure of the BoB; nonetheless, Parker's explosive tenor on "Sunrise On The Sun" is phenomenal, and the 18-minute take on Pukwana's "Kwhalo" (a.k.a. "Diamond Express") might well be the best single thing they ever did; the band unites and disappears into itself. Good to see Dyani on board at long last; reluctant for years to participate in BoB, he works well with Miller here - so well that they also played together on Moholo's unbeatable Spirits Rejoice the following year.

There were two more albums in the '80s - Yes Please (In & Out, 1981) and Country Cooking (Virgin, 1987). Both have their supporters but McGregor was moving away from free jazz and towards a more formal Ellingtonian structure. Thus the playing here is efficient but anonymous. Evans, Malfatti and Beckett still turn up on Yes Please, as do John Tchicai and Louis Sclavis, but they're not given much to do, and Pukwana, Miller and Moholo are all conspicuous by their absence. You can hear the two hapless French drummers sweating as they try to do what Moholo could do with one hand.

Outside BoB, there are a few Blue Notes records:

Very Urgent (credited to "The Chris McGregor Group")(Polydor, 1968)
McGregor, Feza, Pukwana, Beer, Dyani, Moholo. Ornette was in the studio while it was being recorded. Fantastic record - needs reissuing, erm, very urgently.

Blue Notes For Mongezi (Ogun double, 1977).
Recorded by McGregor, Pukwana, Dyani and Moholo on their way back from Feza's memorial service. 90 minutes of the most excoriating expressions of grief ever to appear on record. Should be reissued, but I can understand why they don't.

Blue Notes In Concert Vol 1 (Ogun, 1978)
There never was a Vol 2, but this was done at the 100 Club, and very fine it is too.

Blue Notes For Johnny (Ogun, 1987)
Dyani had now passed on. The three remaining members sound considerably more muted in their grief.

McGregor did a few solo piano records, the best of which is In His Good Time (Ogun, 1978). Finally, he has a striking piano cameo on "Poor Boy" by Nick Drake (from Bryter Layter).

Christmas comes early, etc. etc.

"Mra" is a hit single waiting to happen (and I remember them actually performing it on TOTP!)

i would love to see this. i can't find any mcgregor stuff on youtube or elsewhere. there are some latter-day things with louis moholo playing with various people; as i listen to all this stuff, he's becoming one of my favorite drummers.

and btw just to update the thread, emusic now how the first two b.o.b. albums, along with an early blue notes record and very urgent.

yo dudes, has anyone heard the first assegai record (which I guess is sorta dudu pukwana's jazz rock group?)? apparently has richard thompson on it? info is hard to come by!

It has a guy named Fred Cocker on guitar. Don't think it's a pseudonym. Apparently the plan was that Joe Boyd was going to produce a kwela/folk crossover record which was going to involve Dudu as well as Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol from Fairport - Dudu taught the guitarists the kwela style and some recordings were made but they were shelved, largely due to Dudu's, ahem, personal issues (i.e. too drunk to solo properly).

ah ok... the only thing i ever heard about it was in the electric eden book, which says: "Saxophonist Dudu Pukwana blew on John and Beverley Martyn's Road to Ruin, and Richard Thompson blasted his guitar into the first recording by Assegai" ... but maybe that's inaccurate? Literally nothing else I can find about it on the internet.

I gotta read that book. I still find it amazing that all these people played together

First bit's true enough (one track anyway) but I've got that Assegai record and can't see or hear him on it. Pretty damn good album, though, as was the second one. I think they even might have been on TOTP.

yeah, thompson or not, i need to check those records out.
and yeah, seriously, the electric eden book is probably in the top 10 music books i've ever read.

This has been on my Amazon wishlist for almost a year - how does it compare to Electric Eden?

http://www.amazon.com/Seasons-Change-Experimental-Genuine-Jawbone/dp/1906002320/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372786728&sr=8-1&keywords=seasons+they+change

i haven't read that, though i think it's on my amazon wishlist too. kind of thought it would compare unfavorably to electric eden, but it might cover some more recent stuff too?

Yeah, that's what I was wondering, too. Hmmm. One of us should buy this, tyler. Not "it!" I mean, I'm still figuring out how I'm going to actually read this John Fahey Handbook that came yesterday. So many books, so little time.

Also, to swing around back to the thread topic, anyone ever read Chris McGregor's wife's biography of CMcG? It goes for about four bills on Amazon, and, predictably, my local public library has no record of it ever existing.

the Brotherhood of Breath recording I keep coming back to is an old BBC bootleg recording I picked up years and years back- probably from Jazz Club or something like that. Tracks are "You Ain't Gonna Know Me Cause You Think You Know Me" and "Wood Fire". Never was able to find solid date info on it, but Mongezi's around. Not sure why out of all their stuff that's the one that really stuck with me, but it did.

Maxine's book I got years ago in Ray's Jazz Shop. Pricey but worth it. I never see it now.

haha I've probably still got that (Jazz In Britain?) session on tape somewhere. Sounds like '75 BoB repertoire, so it was probably the Bremen To Bridgewater line-up (or one of them).