Search & Destroy: Sun Ra

I think the first ones I heard were Blue Delight and The Magic City? Can't really remember how I first heard of him, probably Forced Exposure. I still love both of those records.

hilariously, the guy who said (something like) "He's totally out there -- he's from SATURN!" (and played me some Sun Ra) also tried to convince me that Red Hot Chili Peppers' One Hot Minute was an utter classic.

― tylerw, Thursday, June 4, 2015 2:56 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I also can't really recall when I first heard of Sun Ra, but yeah his name was always out there, either via magazines, reissues, Sonic Youth, some one was always talking about him...hearing wise I'm sure I heard him via our local free-from radio station KFAI when I was in high school, which around the time Evidence really started reissuing all those records and they were pretty easy to find.

Similar to Tyler's story I remember a dude in high school being like look what I got and displaying a copy of "Super Sonic Jazz" like it was some crazy thing, but I remember feeling it wasn't "out" enough for me at the time. Ha.

I probably have, I dunno 30+ Sun Ra records? Also feel like I haven't scratched the surface. Sun Ra records are our greatest source of renewable energy!

I remember feeling it wasn't "out" enough for me at the time
honestly, almost none of the free jazzers/out jazz dudes sounded as crazy as I'd built them up in my head to be after reading about them. i remember hearing ornette's early stuff and thinking "this is not insane." i thought it'd just be total atonal freak outs. even ayler didn't really strike me that way.

& yeah i'm not in a hurry to collect every last sun ra recording, but i like the idea that there'll always be some record i've never heard out there waiting...

I think there's still a few Saturns that have never been reissued (on CD or otherwise).

xxpost

Ayler felt pretty out to me, but I know what you mean.

More Live at Kntting Factoryby Charles Gayle was pretty much my standard bearer for atonal blasts at the time and that was two discs full of it.

haha i might be overstating -- hearing ayler for the first time was pretty wild. but it might not have been quite as mindblowing as i had prepped myself for.

i remember hearing ornette's early stuff and thinking "this is not insane."

oh man yes so true. I first heard "Ornette!" and "This is Our Music" and I was like uhh I guess this is a little weirder sounding than Thelonious Monk or 'Trane but it still has discernible rhythms, melodies, patterns - I was expecting more John Zorn "Naked City"-style abrasion

now when I heard "Free Jazz", that was more what I was expecting

yeah, that and ascension i think are what i was expecting, generally...

i came to free jazz pretty late. i was working my way through the 50's for years. it's weird cuz i fit the profile perfectly of the underground/noise/punk/rock listener who should have gravitated to far out stuff at an early age, but i grew up listening to jazz and i loved bop and post-bop stuff so much. soooo, i guess i could be kind of a jazz snob about people who ONLY listened to free stuff or whatever. i blame my dad. he hated that stuff and i think that rubbed off on me a bit. i love it now though. and there is so much that i discover every day. would have been helpful if i had bought a lot of the records i buy now in the 80's or 90's though...

I *never* heard jazz around my house growing up, but it wasn't like I went straight from rock to Sun Ra - by the end of high school/beginning of college I had seen "Straight No Chaser" and "Let's Get Lost", bought "Kind of Blue" and "A Love Supreme", took a class in the history of jazz, etc. My knowledge of jazz wasn't super-deep by the time I got to the free stuff but my interest in that kinda developed in parallel with other strains of jazz (Blue Note funk, "cool"/post-bop stuff, 70s fusion etc.)

if i had to do it all over again, i'd just start with duke ellington

that guy today had a 60's delmark pressing of sun song and i am totally keeping it. great copy too.

yeah, in retrospect, i was really lucky to have the dad that i had. he totally looked like squaresville but he was dragging me to jazz shows in the village at an early age and i heard SO much stuff and saw so many people live. it's all in my brain somewhere. he played jazz constantly at home.

yeah that is lucky. i play a lot of jazz around the house, but my 5yo has recently started complaining about "all the music with no words!"

is it too late to disown him?

The only jazz record that ever seemed too freaky was Dave Holland's Conference of the Birds---not the gentle title track, of course (which was even covered by a band I roomed with, who played what was then called "The New Acoustic Music," like Oregon, various students of Fahey-Kottke-Lang, that first Grisman Quintet LP). And not the cute "Q&A"---but otherwise, Braxton times Rives=OMG! Despite enjoying both guys/ own records as leaders (also Rivers on Miles Davis Heard Round The World). Usually, if I got lost for a second, just listen to the drummer, but didn't work here---nothing against Altschul; I even liked Circle, his group w Chick Corea, and I'm usually meh on post-Miles Corea. But I finally gave up, put it away for a few decades, tried again, and immediately loved the whole thing.

Wikipedia:
Holland's compositions for the album had been performed at a New York City concert by a group including Randy Brecker on trumpet, Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Ralph Towner on guitar, Holland on bass, and Barry Altschul on percussion; "Braxton and Rivers, however, were chosen for the recording as better able to respond to the opportunist disjunctions offered within Holland's compositions."(No lie, Max Harrison!)
... Stuart Nicholson writes: "Conference of the Birds emerged as a definitive statement of swinging free expression. It was, in essence, a return to the rugged discipline of early 1960s free improvising by working off melodic foundations using the 'time, no changes' principle to achieve greater control over that elusive quarry, freedom."

is it too late to disown him?

eh she's got pretty good taste so far -- this is her favorite record currently
https://igcdn-photos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfa1/t51.2885-15/11101966_1621360338077261_1996988635_n.jpg

"all the music with no words!"

haha THIS why do kids require narrative all the time!

Tylerw that is an amazing photo

haha, yeah i like that they both have bedhead. only one of them is totally hung over though.

yeah the narrative thing -- it might have something to with not quite understanding how music is made, like recognizing instruments, etc (though she's kind of getting there with that). the voice/singing is something to latch on to because she can sing and she knows where that's coming from.

this is maybe for another thread but yeah I had this, well idk if it was an "argument" really, but my daughter was complaining about something I was playing that didn't have words (Chet Baker maybe?) because "what's the point?" Good question! But what's the point of any music really... I guess in her mind the point of music is to relay an idea or a concrete feeling or a story, and she doesn't get how abstract/non-literal music can do that. She does like "Rhapsody in Blue" so there's hope...

(she is also cool w Sun Ra btw - because he is FROM SATURN)

ok, she gets a pass for nilsson schmilsson :)

Ha I have a picture of myself from roughly the same age with my Popeye soundtrack! Kids love Nilsson.

I first heard Ra when there was a wave of ESP (?) reissues and the promos were sitting in the bin of freebies at the store where I worked. I took all of them, gave a few to my friend Rebecca and kept a few, can't remember which. The feeling that something isn't as far out/incomprehensible as I thought it would be is also v familiar. I thought that about jazz, metal, everything.

Search!!

Gilles Peterson's Sun Ra compilation is out on Strut at the end of the month. Looking forward to it, the Marshall Allen volume on the same label was pretty great.

my brother hooked me up w/ a bunch of sun ra records a few weeks ago

he's always been kind of a blind spot for me, all i had before was "heliocentric worlds vol 1" which is okay but i never understood why it was always heralded as the best

here is what he gave me:

on jupiter
cosmos
sleeping beauty
strange celestial road
cosmic tones for mental therapy / art forms of dimensions tomorrow
live in cleveland
lanquidity
my brother the wind vol 2

first tune off lanquidity is satisfying a search i've been on for a long while

heliocentric worlds is "heralded as the best" by people who like raw free jazz ... personally, i prefer just about every one of the ones you listed to it (w/ the exception of "live in cleveland" ... never heard it)

yeah I only know the Cosmic Tones/Art Forms twofer, SCR, and Lanquidity. I think SCR is a compilation on Blast First?

Haven't heard a couple of those (never heard of the Cleveland thing...what year is it from?). Cosmic Tones/Art Forms is one of my favorites of his, sounds decades ahead of its time.

listened to the first track off "live in cleveland" (1975 btw) this morning and the sound quality isn't great at all unfortunately but it's a pretty amazing black gospel chant about the "astro nation of the united world" w/ an underlying funk groove

I'll have to check that out; thanks for that info.

Sound quality is definitely an issue on some live Ra stuff. Most of the Transparency sets sound fine (Detroit 1980-81 residency, All-Stars 1983 set), but some are disappointing (a set with an inaudible Milford Graves supposedly in the lineup).

to be honest with you i hardly ever listen to any of his nyc stuff. i like free jazz, but i just don't think "heliocentric worlds" is up there with, say, "ghosts".

"springtime again" from sleeping beauty is amazing wow

I really like that space funk electric thing he was doing from tghe late 70s to the early 80s including Sleeping Beauty, Lanquididty and Strange Celestial Road. Tghough I think he was still heavily revisiting the late 40s stuff at the same time on different lps which can also be enjoyable.
But I think it was that deep space funk stuff that is my favourite and may be what most people who are more familiar with the myth than the actual catalogue may be yearning for when they want to explore his work. Could be worng about that 2nd bit. Are people actually looking for the heavily discordant stuff that I find less satisfactory?

may be what most people who are more familiar with the myth than the actual catalogue may be yearning for when they want to explore his work. Could be worng about that 2nd bit. Are people actually looking for the heavily discordant stuff that I find less satisfactory?

rings true to me, i was certainly not looking for heavy discordant raw free jazz and never really felt pulled into heliocentric worlds. i have a lot of noisy raw free jazz already and i'm rarely in the mood for it

Are people actually looking for the heavily discordant stuff that I find less satisfactory?

I am, and the Transparency series suggests many others are, as well. He arranged and orchestrated like no other; as much as I love Lanquidity, it's not the ideal showcase for many of his (or his Arkestra's) strengths.

I try to seek out anything that might approach The Magic City in its majesty...also always hunting for spacious, tape-delay/reverb-heavy things like Cosmic Tones/Art Forms and When Angels Speak Of Love.

On Jupiter, Sleeping Beauty, Strange Celestial Road, and Lanquidity are all of a piece to my ears - Art Yard reissues of this late 70s sorta r&b/space funk period are quite good imo. I agree that this is probably the most inviting/appealing period of his work to non-jazz/free-jazz heads, structurally and harmonically you get a lot of stuff that has a drifting, pleasant quality to it, without a ton of dissonant wailing (although that does pop up). Cosmos I don't have although it's on my want list, and given that's from the same period I would assume it's similar ...?

cosmic tones for mental therapy - this is way earlier obviously and more in line with the kind of free jazz colliding with exotica he was focusing on

I don't have "live in cleveland" or "my brother the wind vol 2"

I do recommend the recent "Space is the Place - Original Soundtrack" reissue from Sutro Park, which is much different from the "Space is the Place" album proper, and is composed of music used in the actual film. It has a preponderance of my favorite Ra elements - lots of chants/vocals, lots of synth-heavy stuff, and it swings

I don't have "live in cleveland" or "my brother the wind vol 2"

I highly recommend My Brother The Wind Vol 2; half is relatively straight-ahead organ-driven work, and the other half is early (possibly his first) solo synthesizer pieces.

"cosmos" is one of his top 5 imo

my brother the wind vol 2 another yes yes vote from me

'Otherness Blue' and 'Somebody Else's World' are totally great. Top June Tyson moments.

really enjoying two of the quartet albums, "new steps" and "other voices, other blues" from 1978 and I think reissued a couple years ago. Great sax playing by john gilmore. never heard of him before.
I can already tell these are going to be with me for a while.

never heard of him before.

have you never listened to Sun Ra before? Gilmore's on p much everything.

I try periodically try to get into Sun Ra, but it often sounds a little cluttered to me. I don't hate it. It just hasn't clicked for me yet.

his catalog is massive and highly varied obviously but I'd say his late 70s period is a great entry point in general