♥️
Karen Brookman Bailey, who was an amazing artist and friend of mine, handed me her husband's book one afternoon after I’d picked her up some cigarettes. I used to spend large amounts of time hanging out with her at the couples' house in London. Another object she gave to me was the DVD for this, Derek Bailey & Min Tanaka - Mountain Stage (1993). Karen and I met, not through the music world, but rather randomly. One day I was taking these discarded beautiful sash windows off the street in Clapton, to use as a paint palette in my studio, and Karen’s brother was doing something similar, so we started chatting and he invited me to meet his sister, as she was having a yard sale that day, and that’s how our friendship began. I love free jazz, it’s good for you. I like the anti-consumerist attitude...however complex, it’s worth experiencing.
Apr 1, 2025
Related Recs
Throughout January, I’d wake up, light a fire, and play a yellow sleeved record I found in a charity shop. As a compilation it confuses a little in terms of who wrote what, after researching the tracks, it’s mostly the collaborations between Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. I’m making new paintings at the moment, and some jazz music really keeps the paint loose. I was almost studying ‘Moose the Mooche’ and ‘A Night in Tunisia’ before walking to the studio. Another musician who I’m close with is Heather Leigh. She is an amazing improviser and she inspires me. Check the albums ‘I Abused Animal’, ‘Throne’, the song ‘Prelude to Goddess’ is about me. Heather also played extensively with Peter Brötzmann, and she creates beautiful gardens too @theglamgardener
Apr 1, 2025
🎷
My dad is one of the biggest jazz heads in the world. He used to pick me up from the mall in eighth grade blasting Pharaoh Sanders or Maynard Ferguson, and when I got in, instead of turning it down, he would turn it up and say, “LISTEN TO THIS, MOUSE!!! JEEZ!!” Anyways: I first fell in love with Albert Ayler when I saw the 2013 Whitney exhibition Blues for Smoke, and on the ground floor--this is when the museum was still in the Breuer--they were playing this beautiful film of Ayler performing “Spirits Rejoice”--I think on French television. It’s very bizarre, very classic Ayler--it starts and stops multiple times, it mocks its source material, it discharges it into ecstasy. He’s like...the Herodotus of jazz. You can hear Louis Armstrong as much as you can hear Pharaoh Sanders. Ayler had one of the most fascinating lives. It was far too short: he died at 34, and there were rumors for decades that the mafia murdered him by tying him to a jukebox and throwing it into the East River. Where to start? Well, his version of “On Green Dolphin Street” is one of the craziest things you’ll ever hear. Same goes with “Summertime.” And his live recordings are W-I-L-D: try “Live At Greenwich Village.” You can practically hear the paint peeling off the walls during “Truth Is Marching In.”I think there’s this idea that free jazz was somehow inevitable, the same way that Abstract Expressionism was--that it was simply the logical endpoint of the art form. I don’t think that’s quite right. There’s an album called The Albert Ayler Story, which is like an audio documentary and which I also recommend a lot, in which there are lots of interviews with Ayler and friends, plus formative recordings. And his drummer Milford Graves talks how there was a movement in the 1960s to stop jazz music--specifically Pharaoh and Sun-Ra and Ayler--because the musicians were too involved in political activism. Critics said it had nothing to do with the music. But to Graves, this free or avant-garde jazz was always about political progress, because it allows you to have “abstract thoughts” that you later “condense” into something “more logical.” He says of the work he was making and would have continued to make with Ayler, who died in 1970: “I think the music was going to direct people into another area of consciousness.” That’s what was lost when Ayler died. Whereas in something like pop music, “you’re constantly moving around in a circle, where there’s no kind of opening out. You’re caught.” Isn’t that fascinating?
Mar 30, 2021
I used to listen to more jazz, dusted off some old favorites though this week. Story time with this album, like 7-8 years ago I rolled up solo to a show at the Village Vanguard in NYC and was seated next to another solo attendee- over some martinis we got to chatting about lots of topics, jazz being one of course, sharing recs, and he spoke very highly of this album which I hadn’t heard before. Coincidentally we even ended up at the same pizza place for a slice after it happened where our discussion continued. Shout out to you Alan you’re a real dude hope you’re doing well.
Feb 28, 2025
Top Recs from @joanne-robertson
I often work alone, however, friendship and hanging out with friends who make you laugh is very good for you, and sometimes that turns into art, I guess. I’m not totally sure how, but it often happens with my friends. Sidsel Meineche Hansen and I recently made the record ‘Alien Baby’. We also made some ‘Globe’ paintings, and I wrote a short soundtrack piece for a video she made with Reba Maybury, called ‘Day of Wrath’. ’Fingerblades’ is a recent duo exhibition of solo paintings, made with Rachal Bradley. I’ve known Rachal since we were kids at school, and I love her very much. Rachal is currently working on a film about Japanese fashion and the north-west of England, where we both grew up.
Apr 1, 2025
Throughout January, I’d wake up, light a fire, and play a yellow sleeved record I found in a charity shop. As a compilation it confuses a little in terms of who wrote what, after researching the tracks, it’s mostly the collaborations between Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. I’m making new paintings at the moment, and some jazz music really keeps the paint loose. I was almost studying ‘Moose the Mooche’ and ‘A Night in Tunisia’ before walking to the studio. Another musician who I’m close with is Heather Leigh. She is an amazing improviser and she inspires me. Check the albums ‘I Abused Animal’, ‘Throne’, the song ‘Prelude to Goddess’ is about me. Heather also played extensively with Peter Brötzmann, and she creates beautiful gardens too @theglamgardener
Apr 1, 2025
Rosie Healey cooks dream food. Fresh yum amazing, she teaches me to make things I love too, like the magic dressings and green sauce. I am not as good as her and she sometimes laughs when I make gravy.
Apr 1, 2025