Podcasts about Ornette Coleman

When Mitch Goldman invited Roy Campbell to be his guest on Deep Focus, he knew that Roy was a master student of the entire history of the music, but he had no idea that Roy knew Woody Shaw personally.  Stunning tales of Ornette Coleman, Lee Morgan, and others emerge in this remarkable program, recorded not 2 months before Roy Campbell's tragic early passing.  Roy, you are missed!

Nos premiers invités #SessionLive sont Roseaux avec Ben l'Oncle Soul. Roseaux est un trio parisien composé Emile Omar, Alex Finkin et Clément Petit. Les trois mousquetaires du son cultivent leur savoir-faire désormais salué par la critique et un auditoire toujours plus nombreux depuis leur premier projet en 2012. Il leur a fallu du temps, pour prendre du recul et de la hauteur afin de nous offrir un retour tant réjouissant que retentissant. Roseaux prend racine au bord des rives de la soul, du folk, du jazz, et de la chanson de toutes les époques, une cascade de sonorités intarissables, où les trois compositeurs puisent leur inspiration et fusionnent leurs expériences. Les feuilles de Roseaux s'élancent au souffle de merveilleuses voix, choisies avec précision par les trois compères, comme celle, du chanteur américain Aloe Blacc, présent depuis le début de l'aventure, enchanteur incontournable des trois épisodes. Pensé comme une escapade onirique gorgée d'émotions, en marge de la production massive, instantanée et souvent désincarnée, Roseaux est un groupe totalement artisanal, sorte d'ovni dans le paysage musical hexagonal, qui opère à l'instinct et surtout à l'envie. Ainsi, Roseaux est devenu expert pour réunir, le temps d'un disque, les artistes qui forment spécifiquement l'ADN de leur hôte : des voix envoûtantes, une trame au piano et au violoncelle, mais aussi des rencontres et des retrouvailles, dans un univers poétique et volontairement nébuleux. Ce troisième album est l'œuvre de 3 passionnés de musique, capables d'intervertir leurs rôles : écriture, arrangements, production, d'où émergent cette fois, onze titres au mélodies ciselées dont trois instrumentaux colorés et insolites. Un périple entre mélancolie et euphorie, qui a conduit Roseaux aux confins de la planète, des Caraïbes à l'Europe en pasant par l'Afrique pour dénicher d'autres vibrations et des interprètes singuliers : la captivante chanteuse grenado-britannique Ala.ni, le petit prince afropop anglais originaire du Ghana, Ghetto Boy, et la troublante suédoise Isabel Sörling, signent ici une première collaboration flamboyante avec le groupe. Pendant que la talentueuse canado-haïtienne Mélissa Laveaux, l'hypnotique chanteur scandinave Olle Nyman, la pétillante franco-canadienne Anna Majidson et notre remarquable Ben national, déjà présents sur le deuxième volet, parviennent encore à créer la surprise en dévoilant de nouveaux aspects de leur tessiture. Les voix de Roseaux sont décidément impénétrables et sa magie se renouvelle aujourd'hui en faisant dialoguer la force de tous ces éléments scintillants, à découvrir dans un écrin de douceur et de volupté. La nature regorge de roseaux, celui-ci est unique.   Titres interprétés au grand studio - With Us Feat. Ben l'Oncle Soul Live RFI - Loving You Is All I Want To Do Feat. Aloe Blacc, extrait Roseaux III - Island Feat. Ben l'Oncle Soul (Roseaux II 2019) Live RFI Line Up : Emile Omar, machines, Alex Finkin, guitare, Clément Petit, violoncelle, Ben L'Oncle Soul, voix Son : Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant, Camille Roch. ► Album Roseaux III (Fanon Rd)

Nos premiers invités #SessionLive sont Roseaux avec Ben l'Oncle Soul. Roseaux est un trio parisien composé Emile Omar, Alex Finkin et Clément Petit. Les trois mousquetaires du son cultivent leur savoir-faire désormais salué par la critique et un auditoire toujours plus nombreux depuis leur premier projet en 2012. Il leur a fallu du temps, pour prendre du recul et de la hauteur afin de nous offrir un retour tant réjouissant que retentissant. Roseaux prend racine au bord des rives de la soul, du folk, du jazz, et de la chanson de toutes les époques, une cascade de sonorités intarissables, où les trois compositeurs puisent leur inspiration et fusionnent leurs expériences. Les feuilles de Roseaux s'élancent au souffle de merveilleuses voix, choisies avec précision par les trois compères, comme celle, du chanteur américain Aloe Blacc, présent depuis le début de l'aventure, enchanteur incontournable des trois épisodes. Pensé comme une escapade onirique gorgée d'émotions, en marge de la production massive, instantanée et souvent désincarnée, Roseaux est un groupe totalement artisanal, sorte d'ovni dans le paysage musical hexagonal, qui opère à l'instinct et surtout à l'envie. Ainsi, Roseaux est devenu expert pour réunir, le temps d'un disque, les artistes qui forment spécifiquement l'ADN de leur hôte : des voix envoûtantes, une trame au piano et au violoncelle, mais aussi des rencontres et des retrouvailles, dans un univers poétique et volontairement nébuleux. Ce troisième album est l'œuvre de 3 passionnés de musique, capables d'intervertir leurs rôles : écriture, arrangements, production, d'où émergent cette fois, onze titres au mélodies ciselées dont trois instrumentaux colorés et insolites. Un périple entre mélancolie et euphorie, qui a conduit Roseaux aux confins de la planète, des Caraïbes à l'Europe en pasant par l'Afrique pour dénicher d'autres vibrations et des interprètes singuliers : la captivante chanteuse grenado-britannique Ala.ni, le petit prince afropop anglais originaire du Ghana, Ghetto Boy, et la troublante suédoise Isabel Sörling, signent ici une première collaboration flamboyante avec le groupe. Pendant que la talentueuse canado-haïtienne Mélissa Laveaux, l'hypnotique chanteur scandinave Olle Nyman, la pétillante franco-canadienne Anna Majidson et notre remarquable Ben national, déjà présents sur le deuxième volet, parviennent encore à créer la surprise en dévoilant de nouveaux aspects de leur tessiture. Les voix de Roseaux sont décidément impénétrables et sa magie se renouvelle aujourd'hui en faisant dialoguer la force de tous ces éléments scintillants, à découvrir dans un écrin de douceur et de volupté. La nature regorge de roseaux, celui-ci est unique.   Titres interprétés au grand studio - With Us Feat. Ben l'Oncle Soul Live RFI - Loving You Is All I Want To Do Feat. Aloe Blacc, extrait Roseaux III - Island Feat. Ben l'Oncle Soul (Roseaux II 2019) Live RFI Line Up : Emile Omar, machines, Alex Finkin, guitare, Clément Petit, violoncelle, Ben L'Oncle Soul, voix Son : Mathias Taylor, Benoît Letirant, Camille Roch. ► Album Roseaux III (Fanon Rd)

In the 55th episode of the ECM podcast we're joined by pianist and composer Fred Hersch, whose new trio date "The Surrounding Green" was produced by Manfred Eicher. Fred talks about nature, mental health, the art of the trio and more.

When Mitch Goldman invited Roy Campbell to be his guest on Deep Focus, he knew that Roy was a master student of the entire history of the music, but he had no idea that Roy knew Woody Shaw personally.  Stunning tales of Ornette Coleman, Lee Morgan, and others emerge in this remarkable program, recorded not 2 months before Roy Campbell's tragic early passing.  Roy, you are missed!

ORNETTE COLEMAN “CHANGE OF THE CENTURY” Hollywood, CA, October 8, 1959Free, Una Muy Bonita, Change of the centuryDon Cherry (pocket-tp,cnt-1) Ornette Coleman (as) Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins (d) En substack.com publiqué un ensayo acerca de Coleman https://open.substack.com/pub/rbarahona/p/ornette-coleman?r=4bjohm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true ORNETTE COLEMAN DOUBLE QUARTET “FREE JAZZ” New York, December 21, 1960Free JazzDon Cherry, Freddie Hubbard (tp) Ornette Coleman (as) Eric Dolphy (b-cl) Scott LaFaro, Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell (d) Continue reading Puro Jazz 20 de junio, 2025 at PuroJazz.

ORNETTE COLEMAN “CHANGE OF THE CENTURY” Hollywood, CA, October 8, 1959Free, Una Muy Bonita, Change of the centuryDon Cherry (pocket-tp,cnt-1) Ornette Coleman (as) Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins (d) En substack.com publiqué un ensayo acerca de Coleman https://open.substack.com/pub/rbarahona/p/ornette-coleman?r=4bjohm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true ORNETTE COLEMAN DOUBLE QUARTET “FREE JAZZ” New York, December 21, 1960Free JazzDon Cherry, Freddie Hubbard (tp) Ornette Coleman (as) Eric Dolphy (b-cl) Scott LaFaro, Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell (d) Continue reading Puro Jazz 20 de junio, 2025 at PuroJazz.

ORNETTE COLEMAN “TOMORROW IS THE QUESTION !” Los Angeles, January 16, February 23, March 9 & 10, 1959Lorraine (1) Tears inside, CompassionDon Cherry (pocket-tp) Ornette Coleman (as) Percy Heath (b), Red Mitchell (b-1) Shelly Manne (d) En substack.com publiqué un ensayo acerca de Coleman https://open.substack.com/pub/rbarahona/p/ornette-coleman?r=4bjohm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true ORNETTE COLEMAN “THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME” Hollywood, CA, May 22, 1959Peace , Focus on sanity, Chronology, Lonely woman, EventuallyDon Cherry (cnt) Ornette Coleman (as) Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins (d) Continue reading Puro Jazz 19 de junio, 2025 at PuroJazz.

ORNETTE COLEMAN “TOMORROW IS THE QUESTION !” Los Angeles, January 16, February 23, March 9 & 10, 1959Lorraine (1) Tears inside, CompassionDon Cherry (pocket-tp) Ornette Coleman (as) Percy Heath (b), Red Mitchell (b-1) Shelly Manne (d) En substack.com publiqué un ensayo acerca de Coleman https://open.substack.com/pub/rbarahona/p/ornette-coleman?r=4bjohm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true ORNETTE COLEMAN “THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME” Hollywood, CA, May 22, 1959Peace , Focus on sanity, Chronology, Lonely woman, EventuallyDon Cherry (cnt) Ornette Coleman (as) Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins (d) Continue reading Puro Jazz 19 de junio, 2025 at PuroJazz.

For this episode we're joined in our Hammersmith lair by the highly respected Chris Bohn, known better these days by his alias Biba Kopf (cue a nod to Berlin Alexanderplatz author Alfred Döblin...) The veteran NME contributor and sometime editor-in-chief of The Wire talks about his long career as a Europhile connoisseur of extreme and out-there music. We start by asking our guest about his mother's experience as a teenage refugee fleeing her native Silesia after the advance of the Red Army in 1945 – and her subsequent settling in the English Midlands. We learn about Chris' journalistic training on the Sutton Coldfield News and his subsequent travels around Europe, where he reconnected with relatives in West (and East) Germany. Chris reminisces about his first London job as a press officer for Polydor Records, for whom he chaperoned Siouxsie & the Banshees to tapings of Top of the Pops. He then talks us through his writing career from Melody Maker and NME to decades-long association with The Wire. Among the articles mentioned are his 1979 live review of Joy Division, his groundbreaking 1981 on-the-road piece "Trans-Europe Express", and his interviews with Nina Hagen (1979) and Einstürzende Neubauten (1983). Discussion of The Wire leads us into clips from an audio interview with Wire icon Ornette Coleman … by Wire mainstay David Toop. We conclude the episode by paying heartfelt tribute to two Californian geniuses who left us this week: Family Stone funk pioneer Sly Stone and the Beach Boys' "pocket symphonist" Brian Wilson. We shall not see – or hear – their like again. Many thanks to special guest Chris Bohn a.k.a. Biba Kopf. Visit the Wire's website at thewire.co.uk to subscribe digitally and in print.  Pieces discussed: Nina Hagen: West Is Best, Einstürzende Neubauten: Let's Hear It For The Untergang Show, Ornette Coleman (1995), Sly & The Family Stone: Sly Buries Underground And Has Fun!, Not Only Sly, But Sometimes Just Plain Damn Evasive, Sly Stone's Higher Power, Some Producers' Hints From Beach Boy Brian, Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson: Beach Boy, Pop Visionary, Wounded Soul, The Devil and Jerry Lee Lewis and  Group Home: Supa Group.

Del triple CD, banda sonora del libro del francés Laurent Cugny, 'Une histoire du jazz', las grabaciones de Miles Davis ('Oleo'), Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers ('Moanin'), Clifford Brown ('Joy spring'), Charles Mingus Septet ('Self portrait in three colors'), Miles Davis & Gil Evans ('Summertime'), Miles Davis ('So what'), John Coltrane ('Giant steps'), Ornette Coleman ('Invisible'), Billie Holiday ('Strange fruit') Sarah Vaughan ('Embraceable you') y Nina Simone ('My baby just cares for me').Escuchar audio

John Lenwood “Jackie” McClean (born May 17, 1931) grew up in the same neighborhood in Harlem that was home to Sonny Rollins, Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk, and soon fell under the sway of the Bebop Revolution, particularly as espoused by Charlie Parker. Throughout his career, Jackie kept his ears open to new developments in the music, while still remaining grounded in the bebop vocabulary of his youth, he recorded with many more adventuresome players, Ornette Coleman and Woody Shaw to name two. He became a well respected professor at Hart School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut and produced many talented students who have gone on to distinguished careers in jazz.

Comedy legend Milton Berle's SNL hosting gig has gone down as one of the most infamous - and disastrous - events in late-night television history. In this episode of Saturday Night Live - widely considered one of the worst of all time (not just of the original era) - “Mr. Television” brings his 1950s showmanship, sensibility, and bravado to the comedy landscape of the late 1970s. And the results are… A-mazing!From the opening monologue (cringeworthy in any era), Berle's constant adlibbing, camera-mugging, and pre-planned "spontaneous" moments derail the show, creating palpable tension that resonates through every painful bit. Behind the scenes, Berle's legendary ego only amplified the problems. Luckily, there are a few sketches that do NOT include the host, and they work quite well (for the most part). And, although only given one number, Ornette Coleman delivers as musical guest.As with all “train wrecks” from this era, we bring in The SNL in Review's Andy Hoglund to pontificate on all that went wrong with this outing, what few bright spots there might be, and to help get to the bottom of who is to blame for this fiasco. Is this one really as bad as history (and Lorne Michaels) would have us believe?---------------------------------Subscribe today!Follow us on social media: X (Twitter): NR4PTProjectBluesky: nr4ptproject.bsky.socialInstagram: nr4ptprojectFacebook: The Not Ready for Prime Time ProjectContact Us: Website: https://www.nr4project.comEmail: nr4ptproject@gmail.com

L is for Ligtnin' (and) Licks. Ladies Love Loud Losers, listen...In the early 1970s, legendary collaborator and self-proclaimed non-musician Brian Eno famously designed a deck of 115 cards containing elliptical imperatives to spark in the user creative connections unobtainable through regular modes of work. He called his creation "Oblique Strategies." For the past six decades, artists the world over in every artistic medium have used Eno's strategy while attempting to overcome a lull in creative output. In 2025, lazy, lackluster yet somehow still award-winning* hobby podcasters and self-proclaimed Lightnin' Lickers Jay and Deon found themselves uninspired when contemplating the potential theme of their upcoming forty-third episode. Together, they decided... to default back to the alphabet. Because they have a reasonably solid grasp of the alphabet and how it works. They had previously utilized the letters A thru K, so naturally, they went with L.Sonic contributors featured in Lightnin' Licks Radio's forty-third episode include: Beastie Boys, National Public Radio, James Todd Smith, Ol' Burger Beats, Prince Paul, De La Soul, Gravediggaz, Method Man, John Ussery. Brothers Johnson, G.I. Joe's Rescue From Adventure Team Headquarters, Ninth Wonder, Earth, Wind, and Fire. Jay Dilla, Black Milk, Ronnie Laws, Inner Circle, Donny Trump, Childish Gambino, Marly Marl, Mary Jane Girls, Bert and Ernie, Greg Nice, Miss Lauren Hill, Cyprus Hill, The Light Men Plus One, Bubbha Thomas, Ornette Coleman. Tim Reid as Venus Flytrap, Kenny Loggins, L.A. Witch, Living Colour, Malcolm X, Arlo Guthrie, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Public Enemy, Le Bucherettes. At the Drive-in, Terry Genderbender, Bosnian Rainbows. Land of Talk, Canada, Tim Robinson, US Representative Tom Emmer, The Lovely Bad Things, Linn County, The Mighty Loop, Fur and Skin Trading Company. The Pool, Public Image Limited, Morphine, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Hindu Love Gods, Adrian Youngue, La Luz, The Lime Spiders, Hoodoo Gurus, and, the Clockers (theme song).Our favorite selections from the L section in our collections mixtape: (1A) Lime Spiders - Ignormy (2A) Lightmen Plus One - Ashie (3A) L.A. Witch - Sexorexia (4A) Land of Talk - Yuppy Flu (5A) Loop - Head on (1B) Living Colour - Open Letter to a Landlord (2B) Le Bucherettes - Demon Stuck in Your Eye (3B) Linn County - Fever Shot (4B) Lovely Bad Things - Slug Boy (5B) La Luz - In the CountryShop locally for your music. We attend church at Electric Kitsch. We drink Blue Chair Bay flavored rums (without endorsement or appreciation from Kenny Chesney.) We are pro-Canada, but not anti-American. It's very messed up we even feel the need to type that last sentence.

Episode 190 of Pudding On The Wrist.  In which your faithful deejay and psychic friend, Frozen Lazuras, spins choice cuts from Ornette Coleman, The Fonky Family, Stereolab, Magical Power Mako, Şehriban, Love, and so many more.

John Zorn's 1989 homage to Ornette Coleman's Oeuvre is still available, if you look hard enough. We tell you why it's worth the effortSubscribe to Gas GiantsRSS https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/311033.rss This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gasgiants.substack.com

Michelle Coltrane and Maggie LePique discuss her Mother, Alice Coltrane and the year-long celebration currently underway that's being called “The Year of Alice.”This celebration spans 2024-2025 and features previously unreleased music and reissues, brand new community programming, a multimedia museum exhibit, specially curated concerts, newly choreographed ballet works and much more.Jazz musician, composer, bandleader and spiritual and devotional leader, Alice Coltrane was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1937 to Solon and Annie McLeod, the fifth of six children. By the age of nine, she played organ during services at Mount Olive Baptist church.In the early 60's she began playing jazz as a professional in Detroit with her own trio and as a duo with vibist Terry Pollard.Alice Coltrane would go on to collaborate and performed with Kenny Clarke, Kenny Burrell, Ornette Coleman, Pharaoh Sanders, Charlie Haden, Roy Haynes, Jack DeJonette, Carlos Santana and more.Mrs Coltrane's interest in gospel, classical, and jazz music led to the creation of her own innovative style. Her proficiency on keyboard, organ, and harp was remarkable and her artistry matured into amazing arrangements and compositions.Her twenty recordings cover a time span from Monastic Trio (1968) to Translinear Light (2004).Michelle discusses at length one of the events here in Southern California that is part of the Year of Alice.Here in L.A. the exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal at the Hammer Museum in Westwood is inspired by the life and legacy of jazz musician, composer and bandleader as well a spiritual and devotional leader, Alice Coltrane.This exhibition is part of a larger initiative called “The Year of Alice," and in partnership with the John & Alice Coltrane Home, Impulse Records, The New York Historical Society, the Detroit Jazz Festival and more.The exhibition presents works by contemporary American artists paired with items Coltrane's personal archive and features a range of mediums including video, performance, and sculpture together with Coltrane's archival hand-written correspondence, unreleased audio recordings, and rarely seen video footage.Upcoming event with Michelle Coltrane:Sai Anantam Devotional EnsemblePresented by CAP UCLA and Hammer MuseumSun, Apr 13, 2025 at 6:30pm The NimoyThe Year of Alice events include:Reissues of Alice Coltrane's albums and previously unreleased musicSpecially curated concerts in cities including New York, Brooklyn, Detroit, and CaliforniaA multimedia museum exhibitNewly choreographed dance worksCommunity programming and an Oral History ProjectDiscussions about Coltrane's life and workPartners in the celebration are:Impulse! RecordsDetroit Jazz FestivalHammer MuseumAlonzo King LINES BalletThe New York Historical SocietyShapeshifter LabLyon & Healey HarpsSource: https://thecoltranehome.org/2024/03/16/let-the-year-of-alice-begin/Source: https://www.alicecoltrane.com/Source: https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2025/alice-coltrane-monument-eternalHost Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica stSend us a textSupport the show@profileswithmaggielepique@maggielepique

durée : 00:59:29 - Laisser aller - par : Nathalie Piolé - ❣️ Ce soir, on se laisser aller... à aimer !

The cats celebrate the birthdays of jazz greats Jan Garbarek and Ornette Coleman among other gems at the modern end of the spectrum!

In this conversation, John Dominguez, co-founder and chief strategist of Songbird Collective, discusses his extensive background in music and his initiative within the Metaverse aimed at creating immersive and collaborative environments for artists. Songbird Collective has facilitated over 1000 live concerts in the Metaverse, allowing artists to showcase their work, even during the pandemic when live music was largely inaccessible. The initiative has also opened new revenue streams for musicians through NFTs and virtual performances, providing a unique and innovative way to engage with global audiences. He recalls the exciting early days of music exploration via the internet in the mid-90s, highlighting moments when he discovered influential music essays and participated in emerging online music communities. One of his notable memories includes attending his first concert, an NWA show in 1989, where he experienced both the thrill and cultural impact of live hip-hop music. He reminisces about various concert experiences, including attending Kings of Leon at Johnny Depp's Viper Room and the Troubadour in Los Angeles, and describes the unique atmosphere of historical music venues. He also recalls his experience attending the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1996.Dominguez also values personal interactions with musicians, sharing stories about his early online exchanges and meetings with avant-garde musicians Nels Cline and Joe Baiza. Despite the modern shift towards digital music consumption, Dominguez advocates for the irreplaceable magic of live performances and encourages music enthusiasts to support local independent shows. In wrapping up, he stresses how vital it is for fans to support smaller live music venues, highlighting how these spaces provide essential platforms for artists and memorable experiences for audiences. Dominguez's dedication to music culture and innovation through Songbird Collective exemplifies the evolving landscape of live music and virtual experiences.BANDS: Aerosmith, Beastie Boys, Ben Steller, Creeper Lagoon, Dr. Dre, Fontaine's DC, Ice Cube, Jet, John Lee Hooker, Killers, Kings of Leon, Mud Honey, New Jack's Swing, No Doubt, NWA, Oasis, On the Speakers, Ornette Coleman, Pavement, Pixies, Porno for Pyros, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Stooges, Tribe Called QuestVENUES: Celebrity Theater, Constellation Room, Castaic Lake, El Rancho Grande, Johnny Depp's Viper Room, Observatory, Rainbow, Roxy, Salt Shed, Troubadour, Mr. T's Bowl PATREON:https://www.patreon.com/SeeingThemLivePlease help us defer the cost of producing this podcast by making a donation on Patreon.WEBSITE:https://seeingthemlive.com/Visit the Seeing Them Live website for bonus materials including the show blog, resource links for concert buffs, photos, materials related to our episodes, and our Ticket Stub Museum.INSTAGRAM:https://www.instagram.com/seeingthemlive/FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550090670708

Very special episode today with guest selector Colin Smith! In between introducing some deep jazz cuts from the UK & USA, we have a free-wheeling talk that covers Colin taking me to see Stan Tracey at the Bulls Head in London, the UK jazz scene past and present, Ornette Coleman & Prime Time, and even a hilarious anecdote about Lemmy from Motorhead giving Colin a beer. This was a treat to catch up with an old friend, and one of the biggest music fans I know! (Sorry for some unavoidable sound & editing issues that pop up in this one!!)

A mediados de la década de los '60 del pasado siglo irrumpe en Estados Unidos el Free Jazz como una manifestación más de los movimientos emergentes que reivindicaban, cada vez con mayor vehemencia, los derechos de los negros norteamericanos. Esta nueva música, suponía un nuevo paradigma en la concepción del jazz que prescindía de las normas que regían hasta el momento la forma de hacer jazz en sus aspectos melódicos, armónicos y rítmicos. Un movimiento rebelde y disruptivo, más político que musical, que rompía amarras con los estándares impuestos por la sociedad y la cultura blanca que mantenía una intolerable opresión sobre el colectivo afroamericano hastiado de abusos e injusticias. Sin embargo. una buena parte de los músicos de aquella generación, aún simpatizando con los principios políticos y sociales que justificaban esa nueva música, decidieron no dar un paso tan osado hacia aquellos territorios desconocidos y se mantuvieron en una frontera musical en un límite que, conservando en lo esencial los vínculos con el jazz ortodoxo, introducía elementos innovadores procedentes de aquel revolucionario movimiento encabezado por músicos como Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry o Cecil Taylor y del que John Coltrane fue proclamado su líder espiritual. El resultado sería una música fronteriza y apasionante, navegando entre dos aguas, con continuas incursiones dentro y fuera de la tonalidad, que conformaría finalmente el mainstream jazzístico de los ‘60 y ‘70 del pasado siglo y que, aún hoy en día, es la principal referencia del jazz acústico contemporáneo. Radio Jazznoend os invita en nuestro nuevo podcast a un largo viaje por aquella frontera azarosa y aventurera de la mano de algunos de los mas relevantes artistas de aquella era, como Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Charles Tolliver, George Russell o Booker Ervin, entre otros.

One of the first things that Luca turned up was this rarity, which features the father of Jamiroquai's Jay Kay….but which one of those masked men is he?The Businesses* 8mm Records itself is all over Instagram, but you can see their Discogs page HERE. * Fiasco Porto is a Tokyo Jazz Kissaten in the Heroismo quarter of Porto. HERE is an article from a Portuguese lifestyle magazine, which has some great photos.* HERE is the Discogs page for 8mm records, the label.* 8mm in Barcelona can be located through their instagram 8mm_bcn. * From Jan 1st the new website should be up. Link HEREThe MusicWe talked a lot of Music with Luca and it would be impractical to list everything, but there are some highlights to point out…* HERE is a long dissertation about New Music during the Estado Novo, which we touched upon during our conversation.* * Miles plays Cascais…* …then Charlie Haden plays Cascais with Ornette Coleman and runs in to a little problem with the PIDE…* We also mentioned Sonoscopia, which has done a lot for “Outsider” Music. Link HERE* A record from the Quarteto Smoog turned up in a crate……and this one is planned as a reissue.Other Record Shops in PortoAside from Luca's operation, the invincible city has much to offer the record collector. Here are some of Gav's favourites…* Porto Calling. A great city centre shop tucked into a 60's era arcade. Good selection of second hand and new vinyl, which changes regularly. Great website with a full mail order catalogue available HERE. * Discos do Bau. Not far from the Miquel Bombarda gallery quarter. Good selection of Rock, Pop, Jazz and even some Classical; all second hand. Full website available HERE.* Louie Louie, also city centre location. I have yet to go into this shop without coming out with something. Website HERE.* Away from Porto, we also mentioned this combination of Air bnb and Record shop in London, HERE.Subscribe to Gas GiantsRSS https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/311033.rss This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gasgiants.substack.com

ORNETTE COLEMAN “THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME” Hollywood, CA, May 22, 1959Lonely womanDon Cherry (cnt) Ornette Coleman (as) Charlie Haden (b) Billy Higgins (d) JOHN COLTRANE “ASCENSION” Englewood Cliffs, N.J., June 28, 1965Ascension (Edition I – Part 1)Freddie Hubbard, Dewey Johnson (tp) John Tchicai, Marion Brown (as) John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp (ts) McCoy Tyner (p) Jimmy Garrison, Art Davis (b) Elvin Jones (d) CECIL TAYLOR “UNIT STRUCTURE” Englewood Cliffs, N.J., May 19, 1966StepsEddie Gale (tp-1) Jimmy Lyons (as-2) Makanda Ken McIntyre (as-3,oboe-4,b-cl-5) Cecil Taylor (p,bells-4) Henry Grimes, Alan Silva (b) Andrew Cyrille (d) ALBERT AYLER TRIO “SPIRITUAL UNITY” New York, July 10, 1964Ghosts (first variation)Albert Ayler (ts) Gary Peacock (b) Sunny Murray (d) PETER BROTZMANN OCTET “MACHINE GUN” Bremen, May, 1968Music for Han Bennink IPeter Brotzmann (ts,bar) Willem Breuker (ts,b-cl) Evan Parker (ts) Fred Van Hove (p) Peter Kowald, Buschi Niebergall (b) Han Bennink (d) Sven-Ake Johansson (d,perc) Continue reading Puro Jazz 16 de diciembre, 2024 at PuroJazz.

Último episodio de este año de Libertad Jazzera, con la música de The Roboquarians; Peter Evans; Jeff Parker ETA 4tet; Ornette Coleman. Seguir leyendo Libertad Jazzera. Diciembre 2024. en La Montaña Rusa Radio Jazz.

durée : 01:02:39 - Club Jazzafip - Après la sortie de son hommage à Ornette Coleman sur l'album "The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Something Else)", le saxophoniste français prend les rênes du Club Jazzafip avec ses coups de coeur.

Here's another Ph.D. topic for you: Miles Davis vs. Ornette Coleman. Both blazingly original innovators lived most of their lives in Manhattan and they were roughly contemporaries (Miles was 4 years older) so they drew from the same talent pool to make up their bands.  But across 30+ years of simultaneous bandleading and the hiring of dozens and dozens of sidemen, how many can you think of who toured and recorded extensively with both?  We've got one for you: tabla player Badal Roy.     And Badal Roy did so much more than play with those two giants!  His bubbling groove and enormous sonic textures can be heard on albums by everyone from Yoko Ono to Richie Havens, John McLaughlin to Pharoah Sanders, not to mention half a dozen albums under his own leadership.  He died in 2022.   But if you talk to those who knew him, they all speak of a singular warmth, humanity, and unabashed joy.  Maybe that, more than the pure musicianship, is what caught the ear of Miles and Ornette in the first place.     Few know this better than guitarist Ken Wessel. Wessel toured and recorded with Badal Roy in Ornette's band for 13 years, and the two worked on a number of their own projects together.  Wessel will be celebrating Badal Roy in this week's Ragas Live Festival in Brooklyn.     Deep Focus host Mitch Goldman is delighted to welcome Ken Wessel to the WKCR studios this Monday (10/14) from 6pm to 9pm NYC time.  It's on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR-HD or wkcr.org.  Or join us next week when it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/.  Subscribe right now to get notifications when new episodes are posted.  It's ad-free, all free, totally non-commercial.   Find out more about Deep Focus at https://mitchgoldman.com/about-deep-focus/ or join us on Instagram at deep_focus_podcast.   Photo credit: source unknown.   #WKCR #JazzAlternatives #DeepFocus #KenWessel #BadalRoy  #MitchGoldman #JazzInterview #JazzPodcast #JazzRadio #OrnetteColeman #MilesDavis

Here's another Ph.D. topic for you: Miles Davis vs. Ornette Coleman. Both blazingly original innovators lived most of their lives in Manhattan and they were roughly contemporaries (Miles was 4 years older) so they drew from the same talent pool to make up their bands.  But across 30+ years of simultaneous bandleading and the hiring of dozens and dozens of sidemen, how many can you think of who toured and recorded extensively with both?  We've got one for you: tabla player Badal Roy.     And Badal Roy did so much more than play with those two giants!  His bubbling groove and enormous sonic textures can be heard on albums by everyone from Yoko Ono to Richie Havens, John McLaughlin to Pharoah Sanders, not to mention half a dozen albums under his own leadership.  He died in 2022.   But if you talk to those who knew him, they all speak of a singular warmth, humanity, and unabashed joy.  Maybe that, more than the pure musicianship, is what caught the ear of Miles and Ornette in the first place.     Few know this better than guitarist Ken Wessel. Wessel toured and recorded with Badal Roy in Ornette's band for 13 years, and the two worked on a number of their own projects together.  Wessel will be celebrating Badal Roy in this week's Ragas Live Festival in Brooklyn.     Deep Focus host Mitch Goldman is delighted to welcome Ken Wessel to the WKCR studios this Monday (10/14) from 6pm to 9pm NYC time.  It's on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR-HD or wkcr.org.  Or join us next week when it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/.  Subscribe right now to get notifications when new episodes are posted.  It's ad-free, all free, totally non-commercial.   Find out more about Deep Focus at https://mitchgoldman.com/about-deep-focus/ or join us on Instagram at deep_focus_podcast.   Photo credit: source unknown.   #WKCR #JazzAlternatives #DeepFocus #KenWessel #BadalRoy  #MitchGoldman #JazzInterview #JazzPodcast #JazzRadio #OrnetteColeman 

Here's another Ph.D. topic for you: Miles Davis vs. Ornette Coleman. Both blazingly original innovators lived most of their lives in Manhattan and they were roughly contemporaries (Miles was 4 years older) so they drew from the same talent pool to make up their bands.  But across 30+ years of simultaneous bandleading and the hiring of dozens and dozens of sidemen, how many can you think of who toured and recorded extensively with both?  We've got one for you: tabla player Badal Roy.     And Badal Roy did so much more than play with those two giants!  His bubbling groove and enormous sonic textures can be heard on albums by everyone from Yoko Ono to Richie Havens, John McLaughlin to Pharoah Sanders, not to mention half a dozen albums under his own leadership.  He died in 2022.   But if you talk to those who knew him, they all speak of a singular warmth, humanity, and unabashed joy.  Maybe that, more than the pure musicianship, is what caught the ear of Miles and Ornette in the first place.     Few know this better than guitarist Ken Wessel. Wessel toured and recorded with Badal Roy in Ornette's band for 13 years, and the two worked on a number of their own projects together.  Wessel will be celebrating Badal Roy in this week's Ragas Live Festival in Brooklyn.     Deep Focus host Mitch Goldman is delighted to welcome Ken Wessel to the WKCR studios this Monday (10/14) from 6pm to 9pm NYC time.  It's on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR-HD or wkcr.org.  Or join us next week when it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/.  Subscribe right now to get notifications when new episodes are posted.  It's ad-free, all free, totally non-commercial.   Find out more about Deep Focus at https://mitchgoldman.com/about-deep-focus/ or join us on Instagram at deep_focus_podcast.   Photo credit: source unknown.   #WKCR #JazzAlternatives #DeepFocus #KenWessel #BadalRoy  #MitchGoldman #JazzInterview #JazzPodcast #JazzRadio

The Goin Off Crew look at Stove God Cooks' Reasonable Drought and Ornate Coleman's Of Human Feelings Mues' Linktree: https://linktr.ee/mues RC's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/therealrapcritic

durée : 00:59:13 - Banzzaï du jeudi 19 septembre 2024 - par : Nathalie Piolé - La playlist jazz de Nathalie Piolé.

Don't Die goes into NIDA, AA, Alateen and the little nudge that really gets addicts to turn toward the light, plus Bob talks James Chance, Steve Clark of Def Leppard, Methadone Vs Suboxone and the unforgettable wisdom of counselor Gloria Scott Plus Ohana Fest is right around the corner and Don't Die will be there live Sunday September 29 with a special surprise for everybody Mark your calendars and Don't Die everybody

This time around we start with a rendition of "Portrait of Jennie" with strings followed by a portrait by a string player named Jenny… a portrait of Ornette Coleman by violinist Jenny Scheinman to be precise. That's followed by tributes to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Steve Lacy and Hariprasad Chaurasia, as well as a love letter to NYC. The playlist features Franco Ambrosetti; Jenny Scheinmann; Lux Quartet; Dan Weiss; Roberto Ottaviano, Danilo Gallo, Ferdinando Faraò; Nasheet Waits [pictured]. Detailed playlist at https://spinitron.com/RFB/pl/19310530/Mondo-Jazz (from "Portrait of Jennie" to "Snake Stance"). Happy listening! Photo credit: Jimmy Katz

Jazz88's Peter Solomon speaks with vocalist Carmen Bradford about her musical career with Count Basie and her participation in the program "Uptown Nights" with trumpeter Byron Stripling and the Minnesota Orchestra on Saturday, August 3rd. Bradford is the daughter of trumpeter Bobby Bradford, a renowned educator and former sideman with Ornette Coleman, and singer Melba Joyce.

Notre 1er invité est le musicien, auteur-compositeur et interprète BabX, pour la sortie de son nouvel album Une maison avec un piano dedans.Né dans une famille d'artistes et de musiciens, David Babin démarre l'apprentissage du piano à l'âge de 5 ans.À la suite d'une première approche de la scène comme membre de la troupe polyphonique des « Glotte-Trotters », dirigée par Martina A. Catella, David compose sa première musique de spectacle à 17 ans pour un spectacle autour des textes de Roland Topor et intègre la compagnie de l'Herbe Tendre.Au début des années 2000, David écrit ses premières chansons, et donne ses premiers concerts. C'est à cette époque qu'il opte pour le pseudonyme BABX.BABX sort son 1er album en 2006. Dans une chronique dans le magazine Epok, Dominique A écrit au sujet de l'album : « c'est magnifique, parce que la musique (…) annule l'actualité des mots et donne le sentiment d'une histoire qui vient de loin. À suivre de près, au moins ».Dans la foulée de la sortie, l'album est nommé aux Victoires de la musique dans la catégorie « album révélation de l'année ».Deux autres événements discrets mais marquants pour l'avenir viennent ponctuer l'année 2006 : la reprise du studio Sofreson, qui devient le Studio Pigalle et sera désormais le lieu choisi par BABX et son équipe pour réaliser toutes leurs productions. Et la réalisation d'un maxi de quelques titres pour une jeune chanteuse encore inconnue, Raphaële Lannadère, qui deviendra « L ».En 2008, David et son équipe enregistrent Cristal Ballroom, second album de BABX, rêverie inspirée par l'évocation des musiciens de la salle de bal du Titanic. C'est à cette époque qu'il croise la route du légendaire guitariste de l'avant-garde new-yorkaise Marc Ribot avec qui il enregistre en duo le titre Lady L aux Studios Dubway à New York.Cet album est aussi pour Babx celui de deux rencontres importantes : l'ingénieur du son américain Oz Fritz (Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Les Ramones, Bill Laswell…), avec qui il entame une relation durable, ainsi que le photographe Harry Gruyaert (Magnum) dont l'une des photos orne la pochette de Cristal Ballroom.Concomitamment au mix de l'album aux États-Unis avec Oz Fritz, BABX rencontre les membres du « Metropolis Ensemble » (The Roots, Deerhoof…) dirigé par le chef d'orchestre Andrew Cyr et entame une collaboration artistique avec eux.Au même moment, BABX sera nommé finaliste de l'International Songwriting Competition (dont les membres du jury sont composés notamment de Robert Smith, Tom Waits, Mc Coy Tyner, Ornette Coleman…) avec la chanson « Remington Requiem » et écrira deux chansons à Julien Doré « First Lady » et « Soirées Parisiennes » pour l'album Ersatz.2009 est également l'année où BABX renoue avec la musique de spectacle, à l'occasion de la création de « Noctiluque » de la danseuse japonaise Kaori Ito au Théâtre Vidy de Lausanne qu'il co-composera avec son proche complice le guitariste/oudiste Grégory Dargent (L'Hijaz Car, Houria Aïchi, Rachid Taha, Sirventès). En 2010, David Babin réalise et arrange deux premiers albums à succès qui l'installent comme l'un des producteurs incontournables de la scène hexagonale : celui de Camélia Jordana (pour lequel il écrit plusieurs titres) et « Initiale » de L. Le premier sera un immense succès de l'année 2010 (disque de platine, nomination aux Victoires) tandis que le second est disque d'or et unanimement considéré comme l'un des albums de l'année 2011.En 2012, BABX rejoint le saxophoniste et chanteur Thomas de Pourquery (Supersonic, Rigolus, DPZ, VKNG) pour la programmation et l'organisation du Brain Festival : un moment collectif de musique au bénéfice de la lutte contre les maladies neuro-dégénératives auquel participeront Oxmo Puccino, Jacques Higelin, André Minvielle, Poni Hoax, The Do, Camélia Jordana, L, Jeanne Added, etc.2013, 3è album intitulé Drones personnels. Cet album à la tonalité plus électronique que les précédents, évoque les expérimentations avant-gardistes de Laurie Anderson tout en restant fidèle à une forme organique. Il l'enregistre avec son équipe habituelle au Studio Pigalle tout en y conviant une nouvelle génération de musiciens à ses côtés, parmi lesquels Jeanne Added, Thomas de Pourquery, Arnaud Roulin (Poni Hoax), Pamelia Kurstin.2014 est l'année de la sortie du second album de Camélia Jordana Dans la peau, réalisé et arrangé par BABX et sur lequel il écrit et compose encore plusieurs chansons dont « Colonel Chagrin », « Berlin » ou encore « À l'aveuglette ».C'est enfin l'année d'un tournant important dans la carrière de David : en créant BisonBison, sa propre maison de production, il se donne les moyens de réaliser ses projets et les projets d'autres artistes en toute indépendance et selon ses principes.La première sortie sur BisonBison est « Cristal Automatique », un projet de mise en musique de textes des « poètes-punks » Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Jean Genet, Tom Waits ou Gaston Miron notamment (projet né aux Correspondances de Manosque en 2009 sous l'impulsion d'Olivier Chaudenson)…Enfin 2023, sortie de Une Maison avec un piano dedans.2024, nouvel album, et retour à la poésie avec un faible pour Haïti ? Titres interprétés au grand studio- Milonga Live RFI teaser - Joy Is My name, extrait de l'album Une maison avec un piano dedans- Oh Earth, extrait de La Marche des Enfants avec la Maîtrise Populaire de l'Opéra-Comique.- Merveille dans la pirogue Live RFI clip.Line Up : David Babin, piano.Son : Jérémie Besset et Mathias Taylor► Album Une maison avec un piano dedans (Buda Musique 2023) Puis nous recevons Elliott Armen pour la sortie de l'album Turbulence. Écrit et composé, par Elliott Armen. Auteur-compositeur-interprète et producteur, Elliott a grandi entre Paris et sa terre natale, Saint-Malo. Depuis son adolescence, il compose à la guitare et au piano, en écho aux paysages qui abritent sa maison familiale, située au bord d'un magnifique estuaire. Après le lycée, Elliott Armen est parti sillonner l'Europe pendant deux ans pour travailler de ferme en ferme. Tout au long de ces voyages, ses hôtes lui ont transmis un savoir puisé de la terre nourricière. Dans ses bagages : sa guitare et son ukulele, son cahier de notes et un simple micro pour enregistrer ses premières chansons.Aujourd'hui installé près de la maison familiale bretonne, Elliott Armen cultive un terrain en permaculture, redonnant vie à la biodiversité environnante. Elliott Armen, qui a emprunté son nom au phare de l'île de Sein, a enregistré son premier album dans un studio niché sur l'île d'Ouessant. Helium Balloons est sorti le 31 mars 2022, ponctué par un concert exceptionnel en première partie de Miossec, à La Cigale, à Paris. De nombreuses dates ont suivi, toutes aussi prestigieuses : Pitchfork Festival, Midi Festival, Baisers Volés, Printemps de Bourge… et des premières parties d'artistes de renommée tels que Jean-Louis Murat, Dominique A, Florent Marchet, Ariane Moffatt, Jay-Jay Johanson, Alexandra Streliski…Découvert lors de ce concert à la Cigale, Elliott Armen a signé un contrat avec le prestigieux label SONY MASTERWORKS. À ce jour, ses morceaux comptent déjà plus de 3 millions de streams sur l'ensemble des plateformes digitales. En digne héritier d'Elliott Smith, de Sufjan Stevens ou d'Andy Shauf, le jeune Breton de 24 ans mélange, avec singularité, les accords de guitare et de piano à sa voix aérienne. Son œuvre est teintée d'une atmosphère intime et boisée, attachante et intemporelle, toujours ancrée entre terre et mer.Pour son deuxième album, Elliott Armen a décidé de partir en Écosse, rêvant d'un enregistrement particulièrement isolé sur l'île de Lewis. C'est là-bas que se trouve l'inspirant Black Bay Studio, tenu par Peter Fletcher, au bord de l'océan Atlantique. Elliott Armen est parti en ferry de Saint-Malo pour rejoindre, en bus, Stornoway, la ville principale de l'île. De là, il a débuté sa marche qui l'a mené, pendant 200 kilomètres, à travers de splendides paysages aux allures de désert celtique. Après avoir dressé sa tente sous les étoiles pendant douze jours, il est arrivé à destination, imprégné de l'île. C'est alors qu'il s'est plongé dans le calme le plus total pour enregistrer ce nouvel opus. Cet album est un voyage à travers le deuil, l'amour et la solitude. Une traduction des immenses paysages qui peuplent les terres celtes. Et un hymne à la mélancolie comme moteur de la joie. ARMEN - Ar Men « le rocher » ou « la pierre » en breton. Carnet rose : Elliott Armen est le fils de Yann Tiersen. Titres interprétés au grand studio- Turbulence (guitare-voix) Live RFI clip - Strangers, extrait de l'album Turbulence clip - Red Deer (piano-voix) Live RFI.Line up : Elliott Armen, guitare, piano, voix.Son : Jérémie Besset, Mathias Taylor.► Album Turbulence (Helium Balloons Records / Sony Masterworks 2024).Chaîne YouTube.(Rediffusion).

Notre 1er invité est le musicien, auteur-compositeur et interprète BabX, pour la sortie de son nouvel album Une maison avec un piano dedans.Né dans une famille d'artistes et de musiciens, David Babin démarre l'apprentissage du piano à l'âge de 5 ans.À la suite d'une première approche de la scène comme membre de la troupe polyphonique des « Glotte-Trotters », dirigée par Martina A. Catella, David compose sa première musique de spectacle à 17 ans pour un spectacle autour des textes de Roland Topor et intègre la compagnie de l'Herbe Tendre.Au début des années 2000, David écrit ses premières chansons, et donne ses premiers concerts. C'est à cette époque qu'il opte pour le pseudonyme BABX.BABX sort son 1er album en 2006. Dans une chronique dans le magazine Epok, Dominique A écrit au sujet de l'album : « c'est magnifique, parce que la musique (…) annule l'actualité des mots et donne le sentiment d'une histoire qui vient de loin. À suivre de près, au moins ».Dans la foulée de la sortie, l'album est nommé aux Victoires de la musique dans la catégorie « album révélation de l'année ».Deux autres événements discrets mais marquants pour l'avenir viennent ponctuer l'année 2006 : la reprise du studio Sofreson, qui devient le Studio Pigalle et sera désormais le lieu choisi par BABX et son équipe pour réaliser toutes leurs productions. Et la réalisation d'un maxi de quelques titres pour une jeune chanteuse encore inconnue, Raphaële Lannadère, qui deviendra « L ».En 2008, David et son équipe enregistrent Cristal Ballroom, second album de BABX, rêverie inspirée par l'évocation des musiciens de la salle de bal du Titanic. C'est à cette époque qu'il croise la route du légendaire guitariste de l'avant-garde new-yorkaise Marc Ribot avec qui il enregistre en duo le titre Lady L aux Studios Dubway à New York.Cet album est aussi pour Babx celui de deux rencontres importantes : l'ingénieur du son américain Oz Fritz (Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Les Ramones, Bill Laswell…), avec qui il entame une relation durable, ainsi que le photographe Harry Gruyaert (Magnum) dont l'une des photos orne la pochette de Cristal Ballroom.Concomitamment au mix de l'album aux États-Unis avec Oz Fritz, BABX rencontre les membres du « Metropolis Ensemble » (The Roots, Deerhoof…) dirigé par le chef d'orchestre Andrew Cyr et entame une collaboration artistique avec eux.Au même moment, BABX sera nommé finaliste de l'International Songwriting Competition (dont les membres du jury sont composés notamment de Robert Smith, Tom Waits, Mc Coy Tyner, Ornette Coleman…) avec la chanson « Remington Requiem » et écrira deux chansons à Julien Doré « First Lady » et « Soirées Parisiennes » pour l'album Ersatz.2009 est également l'année où BABX renoue avec la musique de spectacle, à l'occasion de la création de « Noctiluque » de la danseuse japonaise Kaori Ito au Théâtre Vidy de Lausanne qu'il co-composera avec son proche complice le guitariste/oudiste Grégory Dargent (L'Hijaz Car, Houria Aïchi, Rachid Taha, Sirventès). En 2010, David Babin réalise et arrange deux premiers albums à succès qui l'installent comme l'un des producteurs incontournables de la scène hexagonale : celui de Camélia Jordana (pour lequel il écrit plusieurs titres) et « Initiale » de L. Le premier sera un immense succès de l'année 2010 (disque de platine, nomination aux Victoires) tandis que le second est disque d'or et unanimement considéré comme l'un des albums de l'année 2011.En 2012, BABX rejoint le saxophoniste et chanteur Thomas de Pourquery (Supersonic, Rigolus, DPZ, VKNG) pour la programmation et l'organisation du Brain Festival : un moment collectif de musique au bénéfice de la lutte contre les maladies neuro-dégénératives auquel participeront Oxmo Puccino, Jacques Higelin, André Minvielle, Poni Hoax, The Do, Camélia Jordana, L, Jeanne Added, etc.2013, 3è album intitulé Drones personnels. Cet album à la tonalité plus électronique que les précédents, évoque les expérimentations avant-gardistes de Laurie Anderson tout en restant fidèle à une forme organique. Il l'enregistre avec son équipe habituelle au Studio Pigalle tout en y conviant une nouvelle génération de musiciens à ses côtés, parmi lesquels Jeanne Added, Thomas de Pourquery, Arnaud Roulin (Poni Hoax), Pamelia Kurstin.2014 est l'année de la sortie du second album de Camélia Jordana Dans la peau, réalisé et arrangé par BABX et sur lequel il écrit et compose encore plusieurs chansons dont « Colonel Chagrin », « Berlin » ou encore « À l'aveuglette ».C'est enfin l'année d'un tournant important dans la carrière de David : en créant BisonBison, sa propre maison de production, il se donne les moyens de réaliser ses projets et les projets d'autres artistes en toute indépendance et selon ses principes.La première sortie sur BisonBison est « Cristal Automatique », un projet de mise en musique de textes des « poètes-punks » Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Jean Genet, Tom Waits ou Gaston Miron notamment (projet né aux Correspondances de Manosque en 2009 sous l'impulsion d'Olivier Chaudenson)…Enfin 2023, sortie de Une Maison avec un piano dedans.2024, nouvel album, et retour à la poésie avec un faible pour Haïti ? Titres interprétés au grand studio- Milonga Live RFI teaser - Joy Is My name, extrait de l'album Une maison avec un piano dedans- Oh Earth, extrait de La Marche des Enfants avec la Maîtrise Populaire de l'Opéra-Comique.- Merveille dans la pirogue Live RFI clip.Line Up : David Babin, piano.Son : Jérémie Besset et Mathias Taylor► Album Une maison avec un piano dedans (Buda Musique 2023) Puis nous recevons Elliott Armen pour la sortie de l'album Turbulence. Écrit et composé, par Elliott Armen. Auteur-compositeur-interprète et producteur, Elliott a grandi entre Paris et sa terre natale, Saint-Malo. Depuis son adolescence, il compose à la guitare et au piano, en écho aux paysages qui abritent sa maison familiale, située au bord d'un magnifique estuaire. Après le lycée, Elliott Armen est parti sillonner l'Europe pendant deux ans pour travailler de ferme en ferme. Tout au long de ces voyages, ses hôtes lui ont transmis un savoir puisé de la terre nourricière. Dans ses bagages : sa guitare et son ukulele, son cahier de notes et un simple micro pour enregistrer ses premières chansons.Aujourd'hui installé près de la maison familiale bretonne, Elliott Armen cultive un terrain en permaculture, redonnant vie à la biodiversité environnante. Elliott Armen, qui a emprunté son nom au phare de l'île de Sein, a enregistré son premier album dans un studio niché sur l'île d'Ouessant. Helium Balloons est sorti le 31 mars 2022, ponctué par un concert exceptionnel en première partie de Miossec, à La Cigale, à Paris. De nombreuses dates ont suivi, toutes aussi prestigieuses : Pitchfork Festival, Midi Festival, Baisers Volés, Printemps de Bourge… et des premières parties d'artistes de renommée tels que Jean-Louis Murat, Dominique A, Florent Marchet, Ariane Moffatt, Jay-Jay Johanson, Alexandra Streliski…Découvert lors de ce concert à la Cigale, Elliott Armen a signé un contrat avec le prestigieux label SONY MASTERWORKS. À ce jour, ses morceaux comptent déjà plus de 3 millions de streams sur l'ensemble des plateformes digitales. En digne héritier d'Elliott Smith, de Sufjan Stevens ou d'Andy Shauf, le jeune Breton de 24 ans mélange, avec singularité, les accords de guitare et de piano à sa voix aérienne. Son œuvre est teintée d'une atmosphère intime et boisée, attachante et intemporelle, toujours ancrée entre terre et mer.Pour son deuxième album, Elliott Armen a décidé de partir en Écosse, rêvant d'un enregistrement particulièrement isolé sur l'île de Lewis. C'est là-bas que se trouve l'inspirant Black Bay Studio, tenu par Peter Fletcher, au bord de l'océan Atlantique. Elliott Armen est parti en ferry de Saint-Malo pour rejoindre, en bus, Stornoway, la ville principale de l'île. De là, il a débuté sa marche qui l'a mené, pendant 200 kilomètres, à travers de splendides paysages aux allures de désert celtique. Après avoir dressé sa tente sous les étoiles pendant douze jours, il est arrivé à destination, imprégné de l'île. C'est alors qu'il s'est plongé dans le calme le plus total pour enregistrer ce nouvel opus. Cet album est un voyage à travers le deuil, l'amour et la solitude. Une traduction des immenses paysages qui peuplent les terres celtes. Et un hymne à la mélancolie comme moteur de la joie. ARMEN - Ar Men « le rocher » ou « la pierre » en breton. Carnet rose : Elliott Armen est le fils de Yann Tiersen. Titres interprétés au grand studio- Turbulence (guitare-voix) Live RFI clip - Strangers, extrait de l'album Turbulence clip - Red Deer (piano-voix) Live RFI.Line up : Elliott Armen, guitare, piano, voix.Son : Jérémie Besset, Mathias Taylor.► Album Turbulence (Helium Balloons Records / Sony Masterworks 2024).Chaîne YouTube.(Rediffusion).

On this episode, Marc talks with Mike Smith, author of “In With The In Crowd: Popular Jazz in 1960s Black America,” published in May of 2024. Smith argues that most studies of 60s jazz focus on the avant-garde centered around John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and more, and he sets out to balance that with a history of the more popular jazz artists from that decade, such as Eddie Harris, Nancy Wilson, and Ramsey Lewis, showing how their music also influenced the form and culture of jazz.As Mike writes, “There was an infrastructure that allowed jazz to thrive in the sixties because jazz, for many, was a moneymaker. It wasn't just the music of protest; it wasn't just the music that spoke to feelings of rage, anger, and resentment. Jazz could be all of those things, but it was also so much more.”We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Mike Smith!

On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we're diving deep into a chat inspired by two tribute albums to an incredibly influential musician, Sun Ra. Joining us are Meshell Ndegeocello and David Harrington. And oh man, do I have my work cut out for me in trying to introduce these incredible people and their careers—I won't even scratch the surface. Meshell Ndegeocello's biggest foray into the public consciousness, strangely enough, came on a duet with John Mellencamp in the mid-'90s, but that's not at all indicative of her wide-ranging career, which also includes everything from go-go music to neo-soul to jazz to rapping on a Madonna song. These days, the Grammys had to create an entirely new category for what she does: She just won the first-ever Grammy award for Alternative Jazz for last year's The Omnichord Real Book. It's no surprise given her musical serachings that Ndegeocello is also deeply inspired by Sun Ra, the legendary out-there jazz composer and performer who traveled through time and space until leaving our planet in 1993. His legacy lives on, though, and Ndegeocello recently released Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City, which features new compositions, old sounds, and a fresh look not just at Ra's work but his musical spirit. It's hard to explain, but check out “Bedlam Blues” from The Magic City right here. Today's other guest is David Harrington, founding member of Kronos Quartet, which has been expanding the music world for 50 years. I'd be a fool to try and sum up everything they've done and everyone with whom they've performed over the years, but do yourself a favor and Google them if you're not familiar. I'll just say that Kronos has pushed the envelope from just about every conceivable angle and expanded the scope and understanding of classical music, pop music, experimental music and much more. They've done film scores that you've definitely heard and deep dives into fringe classical compositions that you almost certainly haven't. So it's no wonder that they, too, like Ndegeocello, have found the wonder and mystery in Sun Ra's music, and that they've put together their own tribute in the Red Hot and Ra series. Theirs is called Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet and Friends Meet Sun Ra. The friends on their volume of the series include Laurie Anderson, Marshall Allen, Laraaji, Moor Mother, Terry Riley, and more. Check out “Outer Spaceways Incorporated,” which features Georgia Anne Muldrow, right here. I should mention too that both of these albums are being released by the Red Hot organization, which has been raising money and awareness for good causes—initially AIDS research, and now that and more—since 1989. The Red Hot and Ra series is just the latest in a long line of albums that push musical boundaries while also serving humanity, so kudos to them—and to former Talkhouse host Elia Einhorn, who's been working with the Red Hot folks on these Sun Ra tributes. In this great conversation, Harrington and Ndegeocello talk, naturally, about Sun Ra, and they get granular with it, touching on MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech and its relationship to this music. They also chat about bringing more women into composition—a Kronos mandate since the beginning—as well as how finding Sun Ra changed Ndegeocello's musical path completely. Harrington also shares a great story about rehearsing with Ornette Coleman. Bonus! Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Meshell Ndegeocello and David Harrington for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time! This episode is brought to you by DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy. To learn more and get 30% off your first year's membership, visit: distrokid.com/vip/talkhouse

Monday nights at Icehouse in Minneapolis are curated by Sophia Kickhofel. This Monday, bands led by Sophia and Peter Goggin pay tribute to the great composer Ornette Coleman. The show starts at 8pm at Icehouse. When Sophia told Phil Nusbaum about this Monday's presentation, she told why she chose Ornette Coleman music as a special point of emphasis.

In this episode — our first-ever "field recording" — we travel up to North London to interview the legendary writer-photographer Val Wilmer. Val takes us back to her earliest musical memories in Streatham, South London, and her immersion in the capital's '60s jazz and blues scenes. We hear about her first pieces for Jazz Journal and her experiences of interviewing (and photographing) the likes of blues singer Jesse Fuller. We also hear about her remarkable DownBeat interview with Jimi Hendrix from early 1968. Val's classic 1977 book As Serious As Your Life — reissued in 2018 — provides the pretext for asking about her passionate championing of the "free jazz" of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and others. We focus on her 1966 Melody Maker encounter with the extraordinary Albert Ayler and the unsolved mystery of his death in 1970. A discussion of Val's deep involvement in the women's movement leads us to clips from Ira Robbins 1994 audio interview with the late Lesley ('It's My Party') Gore — and in particular her startling photo-feminist classic 'You Don't Own Me', six decades young this year. Jasper talks us out with his thoughts on Alan Light's 1991 Rolling Stone interview with Queen Latifah. Many thanks to special guest Val Wilmer. As Serious As Your Life is published by Serpent's Tail and available from all good bookshops. Pieces discussed: Jimi Hendrix: An experience, Once Upon A Time In Williamsburg, Ayler: Mystic tenor with a direct hot line to heaven?, Memories of Hoppy: An interview with Val Wilmer, The New Jazz Gets With It (That Means With Contemporary Art), Tempo: Coltrane, Shankar and All That Rock & Roll, Coltrane, Davis, Monk, Mingus, Lesley Gore audio and Queen Latifah's New Gambit.

Kenny Garrett has been playing for more than 40 years. Originally from Detroit, he joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the late 70s, when it was being run by Ellington's son Mercer. He also played with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and with Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, and Freddie Hubbard. He was a member of a young lions group put together by Blue Note Records in the 80s called Out Of The Blue that also included the late drummer Ralph Peterson, and he was already recording as a leader when he was invited to join Miles Davis's band in 1987. He played on the album Amandla, and was part of the Davis band all the way until the end of Miles's life in 1991. Miles Davis even made a very rare guest appearance on one of Garrett's albums, Prisoner Of Love, from 1989.Kenny Garrett's discography as a leader has taken him in a lot of really interesting directions. His 1995 album Triology, with Brian Blade on drums and either Charnett Moffett or Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass, is a really intense, high-energy record that kind of marries bebop language to post-Ornette Coleman freedom, but the real key to the whole thing is the way he executes these really complex melodies on tunes like John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," Wynton Marsalis's "Delfeayo's Dilemma," and Mulgrew Miller's "Pressing The Issue." It's a tremendous showcase for his technical command of the saxophone. But the album that first got me interested in his work was Beyond The Wall, a 2006 release that was a collaboration with Pharoah Sanders that also featured Mulgrew Miller on piano, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Robert Hurst on bass, Brian Blade on drums, and on some tracks there were strings and harp and Chinese instruments and a six-member vocal ensemble. It's not spiritual jazz in the way that term is used now, and it's not world music, it's entirely its own thing, and it's particularly fascinating because you might not think of Kenny Garrett and Pharoah Sanders having that much in common, artistically speaking, but they really did. They also recorded a live album together that came out in 2008. Garrett talks about Pharoah a lot in the interview you're about to hear.And Kenny Garrett's latest album is going to surprise a lot of people. It's called Who Killed AI, and it's a collaboration with Svoy, an electronic music producer. Garrett plays alto and soprano sax on it, and all the rest of the music is made with synths and programmed drums. Even the horns are multi-tracked and fed through effects at times. It's structured as kind of a suite — the first track is called “Ascendence,” and there are also pieces called “Transcendence,” “Divergence” and “Convergence.” But there's also a really beautiful version of “My Funny Valentine,” which lays the ballad melody over these kind of shimmering keyboard sounds and a hard drum 'n' bass beat. It's not at all what I was expecting when I was told that there was a new Kenny Garrett album on the way.I'm really glad I had the chance to talk to Kenny Garrett. We discussed his history with Miles Davis and with Woody Shaw, his early musical upbringing, his work with Pharoah Sanders, his approach to synthesizing genres and musics from around the world, and much more. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation.

Laurie Anderson is bucket list. The artist, violinist, and poet has been exploring the world in her unique way for decades. She caught our breath releasing O Superman, and has continued to bring play, humour, and curiosity into all she does.Laurie was also the yin to Lou Reed's yang, as a life and creative partner; putting on concerts for dogs, and most recently feeding her and his writing into a supercomputer to see what AI would spit out, in their voice.That was the catalyst for me asking Laurie to Take 5; and her work in AI as an artist over the past few years explores all the questions we're having today about machine learning. Settle in, this is such a poetic conversation, full of great wisdom and plenty of laughs as well. I loved speaking with Laurie about music, and loved how much she embraced the theme I gave her, of duality. From Marianne Faithfull to Maggie Rogers, this is an extraordinary conversation with an all time great.Marianne Faithful – Falling in Love Again Ornette Coleman – Lonely WomanLou Reed – Magic And Loss (The Summation)Bob Dylan – Don't Think Twice, It's AlrightMaggie Rogers – AlaskaKate Crawford's atlas of sound.

In this episode, we're talkin' about SAX, BABY. Phoebe saw a concert that blew her high mind and now we're diving deep into all things saxophone, including a special LIVE musical performance. Plus! Small Business Time brings us Mary Jane Art Company @maryjaneartcomany & @cutielilglass (cutielilglass.com). Featured saxophone performers: 1) Cole Stone-Frisina (@colesfsax) with Christeene, 2) Daniel Haligan (@imdannykosmo) https://youtu.be/yLdRzesJjlA?si=fvLOUmVjn6Sc_m3g 3) Moon Hooch https://youtu.be/wwBhxBBa7tE?si=TBt04CARXa01YftB 4) Ornette Coleman, ‘Lonely Woman' https://youtu.be/OIIyCOAByDU?si=Cjtr8u35dcnP4nOX 5) ‘Young Americans' https://youtu.be/iO6OvHxD_m8?si=IYHugzS2XoVMGujz ---- Our Slashtag.orgsies: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.stonerchickspodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Become a Patron! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/stonerchicks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Grace Penzell (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gracepenzell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), Phoebe Richards (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@27phoebe27⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), Kayla Teel (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@kayla_teel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), and Stephani Thompson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@fannytragic⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@stonerchickspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stoner Chicks Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@broccolibroads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: stonerchickspodcast@gmail.com Snail Mail: PO Box 80586, Seattle, WA 98108 --- Edited by German at YPEditor.com; Theme Song by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessica DiMari⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠; Cover Art by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Redder⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AJ Dent⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and Kayla Teel

“Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey and  Jamel Gaines of Creative Outlet. In this episode of  “Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey,  join host Joanne Carey as she chats with Special Guest: Jamel Gaines, founder and Director of Creative Outlet.  This year marks a special moment for JGCO's annual program as more than 3,000 New York City Public School students will experience the lessons of Remembering. The Company will travel to Cape Coast and Accra, Ghana giving performances and workshops in Africa. Listen in as we talk about the impact Arts in Education had and continues to have in Jamel's life. The February 15 performance of Remembering is in collaboration with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, City Council Member Crystal Hudson, and NAACP Brooklyn Chapter, and pays tribute to New York City Board of Education principals and teachers. The February 16 performance is in collaboration with the Delta's Chapter of Brooklyn. The February 17 performance is in collaboration with the Brooklyn Brownstones Organization https://youtu.be/x8JgSjd3S_M?si=HIB-br85c8s4xW0M Tickets are available through the link belowhttps://www.bam.org/dance/2024/remembering Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 15 and 16 at 7:30 PM and February 17th at 2 PM. Jamel Gaines is the Founder and Artistic Director of Creative Outlet.Jamel has dedicated his life to delivering artistic excellence and stirring, soaring performance to audiences everywhere.  With more than 22 years of teaching and choreographing experience, Jamel seeks to inspire, motivate and nurture dancers and artists.  Under his leadership, Creative Outlet has set itself apart as a highly acclaimed performing arts organization with a proven record in training the next generation of professional dancers and artists. Some of Jamel's more recent choreography includes the crowd pleasing presentation live streamed across the internet during Spike Lee's Annual Tribute Concert to Michael Jackson (August 2017) televised choreography and dramatic performance by contestants on So You Think You Can Dance. (2010).  In addition, Mr. Gaines has created and staged over 25 repertory and concert productions.  He has had the distinction of working with such distinguished artists as Jennifer Holiday, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Savion Glover, Malik Yoba, George Fasion, Ornette Coleman, Ossie Davis, Olatunje Babatunde, Max Roach, Cassandra Wilson and Rick James. Founder and Artistic Director, Jamel Gaines has dedicated his life to delivering artistic excellence to artists and audiences. Jamel has appeared on Public Television's American Talent in which he was presented The Teacher Recognition Award, during the Presidential Scholars in the Arts Committee at The Kennedy Center, and has been featured in publications such as Essence Magazine, The New York Times, The Seattle Times and The Daily News.  His work has been staged by the Actors Theater Workshop, The NYC Department of Parks, Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Paramount Theatre and The Martha Graham School.   Mr. Gaines serves as the director of St. Paul's Eldad Medad Danced Ministry. His work at St. Paul's includes “He Got Up”, the commemoration of the African Holocaust and the acclaimed “Black Nativity” for which he won an Obie Award. Gaines began his dance career in the mid-1990s under the direction of Diane and Adrian Brown, and James Grant and Received his BFA from SUNY Purchase. He credits the development of his unique and nurturing approach to teaching and composing to Kevin Iega Jeff. Follow on Instagram @jamelgainescreativeoutlet  Find out more https://www.creativeoutlet.org/⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Follow Joanne Carey on Instagram @westfieldschoolofdance And follow  “Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tune in. Follow. Like us. And Share. Please leave us review about our podcast  “Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey "Where the Dance World Connects, the Conversations Inspire, and Where We Are Keeping Them Real."

Guitarist Marc Ribot possesses one of the most distinctive six-string sounds in American music, audible both in his work with collaborators like Tom Waits and John Zorn and in his own projects, such as his band Ceramic Dog. In this episode, he discusses pieces by Frantz Casseus, Ornette Coleman and Chocolate Genius. Essential Tremors is produced by Matt Byars and Lee Gardner and distributed by Your Public Studios.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bruce is best known for his first album The Way It Is (1986), but has come light years since then through 18+ albums, experimenting with different styles, playing over 100 shows with the Grateful Dead, and scoring numerous projects for Spike Lee. He's won three Grammys and recorded with music royalty including Elton John, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, etc. We discuss "Sidelines" (feat. Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend) from 'Flicted (2022), "My Resolve" (feat. James Mercer of The Shins) from Non-Secure Connection (2020), and a new live version of "Shadow Hand" from the 25th Anniversary Edition of Spirit Trail. End song: "Cast-Off" (feat. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver) from Absolute Zero (2019). Intro: "The Way It Is" (Live from Köln, 2019). More at brucehornsby.com Hear more Nakedly Examined Music. Like our Facebook page. Support us on Patreon. Sponsors: Visit GreenChef.com/60Nakedly (use code 60Nakedly) to get 60% off your first box from America's #1 Meal Kit for eating clean (plus 20% off for the next two months) Get the ultimate gift: A custom-written song from Songfinch. Use songfinch.com/NEM to get free Spotify streaming for your song. Listen to the song Mark commissioned.

Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we'd like to wish you a Happy New Year 2024 with this encore episode for first episode of our third season. Our guest today is talking to musician Rachel Haden about her father, influential jazz bassist Charlie Haden. Rachel was kind enough to talk to us about so many things including her memories of growing up as a triplets and going for walks with jazz trumpeter Don Cherry when the Haden's lived in New York. This led us down the path of many other genres of music including country, punk, jazz, indie rock and much.more as the Haden's all sang and played instruments growing up. Thanks dad. We learn about the Rachel's time on the road with Todd Rundgren, her band That Dog, Brendan Perry of Dead Can Dance as well as Beck, Jimmy Eat World, Neil Hamburger and more. While we were at it we also discuss jaco Pastorius, Ornette Coleman, Ry Cooder, Jack White, Mike Watt and others. It's a very fertile musical well we draw from when talking to a Haden family member like Rachel as there are so many avenues and styles of music she and her family are connected to. The story spans 1930s Iowa where Charlie was part of The Haden Family Band, who rivaled the Carter Family in popularity in the Midwest and runs all the way to the 2020's with the release of Rachel's solo albums including making music with Charlie's son-in-law, comedian Jack Black of Tenacious D. If you are a fan of music, this episode is the one for you. Take a listen, on the Rarified Heir Podcast encore edition with Rachel Haden, coming up here.

Grammy-nominated funk-jazz virtuoso WILL BERNARD plugs in! Home for the holidays, the renowned New York-based ES-335 tamer invites me into the Berkeley, California, house he grew up in, where he cranks up a Carr combo, shares some funkalicious pedalboard recipes, and offers insights he's gained from releasing tons of his own solo records, working as a hired gun, learning jazz and more from the great Dave Creamer, studying slide guitar ragas with Debashish Battacharya, talking free jazz with Ornette Coleman, and, of course, playing with the popular, major-label funk fusion ensemble T.J. Kirk. PRESENTED BY GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE, this was a great rainy-night guitar hang! Enjoy. — Jude Gold, Host, No Guitar Is Safe podcast.

Episode 171 looks at "Hey Jude", the White Album, and the career of the Beatles from August 1967 through November 1968. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on "I Love You" by People!. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata Not really an error, but at one point I refer to Ornette Coleman as a saxophonist. While he was, he plays trumpet on the track that is excerpted after that. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. This time I also used Steve Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. I referred to Philip Norman's biographies of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, to Graeme Thomson's biography of George Harrison, Take a Sad Song by James Campion, Yoko Ono: An Artful Life by Donald Brackett, Those Were the Days 2.0 by Stephan Granados, and Sound Pictures by Kenneth Womack. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of “Hey Jude” is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but a remixed stereo mix is easily available on the new reissue of the 1967-70 compilation. The original mixes of the White Album are also, shockingly, out of print, but this 2018 remix is available for the moment. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a quick note -- this episode deals, among other topics, with child abandonment, spousal neglect, suicide attempts, miscarriage, rape accusations, and heroin addiction. If any of those topics are likely to upset you, you might want to check the transcript rather than listening to this episode. It also, for once, contains a short excerpt of an expletive, but given that that expletive in that context has been regularly played on daytime radio without complaint for over fifty years, I suspect it can be excused. The use of mantra meditation is something that exists across religions, and which appears to have been independently invented multiple times, in multiple cultures. In the Western culture to which most of my listeners belong, it is now best known as an aspect of what is known as "mindfulness", a secularised version of Buddhism which aims to provide adherents with the benefits of the teachings of the Buddha but without the cosmology to which they are attached. But it turns up in almost every religious tradition I know of in one form or another. The idea of mantra meditation is a very simple one, and one that even has some basis in science. There is a mathematical principle in neurology and information science called the free energy principle which says our brains are wired to try to minimise how surprised we are --  our brain is constantly making predictions about the world, and then looking at the results from our senses to see if they match. If they do, that's great, and the brain will happily move on to its next prediction. If they don't, the brain has to update its model of the world to match the new information, make new predictions, and see if those new predictions are a better match. Every person has a different mental model of the world, and none of them match reality, but every brain tries to get as close as possible. This updating of the model to match the new information is called "thinking", and it uses up energy, and our bodies and brains have evolved to conserve energy as much as possible. This means that for many people, most of the time, thinking is unpleasant, and indeed much of the time that people have spent thinking, they've been thinking about how to stop themselves having to do it at all, and when they have managed to stop thinking, however briefly, they've experienced great bliss. Many more or less effective technologies have been created to bring about a more minimal-energy state, including alcohol, heroin, and barbituates, but many of these have unwanted side-effects, such as death, which people also tend to want to avoid, and so people have often turned to another technology. It turns out that for many people, they can avoid thinking by simply thinking about something that is utterly predictable. If they minimise the amount of sensory input, and concentrate on something that they can predict exactly, eventually they can turn off their mind, relax, and float downstream, without dying. One easy way to do this is to close your eyes, so you can't see anything, make your breath as regular as possible, and then concentrate on a sound that repeats over and over.  If you repeat a single phrase or word a few hundred times, that regular repetition eventually causes your mind to stop having to keep track of the world, and experience a peace that is, by all accounts, unlike any other experience. What word or phrase that is can depend very much on the tradition. In Transcendental Meditation, each person has their own individual phrase. In the Catholicism in which George Harrison and Paul McCartney were raised, popular phrases for this are "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" or "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." In some branches of Buddhism, a popular mantra is "_NAMU MYŌHŌ RENGE KYŌ_". In the Hinduism to which George Harrison later converted, you can use "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare", "Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya" or "Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha". Those last two start with the syllable "Om", and indeed some people prefer to just use that syllable, repeating a single syllable over and over again until they reach a state of transcendence. [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude" ("na na na na na na na")] We don't know much about how the Beatles first discovered Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, except that it was thanks to Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's then-wife. Unfortunately, her memory of how she first became involved in the Maharishi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as described in her autobiography, doesn't fully line up with other known facts. She talks about reading about the Maharishi in the paper with her friend Marie-Lise while George was away on tour, but she also places the date that this happened in February 1967, several months after the Beatles had stopped touring forever. We'll be seeing a lot more of these timing discrepancies as this story progresses, and people's memories increasingly don't match the events that happened to them. Either way, it's clear that Pattie became involved in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement a good length of time before her husband did. She got him to go along with her to one of the Maharishi's lectures, after she had already been converted to the practice of Transcendental Meditation, and they brought along John, Paul, and their partners (Ringo's wife Maureen had just given birth, so they didn't come). As we heard back in episode one hundred and fifty, that lecture was impressive enough that the group, plus their wives and girlfriends (with the exception of Maureen Starkey) and Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, all went on a meditation retreat with the Maharishi at a holiday camp in Bangor, and it was there that they learned that Brian Epstein had been found dead. The death of the man who had guided the group's career could not have come at a worse time for the band's stability.  The group had only recorded one song in the preceding two months -- Paul's "Your Mother Should Know" -- and had basically been running on fumes since completing recording of Sgt Pepper many months earlier. John's drug intake had increased to the point that he was barely functional -- although with the enthusiasm of the newly converted he had decided to swear off LSD at the Maharishi's urging -- and his marriage was falling apart. Similarly, Paul McCartney's relationship with Jane Asher was in a bad state, though both men were trying to repair their damaged relationships, while both George and Ringo were having doubts about the band that had made them famous. In George's case, he was feeling marginalised by John and Paul, his songs ignored or paid cursory attention, and there was less for him to do on the records as the group moved away from making guitar-based rock and roll music into the stranger areas of psychedelia. And Ringo, whose main memory of the recording of Sgt Pepper was of learning to play chess while the others went through the extensive overdubs that characterised that album, was starting to feel like his playing was deteriorating, and that as the only non-writer in the band he was on the outside to an extent. On top of that, the group were in the middle of a major plan to restructure their business. As part of their contract renegotiations with EMI at the beginning of 1967, it had been agreed that they would receive two million pounds -- roughly fifteen million pounds in today's money -- in unpaid royalties as a lump sum. If that had been paid to them as individuals, or through the company they owned, the Beatles Ltd, they would have had to pay the full top rate of tax on it, which as George had complained the previous year was over ninety-five percent. (In fact, he'd been slightly exaggerating the generosity of the UK tax system to the rich, as at that point the top rate of income tax was somewhere around ninety-seven and a half percent). But happily for them, a couple of years earlier the UK had restructured its tax laws and introduced a corporation tax, which meant that the profits of corporations were no longer taxed at the same high rate as income. So a new company had been set up, The Beatles & Co, and all the group's non-songwriting income was paid into the company. Each Beatle owned five percent of the company, and the other eighty percent was owned by a new partnership, a corporation that was soon renamed Apple Corps -- a name inspired by a painting that McCartney had liked by the artist Rene Magritte. In the early stages of Apple, it was very entangled with Nems, the company that was owned by Brian and Clive Epstein, and which was in the process of being sold to Robert Stigwood, though that sale fell through after Brian's death. The first part of Apple, Apple Publishing, had been set up in the summer of 1967, and was run by Terry Doran, a friend of Epstein's who ran a motor dealership -- most of the Apple divisions would be run by friends of the group rather than by people with experience in the industries in question. As Apple was set up during the point that Stigwood was getting involved with NEMS, Apple Publishing's initial offices were in the same building with, and shared staff with, two publishing companies that Stigwood owned, Dratleaf Music, who published Cream's songs, and Abigail Music, the Bee Gees' publishers. And indeed the first two songs published by Apple were copyrights that were gifted to the company by Stigwood -- "Listen to the Sky", a B-side by an obscure band called Sands: [Excerpt: Sands, "Listen to the Sky"] And "Outside Woman Blues", an arrangement by Eric Clapton of an old blues song by Blind Joe Reynolds, which Cream had copyrighted separately and released on Disraeli Gears: [Excerpt: Cream, "Outside Woman Blues"] But Apple soon started signing outside songwriters -- once Mike Berry, a member of Apple Publishing's staff, had sat McCartney down and explained to him what music publishing actually was, something he had never actually understood even though he'd been a songwriter for five years. Those songwriters, given that this was 1967, were often also performers, and as Apple Records had not yet been set up, Apple would try to arrange recording contracts for them with other labels. They started with a group called Focal Point, who got signed by badgering Paul McCartney to listen to their songs until he gave them Doran's phone number to shut them up: [Excerpt: Focal Point, "Sycamore Sid"] But the big early hope for Apple Publishing was a songwriter called George Alexander. Alexander's birth name had been Alexander Young, and he was the brother of George Young, who was a member of the Australian beat group The Easybeats, who'd had a hit with "Friday on My Mind": [Excerpt: The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"] His younger brothers Malcolm and Angus would go on to have a few hits themselves, but AC/DC wouldn't be formed for another five years. Terry Doran thought that Alexander should be a member of a band, because bands were more popular than solo artists at the time, and so he was placed with three former members of Tony Rivers and the Castaways, a Beach Boys soundalike group that had had some minor success. John Lennon suggested that the group be named Grapefruit, after a book he was reading by a conceptual artist of his acquaintance named Yoko Ono, and as Doran was making arrangements with Terry Melcher for a reciprocal publishing deal by which Melcher's American company would publish Apple songs in the US while Apple published songs from Melcher's company in the UK, it made sense for Melcher to also produce Grapefruit's first single, "Dear Delilah": [Excerpt: Grapefruit, "Dear Delilah"] That made number twenty-one in the UK when it came out in early 1968, on the back of publicity about Grapefruit's connection with the Beatles, but future singles by the band were much less successful, and like several other acts involved with Apple, they found that they were more hampered by the Beatles connection than helped. A few other people were signed to Apple Publishing early on, of whom the most notable was Jackie Lomax. Lomax had been a member of a minor Merseybeat group, the Undertakers, and after they had split up, he'd been signed by Brian Epstein with a new group, the Lomax Alliance, who had released one single, "Try as You May": [Excerpt: The Lomax Alliance, "Try As You May"] After Epstein's death, Lomax had plans to join another band, being formed by another Merseybeat musician, Chris Curtis, the former drummer of the Searchers. But after going to the Beatles to talk with them about them helping the new group financially, Lomax was persuaded by John Lennon to go solo instead. He may later have regretted that decision, as by early 1968 the people that Curtis had recruited for his new band had ditched him and were making a name for themselves as Deep Purple. Lomax recorded one solo single with funding from Stigwood, a cover version of a song by an obscure singer-songwriter, Jake Holmes, "Genuine Imitation Life": [Excerpt: Jackie Lomax, "Genuine Imitation Life"] But he was also signed to Apple Publishing as a songwriter. The Beatles had only just started laying out plans for Apple when Epstein died, and other than the publishing company one of the few things they'd agreed on was that they were going to have a film company, which was to be run by Denis O'Dell, who had been an associate producer on A Hard Day's Night and on How I Won The War, the Richard Lester film Lennon had recently starred in. A few days after Epstein's death, they had a meeting, in which they agreed that the band needed to move forward quickly if they were going to recover from Epstein's death. They had originally been planning on going to India with the Maharishi to study meditation, but they decided to put that off until the new year, and to press forward with a film project Paul had been talking about, to be titled Magical Mystery Tour. And so, on the fifth of September 1967, they went back into the recording studio and started work on a song of John's that was earmarked for the film, "I am the Walrus": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] Magical Mystery Tour, the film, has a mixed reputation which we will talk about shortly, but one defence that Paul McCartney has always made of it is that it's the only place where you can see the Beatles performing "I am the Walrus". While the song was eventually relegated to a B-side, it's possibly the finest B-side of the Beatles' career, and one of the best tracks the group ever made. As with many of Lennon's songs from this period, the song was a collage of many different elements pulled from his environment and surroundings, and turned into something that was rather more than the sum of its parts. For its musical inspiration, Lennon pulled from, of all things, a police siren going past his house. (For those who are unfamiliar with what old British police sirens sounded like, as opposed to the ones in use for most of my lifetime or in other countries, here's a recording of one): [Excerpt: British police siren ca 1968] That inspired Lennon to write a snatch of lyric to go with the sound of the siren, starting "Mister city policeman sitting pretty". He had two other song fragments, one about sitting in the garden, and one about sitting on a cornflake, and he told Hunter Davies, who was doing interviews for his authorised biography of the group, “I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll turn out to be different parts of the same song.” But the final element that made these three disparate sections into a song was a letter that came from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at Lennon's old school Quarry Bank, who told him that the teachers at the school -- who Lennon always thought of as having suppressed his creativity -- were now analysing Beatles lyrics in their lessons. Lennon decided to come up with some nonsense that they couldn't analyse -- though as nonsensical as the finished song is, there's an underlying anger to a lot of it that possibly comes from Lennon thinking of his school experiences. And so Lennon asked his old schoolfriend Pete Shotton to remind him of a disgusting playground chant that kids used to sing in schools in the North West of England (and which they still sang with very minor variations at my own school decades later -- childhood folklore has a remarkably long life). That rhyme went: Yellow matter custard, green snot pie All mixed up with a dead dog's eye Slap it on a butty, nice and thick, And drink it down with a cup of cold sick Lennon combined some parts of this with half-remembered fragments of Lewis Carrol's The Walrus and the Carpenter, and with some punning references to things that were going on in his own life and those of his friends -- though it's difficult to know exactly which of the stories attached to some of the more incomprehensible bits of the lyrics are accurate. The story that the line "I am the eggman" is about a sexual proclivity of Eric Burdon of the Animals seems plausible, while the contention by some that the phrase "semolina pilchard" is a reference to Sgt Pilcher, the corrupt policeman who had arrested three of the Rolling Stones, and would later arrest Lennon, on drugs charges, seems less likely. The track is a masterpiece of production, but the release of the basic take on Anthology 2 in 1996 showed that the underlying performance, before George Martin worked his magic with the overdubs, is still a remarkable piece of work: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus (Anthology 2 version)"] But Martin's arrangement and production turned the track from a merely very good track into a masterpiece. The string arrangement, very much in the same mould as that for "Strawberry Fields Forever" but giving a very different effect with its harsh cello glissandi, is the kind of thing one expects from Martin, but there's also the chanting of the Mike Sammes Singers, who were more normally booked for sessions like Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz": [Excerpt: Engelbert Humperdinck, "The Last Waltz"] But here were instead asked to imitate the sound of the strings, make grunting noises, and generally go very far out of their normal comfort zone: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] But the most fascinating piece of production in the entire track is an idea that seems to have been inspired by people like John Cage -- a live feed of a radio being tuned was played into the mono mix from about the halfway point, and whatever was on the radio at the time was captured: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] This is also why for many decades it was impossible to have a true stereo mix of the track -- the radio part was mixed directly into the mono mix, and it wasn't until the 1990s that someone thought to track down a copy of the original radio broadcasts and recreate the process. In one of those bits of synchronicity that happen more often than you would think when you're creating aleatory art, and which are why that kind of process can be so appealing, one bit of dialogue from the broadcast of King Lear that was on the radio as the mixing was happening was *perfectly* timed: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] After completing work on the basic track for "I am the Walrus", the group worked on two more songs for the film, George's "Blue Jay Way" and a group-composed twelve-bar blues instrumental called "Flying", before starting production. Magical Mystery Tour, as an idea, was inspired in equal parts by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the collective of people we talked about in the episode on the Grateful Dead who travelled across the US extolling the virtues of psychedelic drugs, and by mystery tours, a British working-class tradition that has rather fallen out of fashion in the intervening decades. A mystery tour would generally be put on by a coach-hire company, and would be a day trip to an unannounced location -- though the location would in fact be very predictable, and would be a seaside town within a couple of hours' drive of its starting point. In the case of the ones the Beatles remembered from their own childhoods, this would be to a coastal town in Lancashire or Wales, like Blackpool, Rhyl, or Prestatyn. A coachload of people would pay to be driven to this random location, get very drunk and have a singsong on the bus, and spend a day wherever they were taken. McCartney's plan was simple -- they would gather a group of passengers and replicate this experience over the course of several days, and film whatever went on, but intersperse that with more planned out sketches and musical numbers. For this reason, along with the Beatles and their associates, the cast included some actors found through Spotlight and some of the group's favourite performers, like the comedian Nat Jackley (whose comedy sequence directed by John was cut from the final film) and the surrealist poet/singer/comedian Ivor Cutler: [Excerpt: Ivor Cutler, "I'm Going in a Field"] The film also featured an appearance by a new band who would go on to have great success over the next year, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. They had recorded their first single in Abbey Road at the same time as the Beatles were recording Revolver, but rather than being progressive psychedelic rock, it had been a remake of a 1920s novelty song: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "My Brother Makes the Noises For the Talkies"] Their performance in Magical Mystery Tour was very different though -- they played a fifties rock pastiche written by band leaders Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes while a stripper took off her clothes. While several other musical sequences were recorded for the film, including one by the band Traffic and one by Cutler, other than the Beatles tracks only the Bonzos' song made it into the finished film: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "Death Cab for Cutie"] That song, thirty years later, would give its name to a prominent American alternative rock band. Incidentally the same night that Magical Mystery Tour was first broadcast was also the night that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band first appeared on a TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured three future members of the Monty Python troupe -- Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Over the years the careers of the Bonzos, the Pythons, and the Beatles would become increasingly intertwined, with George Harrison in particular striking up strong friendships and working relationships with Bonzos Neil Innes and "Legs" Larry Smith. The filming of Magical Mystery Tour went about as well as one might expect from a film made by four directors, none of whom had any previous filmmaking experience, and none of whom had any business knowledge. The Beatles were used to just turning up and having things magically done for them by other people, and had no real idea of the infrastructure challenges that making a film, even a low-budget one, actually presents, and ended up causing a great deal of stress to almost everyone involved. The completed film was shown on TV on Boxing Day 1967 to general confusion and bemusement. It didn't help that it was originally broadcast in black and white, and so for example the scene showing shifting landscapes (outtake footage from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, tinted various psychedelic colours) over the "Flying" music, just looked like grey fuzz. But also, it just wasn't what people were expecting from a Beatles film. This was a ramshackle, plotless, thing more inspired by Andy Warhol's underground films than by the kind of thing the group had previously appeared in, and it was being presented as Christmas entertainment for all the family. And to be honest, it's not even a particularly good example of underground filmmaking -- though it looks like a masterpiece when placed next to something like the Bee Gees' similar effort, Cucumber Castle. But there are enough interesting sequences in there for the project not to be a complete failure -- and the deleted scenes on the DVD release, including the performances by Cutler and Traffic, and the fact that the film was edited down from ten hours to fifty-two minutes, makes one wonder if there's a better film that could be constructed from the original footage. Either way, the reaction to the film was so bad that McCartney actually appeared on David Frost's TV show the next day to defend it and, essentially, apologise. While they were editing the film, the group were also continuing to work in the studio, including on two new McCartney songs, "The Fool on the Hill", which was included in Magical Mystery Tour, and "Hello Goodbye", which wasn't included on the film's soundtrack but was released as the next single, with "I Am the Walrus" as the B-side: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Incidentally, in the UK the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double-EP rather than as an album (in the US, the group's recent singles and B-sides were added to turn it into a full-length album, which is how it's now generally available). "I Am the Walrus" was on the double-EP as well as being on the single's B-side, and the double-EP got to number two on the singles charts, meaning "I am the Walrus" was on the records at number one and number two at the same time. Before it became obvious that the film, if not the soundtrack, was a disaster, the group held a launch party on the twenty-first of December, 1967. The band members went along in fancy dress, as did many of the cast and crew -- the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performed at the party. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys also turned up at the party, and apparently at one point jammed with the Bonzos, and according to some, but not all, reports, a couple of the Beatles joined in as well. Love and Johnston had both just met the Maharishi for the first time a couple of days earlier, and Love had been as impressed as the Beatles were, and it may have been at this party that the group mentioned to Love that they would soon be going on a retreat in India with the guru -- a retreat that was normally meant for training TM instructors, but this time seemed to be more about getting celebrities involved. Love would also end up going with them. That party was also the first time that Cynthia Lennon had an inkling that John might not be as faithful to her as she previously supposed. John had always "joked" about being attracted to George Harrison's wife, Patti, but this time he got a little more blatant about his attraction than he ever had previously, to the point that he made Cynthia cry, and Cynthia's friend, the pop star Lulu, decided to give Lennon a very public dressing-down for his cruelty to his wife, a dressing-down that must have been a sight to behold, as Lennon was dressed as a Teddy boy while Lulu was in a Shirley Temple costume. It's a sign of how bad the Lennons' marriage was at this point that this was the second time in a two-month period where Cynthia had ended up crying because of John at a film launch party and been comforted by a female pop star. In October, Cilla Black had held a party to celebrate the belated release of John's film How I Won the War, and during the party Georgie Fame had come up to Black and said, confused, "Cynthia Lennon is hiding in your wardrobe". Black went and had a look, and Cynthia explained to her “I'm waiting to see how long it is before John misses me and comes looking for me.” Black's response had been “You'd better face it, kid—he's never gonna come.” Also at the Magical Mystery Tour party was Lennon's father, now known as Freddie Lennon, and his new nineteen-year-old fiancee. While Hunter Davis had been researching the Beatles' biography, he'd come across some evidence that the version of Freddie's attitude towards John that his mother's side of the family had always told him -- that Freddie had been a cruel and uncaring husband who had not actually wanted to be around his son -- might not be the whole of the truth, and that the mother who he had thought of as saintly might also have had some part to play in their marriage breaking down and Freddie not seeing his son for twenty years. The two had made some tentative attempts at reconciliation, and indeed Freddie would even come and live with John for a while, though within a couple of years the younger Lennon's heart would fully harden against his father again. Of course, the things that John always resented his father for were pretty much exactly the kind of things that Lennon himself was about to do. It was around this time as well that Derek Taylor gave the Beatles copies of the debut album by a young singer/songwriter named Harry Nilsson. Nilsson will be getting his own episode down the line, but not for a couple of years at my current rates, so it's worth bringing that up here, because that album became a favourite of all the Beatles, and would have a huge influence on their songwriting for the next couple of years, and because one song on the album, "1941", must have resonated particularly deeply with Lennon right at this moment -- an autobiographical song by Nilsson about how his father had left him and his mother when he was a small boy, and about his own fear that, as his first marriage broke down, he was repeating the pattern with his stepson Scott: [Excerpt: Nilsson, "1941"] The other major event of December 1967, rather overshadowed by the Magical Mystery Tour disaster the next day, was that on Christmas Day Paul McCartney and Jane Asher announced their engagement. A few days later, George Harrison flew to India. After John and Paul had had their outside film projects -- John starring in How I Won The War and Paul doing the soundtrack for The Family Way -- the other two Beatles more or less simultaneously did their own side project films, and again one acted while the other did a soundtrack. Both of these projects were in the rather odd subgenre of psychedelic shambolic comedy film that sprang up in the mid sixties, a subgenre that produced a lot of fascinating films, though rather fewer good ones. Indeed, both of them were in the subsubgenre of shambolic psychedelic *sex* comedies. In Ringo's case, he had a small role in the film Candy, which was based on the novel we mentioned in the last episode, co-written by Terry Southern, which was in itself a loose modern rewriting of Voltaire's Candide. Unfortunately, like such other classics of this subgenre as Anthony Newley's Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, Candy has dated *extremely* badly, and unless you find repeated scenes of sexual assault and rape, ethnic stereotypes, and jokes about deformity and disfigurement to be an absolute laugh riot, it's not a film that's worth seeking out, and Starr's part in it is not a major one. Harrison's film was of the same basic genre -- a film called Wonderwall about a mad scientist who discovers a way to see through the walls of his apartment, and gets to see a photographer taking sexy photographs of a young woman named Penny Lane, played by Jane Birkin: [Excerpt: Some Wonderwall film dialogue ripped from the Blu-Ray] Wonderwall would, of course, later inspire the title of a song by Oasis, and that's what the film is now best known for, but it's a less-unwatchable film than Candy, and while still problematic it's less so. Which is something. Harrison had been the Beatle with least involvement in Magical Mystery Tour -- McCartney had been the de facto director, Starr had been the lead character and the only one with much in the way of any acting to do, and Lennon had written the film's standout scene and its best song, and had done a little voiceover narration. Harrison, by contrast, barely has anything to do in the film apart from the one song he contributed, "Blue Jay Way", and he said of the project “I had no idea what was happening and maybe I didn't pay enough attention because my problem, basically, was that I was in another world, I didn't really belong; I was just an appendage.” He'd expressed his discomfort to his friend Joe Massot, who was about to make his first feature film. Massot had got to know Harrison during the making of his previous film, Reflections on Love, a mostly-silent short which had starred Harrison's sister-in-law Jenny Boyd, and which had been photographed by Robert Freeman, who had been the photographer for the Beatles' album covers from With the Beatles through Rubber Soul, and who had taken most of the photos that Klaus Voorman incorporated into the cover of Revolver (and whose professional association with the Beatles seemed to come to an end around the same time he discovered that Lennon had been having an affair with his wife). Massot asked Harrison to write the music for the film, and told Harrison he would have complete free rein to make whatever music he wanted, so long as it fit the timing of the film, and so Harrison decided to create a mixture of Western rock music and the Indian music he loved. Harrison started recording the music at the tail end of 1967, with sessions with several London-based Indian musicians and John Barham, an orchestrator who had worked with Ravi Shankar on Shankar's collaborations with Western musicians, including the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack we talked about in the "All You Need is Love" episode. For the Western music, he used the Remo Four, a Merseybeat group who had been on the scene even before the Beatles, and which contained a couple of classmates of Paul McCartney, but who had mostly acted as backing musicians for other artists. They'd backed Johnny Sandon, the former singer with the Searchers, on a couple of singles, before becoming the backing band for Tommy Quickly, a NEMS artist who was unsuccessful despite starting his career with a Lennon/McCartney song, "Tip of My Tongue": [Excerpt: Tommy Quickly, "Tip of My Tongue"] The Remo Four would later, after a lineup change, become Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, who would become one-hit wonders in the seventies, and during the Wonderwall sessions they recorded a song that went unreleased at the time, and which would later go on to be rerecorded by Ashton, Gardner, and Dyke. "In the First Place" also features Harrison on backing vocals and possibly guitar, and was not submitted for the film because Harrison didn't believe that Massot wanted any vocal tracks, but the recording was later discovered and used in a revised director's cut of the film in the nineties: [Excerpt: The Remo Four, "In the First Place"] But for the most part the Remo Four were performing instrumentals written by Harrison. They weren't the only Western musicians performing on the sessions though -- Peter Tork of the Monkees dropped by these sessions and recorded several short banjo solos, which were used in the film soundtrack but not in the soundtrack album (presumably because Tork was contracted to another label): [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Wonderwall banjo solo"] Another musician who was under contract to another label was Eric Clapton, who at the time was playing with The Cream, and who vaguely knew Harrison and so joined in for the track "Ski-ing", playing lead guitar under the cunning, impenetrable, pseudonym "Eddie Clayton", with Harrison on sitar, Starr on drums, and session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan on bass: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Ski-ing"] But the bulk of the album was recorded in EMI's studios in the city that is now known as Mumbai but at the time was called Bombay. The studio facilities in India had up to that point only had a mono tape recorder, and Bhaskar Menon, one of the top executives at EMI's Indian division and later the head of EMI music worldwide, personally brought the first stereo tape recorder to the studio to aid in Harrison's recording. The music was all composed by Harrison and performed by the Indian musicians, and while Harrison was composing in an Indian mode, the musicians were apparently fascinated by how Western it sounded to them: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Microbes"] While he was there, Harrison also got the instrumentalists to record another instrumental track, which wasn't to be used for the film: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "The Inner Light (instrumental)"] That track would, instead, become part of what was to be Harrison's first composition to make a side of a Beatles single. After John and George had appeared on the David Frost show talking about the Maharishi, in September 1967, George had met a lecturer in Sanskrit named Juan Mascaró, who wrote to Harrison enclosing a book he'd compiled of translations of religious texts, telling him he'd admired "Within You Without You" and thought it would be interesting if Harrison set something from the Tao Te Ching to music. He suggested a text that, in his translation, read: "Without going out of my door I can know all things on Earth Without looking out of my window I can know the ways of heaven For the farther one travels, the less one knows The sage, therefore Arrives without travelling Sees all without looking Does all without doing" Harrison took that text almost verbatim, though he created a second verse by repeating the first few lines with "you" replacing "I" -- concerned that listeners might think he was just talking about himself, and wouldn't realise it was a more general statement -- and he removed the "the sage, therefore" and turned the last few lines into imperative commands rather than declarative statements: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] The song has come in for some criticism over the years as being a little Orientalist, because in critics' eyes it combines Chinese philosophy with Indian music, as if all these things are equally "Eastern" and so all the same really. On the other hand there's a good argument that an English songwriter taking a piece of writing written in Chinese and translated into English by a Spanish man and setting it to music inspired by Indian musical modes is a wonderful example of cultural cross-pollination. As someone who's neither Chinese nor Indian I wouldn't want to take a stance on it, but clearly the other Beatles were impressed by it -- they put it out as the B-side to their next single, even though the only Beatles on it are Harrison and McCartney, with the latter adding a small amount of harmony vocal: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] And it wasn't because the group were out of material. They were planning on going to Rishikesh to study with the Maharishi, and wanted to get a single out for release while they were away, and so in one week they completed the vocal overdubs on "The Inner Light" and recorded three other songs, two by John and one by Paul. All three of the group's songwriters brought in songs that were among their best. John's first contribution was a song whose lyrics he later described as possibly the best he ever wrote, "Across the Universe". He said the lyrics were “purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don't own it, you know; it came through like that … Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship, it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it … It's like being possessed, like a psychic or a medium.” But while Lennon liked the song, he was never happy with the recording of it. They tried all sorts of things to get the sound he heard in his head, including bringing in some fans who were hanging around outside to sing backing vocals. He said of the track "I was singing out of tune and instead of getting a decent choir, we got fans from outside, Apple Scruffs or whatever you call them. They came in and were singing all off-key. Nobody was interested in doing the tune originally.” [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] The "jai guru deva" chorus there is the first reference to the teachings of the Maharishi in one of the Beatles' records -- Guru Dev was the Maharishi's teacher, and the phrase "Jai guru dev" is a Sanskrit one which I've seen variously translated as "victory to the great teacher", and "hail to the greatness within you". Lennon would say shortly before his death “The Beatles didn't make a good record out of it. I think subconsciously sometimes we – I say ‘we' though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us – Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song … Usually we'd spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul's songs, when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields' or ‘Across The Universe', somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in … It was a _lousy_ track of a great song and I was so disappointed by it …The guitars are out of tune and I'm singing out of tune because I'm psychologically destroyed and nobody's supporting me or helping me with it, and the song was never done properly.” Of course, this is only Lennon's perception, and it's one that the other participants would disagree with. George Martin, in particular, was always rather hurt by the implication that Lennon's songs had less attention paid to them, and he would always say that the problem was that Lennon in the studio would always say "yes, that's great", and only later complain that it hadn't been what he wanted. No doubt McCartney did put in more effort on his own songs than on Lennon's -- everyone has a bias towards their own work, and McCartney's only human -- but personally I suspect that a lot of the problem comes down to the two men having very different personalities. McCartney had very strong ideas about his own work and would drive the others insane with his nitpicky attention to detail. Lennon had similarly strong ideas, but didn't have the attention span to put the time and effort in to force his vision on others, and didn't have the technical knowledge to express his ideas in words they'd understand. He expected Martin and the other Beatles to work miracles, and they did -- but not the miracles he would have worked. That track was, rather than being chosen for the next single, given to Spike Milligan, who happened to be visiting the studio and was putting together an album for the environmental charity the World Wildlife Fund. The album was titled "No One's Gonna Change Our World": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] That track is historic in another way -- it would be the last time that George Harrison would play sitar on a Beatles record, and it effectively marks the end of the period of psychedelia and Indian influence that had started with "Norwegian Wood" three years earlier, and which many fans consider their most creative period. Indeed, shortly after the recording, Harrison would give up the sitar altogether and stop playing it. He loved sitar music as much as he ever had, and he still thought that Indian classical music spoke to him in ways he couldn't express, and he continued to be friends with Ravi Shankar for the rest of his life, and would only become more interested in Indian religious thought. But as he spent time with Shankar he realised he would never be as good on the sitar as he hoped. He said later "I thought, 'Well, maybe I'm better off being a pop singer-guitar-player-songwriter – whatever-I'm-supposed-to-be' because I've seen a thousand sitar-players in India who are twice as better as I'll ever be. And only one of them Ravi thought was going to be a good player." We don't have a precise date for when it happened -- I suspect it was in June 1968, so a few months after the "Across the Universe" recording -- but Shankar told Harrison that rather than try to become a master of a music that he hadn't encountered until his twenties, perhaps he should be making the music that was his own background. And as Harrison put it "I realised that was riding my bike down a street in Liverpool and hearing 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of someone's house.": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"] In early 1968 a lot of people seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as if Christmas 1967 had been the flick of a switch and instead of whimsy and ornamentation, the thing to do was to make music that was influenced by early rock and roll. In the US the Band and Bob Dylan were making music that was consciously shorn of all studio experimentation, while in the UK there was a revival of fifties rock and roll. In April 1968 both "Peggy Sue" and "Rock Around the Clock" reentered the top forty in the UK, and the Who were regularly including "Summertime Blues" in their sets. Fifties nostalgia, which would make occasional comebacks for at least the next forty years, was in its first height, and so it's not surprising that Paul McCartney's song, "Lady Madonna", which became the A-side of the next single, has more than a little of the fifties about it. Of course, the track isn't *completely* fifties in its origins -- one of the inspirations for the track seems to have been the Rolling Stones' then-recent hit "Let's Spend The Night Together": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Let's Spend the Night Together"] But the main source for the song's music -- and for the sound of the finished record -- seems to have been Johnny Parker's piano part on Humphrey Lyttleton's "Bad Penny Blues", a hit single engineered by Joe Meek in the fifties: [Excerpt: Humphrey Lyttleton, "Bad Penny Blues"] That song seems to have been on the group's mind for a while, as a working title for "With a Little Help From My Friends" had at one point been "Bad Finger Blues" -- a title that would later give the name to a band on Apple. McCartney took Parker's piano part as his inspiration, and as he later put it “‘Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. I got my left hand doing an arpeggio thing with the chord, an ascending boogie-woogie left hand, then a descending right hand. I always liked that, the  juxtaposition of a line going down meeting a line going up." [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] That idea, incidentally, is an interesting reversal of what McCartney had done on "Hello, Goodbye", where the bass line goes down while the guitar moves up -- the two lines moving away from each other: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Though that isn't to say there's no descending bass in "Lady Madonna" -- the bridge has a wonderful sequence where the bass just *keeps* *descending*: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] Lyrically, McCartney was inspired by a photo in National Geographic of a woman in Malaysia, captioned “Mountain Madonna: with one child at her breast and another laughing into her face, sees her quality of life threatened.” But as he put it “The people I was brought up amongst were often Catholic; there are lots of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection and they are often religious. When they have a baby I think they see a big connection between themselves and the Virgin Mary with her baby. So the original concept was the Virgin Mary but it quickly became symbolic of every woman; the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working class woman. It's really a tribute to the mother figure, it's a tribute to women.” Musically though, the song was more a tribute to the fifties -- while the inspiration had been a skiffle hit by Humphrey Lyttleton, as soon as McCartney started playing it he'd thought of Fats Domino, and the lyric reflects that to an extent -- just as Domino's "Blue Monday" details the days of the week for a weary working man who only gets to enjoy himself on Saturday night, "Lady Madonna"'s lyrics similarly look at the work a mother has to do every day -- though as McCartney later noted  "I was writing the words out to learn it for an American TV show and I realised I missed out Saturday ... So I figured it must have been a real night out." The vocal was very much McCartney doing a Domino impression -- something that wasn't lost on Fats, who cut his own version of the track later that year: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Lady Madonna"] The group were so productive at this point, right before the journey to India, that they actually cut another song *while they were making a video for "Lady Madonna"*. They were booked into Abbey Road to film themselves performing the song so it could be played on Top of the Pops while they were away, but instead they decided to use the time to cut a new song -- John had a partially-written song, "Hey Bullfrog", which was roughly the same tempo as "Lady Madonna", so they could finish that up and then re-edit the footage to match the record. The song was quickly finished and became "Hey Bulldog": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"] One of Lennon's best songs from this period, "Hey Bulldog" was oddly chosen only to go on the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine. Either the band didn't think much of it because it had come so easily, or it was just assigned to the film because they were planning on being away for several months and didn't have any other projects they were working on. The extent of the group's contribution to the film was minimal – they were not very hands-on, and the film, which was mostly done as an attempt to provide a third feature film for their United Artists contract without them having to do any work, was made by the team that had done the Beatles cartoon on American TV. There's some evidence that they had a small amount of input in the early story stages, but in general they saw the cartoon as an irrelevance to them -- the only things they contributed were the four songs "All Together Now", "It's All Too Much", "Hey Bulldog" and "Only a Northern Song", and a brief filmed appearance for the very end of the film, recorded in January: [Excerpt: Yellow Submarine film end] McCartney also took part in yet another session in early February 1968, one produced by Peter Asher, his fiancee's brother, and former singer with Peter and Gordon. Asher had given up on being a pop star and was trying to get into the business side of music, and he was starting out as a producer, producing a single by Paul Jones, the former lead singer of Manfred Mann. The A-side of the single, "And the Sun Will Shine", was written by the Bee Gees, the band that Robert Stigwood was managing: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "And the Sun Will Shine"] While the B-side was an original by Jones, "The Dog Presides": [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "The Dog Presides"] Those tracks featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Paul Samwell-Smith, on guitar and bass, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Asher asked McCartney to play drums on both sides of the single, saying later "I always thought he was a great, underrated drummer." McCartney was impressed by Asher's production, and asked him to get involved with the new Apple Records label that would be set up when the group returned from India. Asher eventually became head of A&R for the label. And even before "Lady Madonna" was mixed, the Beatles were off to India. Mal Evans, their roadie, went ahead with all their luggage on the fourteenth of February, so he could sort out transport for them on the other end, and then John and George followed on the fifteenth, with their wives Pattie and Cynthia and Pattie's sister Jenny (John and Cynthia's son Julian had been left with his grandmother while they went -- normally Cynthia wouldn't abandon Julian for an extended period of time, but she saw the trip as a way to repair their strained marriage). Paul and Ringo followed four days later, with Ringo's wife Maureen and Paul's fiancee Jane Asher. The retreat in Rishikesh was to become something of a celebrity affair. Along with the Beatles came their friend the singer-songwriter Donovan, and Donovan's friend and songwriting partner, whose name I'm not going to say here because it's a slur for Romani people, but will be known to any Donovan fans. Donovan at this point was also going through changes. Like the Beatles, he was largely turning away from drug use and towards meditation, and had recently written his hit single "There is a Mountain" based around a saying from Zen Buddhism: [Excerpt: Donovan, "There is a Mountain"] That was from his double-album A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, which had come out in December 1967. But also like John and Paul he was in the middle of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and while he would remain with his then-partner until 1970, and even have another child with her, he was secretly in love with another woman. In fact he was secretly in love with two other women. One of them, Brian Jones' ex-girlfriend Linda, had moved to LA, become the partner of the singer Gram Parsons, and had appeared in the documentary You Are What You Eat with the Band and Tiny Tim. She had fallen out of touch with Donovan, though she would later become his wife. Incidentally, she had a son to Brian Jones who had been abandoned by his rock-star father -- the son's name is Julian. The other woman with whom Donovan was in love was Jenny Boyd, the sister of George Harrison's wife Pattie.  Jenny at the time was in a relationship with Alexis Mardas, a TV repairman and huckster who presented himself as an electronics genius to the Beatles, who nicknamed him Magic Alex, and so she was unavailable, but Donovan had written a song about her, released as a single just before they all went to Rishikesh: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Jennifer Juniper"] Donovan considered himself and George Harrison to be on similar spiritual paths and called Harrison his "spirit-brother", though Donovan was more interested in Buddhism, which Harrison considered a corruption of the more ancient Hinduism, and Harrison encouraged Donovan to read Autobiography of a Yogi. It's perhaps worth noting that Donovan's father had a different take on the subject though, saying "You're not going to study meditation in India, son, you're following that wee lassie Jenny" Donovan and his friend weren't the only other celebrities to come to Rishikesh. The actor Mia Farrow, who had just been through a painful divorce from Frank Sinatra, and had just made Rosemary's Baby, a horror film directed by Roman Polanski with exteriors shot at the Dakota building in New York, arrived with her sister Prudence. Also on the trip was Paul Horn, a jazz saxophonist who had played with many of the greats of jazz, not least of them Duke Ellington, whose Sweet Thursday Horn had played alto sax on: [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Zweet Zursday"] Horn was another musician who had been inspired to investigate Indian spirituality and music simultaneously, and the previous year he had recorded an album, "In India," of adaptations of ragas, with Ravi Shankar and Alauddin Khan: [Excerpt: Paul Horn, "Raga Vibhas"] Horn would go on to become one of the pioneers of what would later be termed "New Age" music, combining jazz with music from various non-Western traditions. Horn had also worked as a session musician, and one of the tracks he'd played on was "I Know There's an Answer" from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Know There's an Answer"] Mike Love, who co-wrote that track and is one of the lead singers on it, was also in Rishikesh. While as we'll see not all of the celebrities on the trip would remain practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, Love would be profoundly affected by the trip, and remains a vocal proponent of TM to this day. Indeed, his whole band at the time were heavily into TM. While Love was in India, the other Beach Boys were working on the Friends album without him -- Love only appears on four tracks on that album -- and one of the tracks they recorded in his absence was titled "Transcendental Meditation": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Transcendental Meditation"] But the trip would affect Love's songwriting, as it would affect all of the musicians there. One of the few songs on the Friends album on which Love appears is "Anna Lee, the Healer", a song which is lyrically inspired by the trip in the most literal sense, as it's about a masseuse Love met in Rishikesh: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Anna Lee, the Healer"] The musicians in the group all influenced and inspired each other as is likely to happen in such circumstances. Sometimes, it would be a matter of trivial joking, as when the Beatles decided to perform an off-the-cuff song about Guru Dev, and did it in the Beach Boys style: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] And that turned partway through into a celebration of Love for his birthday: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] Decades later, Love would return the favour, writing a song about Harrison and their time together in Rishikesh. Like Donovan, Love seems to have considered Harrison his "spiritual brother", and he titled the song "Pisces Brothers": [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Pisces Brothers"] The musicians on the trip were also often making suggestions to each other about songs that would become famous for them. The musicians had all brought acoustic guitars, apart obviously from Ringo, who got a set of tabla drums when George ordered some Indian instruments to be delivered. George got a sitar, as at this point he hadn't quite given up on the instrument, and he gave Donovan a tamboura. Donovan started playing a melody on the tamboura, which is normally a drone instrument, inspired by the Scottish folk music he had grown up with, and that became his "Hurdy-Gurdy Man": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man"] Harrison actually helped him with the song, writing a final verse inspired by the Maharishi's teachings, but in the studio Donovan's producer Mickie Most told him to cut the verse because the song was overlong, which apparently annoyed Harrison. Donovan includes that verse in his live performances of the song though -- usually while doing a fairly terrible impersonation of Harrison: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man (live)"] And similarly, while McCartney was working on a song pastiching Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, but singing about the USSR rather than the USA, Love suggested to him that for a middle-eight he might want to sing about the girls in the various Soviet regions: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Back in the USSR"] As all the guitarists on the retreat only had acoustic instruments, they were very keen to improve their acoustic playing, and they turned to Donovan, who unlike the rest of them was primarily an acoustic player, and one from a folk background. Donovan taught them the rudiments of Travis picking, the guitar style we talked about way back in the episodes on the Everly Brothers, as well as some of the tunings that had been introduced to British folk music by Davey Graham, giving them a basic grounding in the principles of English folk-baroque guitar, a style that had developed over the previous few years. Donovan has said in his autobiography that Lennon picked the technique up quickly (and that Harrison had already learned Travis picking from Chet Atkins records) but that McCartney didn't have the application to learn the style, though he picked up bits. That seems very unlike anything else I've read anywhere about Lennon and McCartney -- no-one has ever accused Lennon of having a surfeit of application -- and reading Donovan's book he seems to dislike McCartney and like Lennon and Harrison, so possibly that enters into it. But also, it may just be that Lennon was more receptive to Donovan's style at the time. According to McCartney, even before going to Rishikesh Lennon had been in a vaguely folk-music and country mode, and the small number of tapes he'd brought with him to Rishikesh included Buddy Holly, Dylan, and the progressive folk band The Incredible String Band, whose music would be a big influence on both Lennon and McCartney for the next year: [Excerpt: The Incredible String Band, "First Girl I Loved"] According to McCartney Lennon also brought "a tape the singer Jake Thackray had done for him... He was one of the people we bumped into at Abbey Road. John liked his stuff, which he'd heard on television. Lots of wordplay and very suggestive, so very much up John's alley. I was fascinated by his unusual guitar style. John did ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun' as a Jake Thackray thing at one point, as I recall.” Thackray was a British chansonnier, who sang sweetly poignant but also often filthy songs about Yorkshire life, and his humour in particular will have appealed to Lennon. There's a story of Lennon meeting Thackray in Abbey Road and singing the whole of Thackray's song "The Statues", about two drunk men fighting a male statue to defend the honour of a female statue, to him: [Excerpt: Jake Thackray, "The Statues"] Given this was the music that Lennon was listening to, it's unsurprising that he was more receptive to Donovan's lessons, and the new guitar style he learned allowed him to expand his songwriting, at precisely the same time he was largely clean of drugs for the first time in several years, and he started writing some of the best songs he would ever write, often using these new styles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Julia"] That song is about Lennon's dead mother -- the first time he ever addressed her directly in a song, though  it would be far from the last -- but it's also about someone else. That phrase "Ocean child" is a direct translation of the Japanese name "Yoko". We've talked about Yoko Ono a bit in recent episodes, and even briefly in a previous Beatles episode, but it's here that she really enters the story of the Beatles. Unfortunately, exactly *how* her relationship with John Lennon, which was to become one of the great legendary love stories in rock and roll history, actually started is the subject of some debate. Both of them were married when they first got together, and there have also been suggestions that Ono was more interested in McCartney than in Lennon at first -- suggestions which everyone involved has denied, and those denials have the ring of truth about them, but if that was the case it would also explain some of Lennon's more perplexing behaviour over the next year. By all accounts there was a certain amount of finessing of the story th

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