AMM vs. SME

Met DB couple of times. Really nice guy and completely worthy hero to many. Him and EP just weren't fated to get on is all.

I voted for AMM just because I think that what they made works better as albums.

Never got the impression he was one of those d-bags who spells improv with a capital I, if you know what I mean.

― 誤訳侮辱, Tuesday, February 12, 2013 10:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is OTMFM. He never, ever approached his work as Free Improv, and yet sadly, the legions he inspired/influenced do just that.

AMM

I saw him play at the Klinker club in north London, may have been the last time he played in Britain before he died? He signed my CD and was a true gent. IIRC he had a tap dancer with him that night.

― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Tuesday, 12 February 2013 23:08 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm pretty sure his last gig in britain was a group thing with tony bevan, which I went to. I was 19 & didn't know much about improv (still don't!) and I thought it was amazing. I got there crazy early - it was only like my 3rd london gig - and talked to derek. Such a cool guy! He pretended never to have heard of himself, it was v funny. I guess you had to be there. Karen was cool too. She said something funny about michael nyman. The whole experience seemed really amazing and magical in a way that's kind of hard to place now.

I got really melancholy while typing that and I'm not sure why.

nice post, wins. i remember that bailey died on or around christmas day, which only added to the sense of melancholy surrounding his death, and for me, this gnawing feeling of loss (to music, to british cultural life) seems to only increase with time - as if a whole tradition, a way of life, was swept away with him. i miss him more than just about any other musician i can think of.

Would've done AMM vs.:

http://www.emanemdisc.com/images/E4301.jpeg

Or Lenin vs Mao.

Feel like I should vote SME because they're more "jazz" than AMM, and AMM have inspired a whole lot of really horrible shit (the whole "eai" aesthetic/movement), but I'll probably vote AMM anyway.

― 誤訳侮辱, Monday, 11 February 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is wrong, it wasn't just AMM. That Keith turned up to a lot of it doesn't mean a great deal.

AMM, like so much free improv, are a mish-mash of jazz, serial music, chance procedures and all kinds of ideas that live outside those music circles some of the people involved came from initially, and I'm not just talking about the western avant-garde: if you look at what Bailey says about recording apes in a roundabout way what an Indian raga musician might suggest about his music as achieving an ecstatic experience with the audience or a higher being, and how that couldn't be mediated via a record (of course others were keen on records).

You can look at eai as dealing w/how a lot of those sonics generated via improv were recorded in the first place, how they are heard by subsequent generations and then played back at an audience that knows those records.

Another point of departure is company week where you had a dancer or a sound artist being invited along. Or Steve Beresford. Someone who doesn't quite have the chops or tech but brings other qualities that aren't whatever but will then be transformed. eai is a further departure because its so record based, with electronics too so that's where MEV and David Tudor (by all accounts a great pianist who gave it up) come in.

The Charlie Watts Big Band was actually put together by John Stevens, and had guys in it like Paul Rutherford with whom DB certainly didn't stop playing (not to mention that Chas produced the first People Band album back in '68) so I'm not sure that really had anything to do with it.

I saw them at Fulham Town Hall in '86. Bit of a mess but quite enjoyable.

Feel a tad guilty that so many DB fans here didn't actually ever see him live when I saw him 6 or 7 times and I'm not even a fan! Admittedly the first 3 occasions were attempts by me to work out whether I actually liked what he was doing or not (or "understand", if you prefer), the rest he was just there when I showed up to the gig.

Interesting, didn't know about Stevens' and Rutherford's involvement with Watts. I read an interview with Parker where he said Charlie was always trying to get him to play more "out" in that band.

btw, here are four programs on improvisation, presented by DB.

Gah! Been looking for those! Thanks!

Started watching them last week for the first time, its a model on how music docs should be done.

Not saying he wasn't nice in person but turn to his spiky comments on jazz and the museum in the 3rd EP..

voted AMM, in a non-shocker.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

ha, the Iskra 1903 reminder above reminds me that when Hughie Green did his big "Stand Up And Be Counted" meltdown on Opportunity Knocks at the beginning of '77, both Derek B and Paul R were in the studio orchestra behind him!

Wow! (Though lost on anyone other than me, Marcello + few others)

That is awesome.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

c'mon who voted SME

Lou Gare, founder member of AMM, passed away earlier this month. RIP.

This compilation w/some early unreleased AMM is now circulating:

http://inconstantsol.blogspot.com/2017/10/lou-gare-compilation-1965-1985.html

Lock up yer daughters, the AMM boys are on tour.

https://noisenotmusicdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/l-r_eddie_prevost_john_tilbury_keith_rowe__pisa__mid-_1980s.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9AbMBDjCys

Thanks for posting that!