Revolver Related Shows This Week (5/7 - 5/13)

MONDAY MAY 7TH
DIRTY BEACHES - Northampton    MA    Iron Horse    w/ Xiu Xiu       
LA OTRACINA - Bremen    DE    Stubnitz           
SIC ALPS - Cologne    DE    King Georg           
MARK SULTAN - Denver    CO    Hi-Dive           
UNSANE - Dallas    TX    Trees     w/ The Melvins
   
TUESDAY MAY 8TH   
ALLO DARLIN'- San Francisco     CA    Rickshaw Stop           
CHRISSY MURDERBOT - Pawtucket    RI    The Met   
COLOSSAL YES -     San Francisco     CA    Hemlock Tavern   
DIRTY BEACHES - Portland    ME    SPACE Gallery     w/ Xiu Xiu       
JUCIFER - Geneva    CH    Le Kab Usine           
QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT - Toronto    ON    Silver Dollar            
TY SEGALL - Minneapolis    MN    7th Street Entry     w/ White Fence        
SIC ALPS - Paris    FR    La Mecanique Ondulatoire           
STRANGE BOYS, THE - Nashville    TN    The End            
UNSANE - Santa Fe    NM    Santa Fe Brewing Company    w/ The Melvins               
ZOMES - Miami Beach    FL    The Fillmore Miami Beach     w/ Beach House

WEDNESDAY MAY 9TH       
A STORM OF LIGHT- Berlin    DE    Berghain    w/ Sleep       
ALLO DARLIN' - Chico     CA    Origami Lounge           
CHRISSY MURDERBOT - New York    NY    Irving Plaza           
DIRTY BEACHES - Montreal    QC    La Sala Rossa    w/ Xiu Xiu       
LA OTRACINA - Stockholm    SE    Mother           
TY SEGALL - Madison    WI    High Noon Saloon     w/ White Fence        
SIC ALPS - Lille    FR    La Malterie           
SPITS, THE - Goteborg    SE    Truck Stop Alaska            
STRANGE BOYS, THE - Bloomington    IN    The Bishop            
UNSANE - Santa Ana    CA    Galaxy Concert Theatre     w/ The Melvins               
ZOMES - Orlando    FL    Beacham Theater     w/ Beach House

THURSDAY MAY 10TH       
A STORM OF LIGHT     - Leipzig    DE    Conne Island    w/ Sleep       
ALLO DARLIN' - Portland     OR     Mississippi Studios            
CHRISSY MURDERBOT - Boston    MA    Paradise           
JUCIFER - Prague    CZ    Klub Final            
LA OTRACINA - Goteborg    SE    Koloni           
PURLING HISS - Fayetteville    AR    Arkansas Music Pavilion     w/ Wilco       
QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT - Detroit    MI    Lager House             
TY SEGALL - Chicago    IL    Lincoln Hall    w/ White Fence, The Strange Boys        
SPITS, THE - Stockholm    SE    Vielles Montagnes                   
MARK SULTAN - Brooklyn    NY    Knitting Factory           
TERRY MALTS - San Francisco    CA    Slim's           
TORCHE - Chapel HIll    NC    Local 506               
ZOMES - Jacksonville    FL    Free Bird Live     w/ Beach House   

FRIDAY MAY 11TH   
A STORM OF LIGHT - Prague    CZ    Lucerna Music Bar    w/ Sleep       
ALLO DARLIN' - Seattle     WA    The Vera Project      
BLACK TWIG PICKERS - Birmingham    AL    Secret Stages Festival           
CHRISSY MURDERBOT - Baltimore    MD    Sonar           
DASH RIP ROCK - Macon    GA    Hummingbird Bar & Taproom           
DIRTY BEACHES - Ottawa    ON    Mavericks     w/ Xiu Xiu       
GENTLEMAN JESSE - Asheville    NC    Emerald Lounge    w/ Barreracudas       
JUCIFER - Halle    DE    Reilstrasse 78            
LA OTRACINA - Copenhagen    DK    Mayhem           
PURLING HISS - Birmingham    AL    Sloss Furnaces            
PYGMY LUSH - Philadelphia    PA    First Unitarian/Side Chapel           
QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT - Cleveland    OH    Horrible Fest

TY SEGALL - Detroit    MI    Lager House     w/ White Fence, The Strange Boys              
SULTAN, MARK - New Haven    CT    Cafe 9           
TORCHE - Atlanta    GA    5 2 9        
ZOMES - Birmingham    AL    The Bottletree     w/ Beach House

SATURDAY MAY 12TH           
BLACK LIPS    5/12    Atlanta    GA    Terminal West at King Plow Arts Center           
BLACK TWIG PICKERS - Birmingham    AL    Secret Stages Festival           
BURNING IMAGE - Bakersfield    CA    Riley's Backstage           
CHRISSY MURDERBOT - Harrisburg    PA    The Abbey Bar           
DIRTY BEACHES - Toronto    ON    Lee's Place     w/ Xiu Xiu       
DUCKTAILS - New York    NY    Terminal 5            
GENTLEMAN JESSE - Washington    DC    Black Cat    w/ Barreracudas       
NATE HALL - Johnson City    TN    The Hideaway    Record Release Show       
JUCIFER - Berlin    DE    Magnet Club           
LA OTRACINA - Malmo    SE    Get Daun Festival           
MV & EE - Jamaica Plain    MA    The Whitehaus           
PURLING HISS - Jackson    MS    Thalia Mara Hall            
QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT - Chicago    IL    Empty Bottle           
TY SEGALL - Toronto    ON    Horseshoe Tavern    w/ White Fence, The Strange Boys        
SPITS, THE - Aarhus    DK    Woxhall               
MARK SULTAN - Boston    MA    PA's Lounge           
TORCHE - Orlando    FL    Will's Pub               
ZOMES - Athens    GA    The Georgia Theatre     w/ Beach House

SUNDAY MAY 13TH           
CHRISSY MURDERBOT - Buffalo    NY    Soundlab           
GENTLEMAN JESSE - Brooklyn    NY    Knitting Factory    w/ Barreracudas       
JUCIFER - Slupsk    PO    Motor Rock Club           
MV & EE - Brooklyn    NY    285 Kent    Record Release Show       
QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT - Milwaukee    WI    Cactus Club           
TY SEGALL - Montreal    QC    IL Motore             
SPITS, THE - Venice    IT    Guilty Boat Party                    
ZOMES - Asheville    NC    Orange Peel     w/ Beach House

Revolver Guide To Roadburn 2012.

THURSDAY APRIL 12TH
AGALLOCH   
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 5:15 PM - 6:15 PM
 

MICHAEL GIRA  
013 Venue - Midi Theater, set time 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

CHRISTIAN MISTRESS   
013 Venue - Stage 01, set time 6:00 - 7:00
   
OM   
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 6:45 PM - 7:45 PM

LA OTRACINA   
013 Venue - Stage 01, set time 7:30 PM - 8:30   

VOIVOD   
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 11:50 PM - 12:50 AM   


FRIDAY APRIL 13TH
YOB
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 8:30 PM - 9:45 PM

VOIVOD
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 10:15 PM - 11:40



SATURDAY APRIL 14TH

SLEEP
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 9:40 PM - 11:20

JUCIFER   
013 Venue - Stage 1, set time 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM


SUNDAY APRIL 15TH (THE AFTERBURNER)

YOB
013 Venue - Main Stage, set time 7:30 PM - 8:40 PM

La Otracina Vinyl Reviewed on Foxy Digitalis.

La Otracina "Blood Moon Riders"
Holy Mountain
Original post

The LP opens with a punch drunk rock epic that feels as fresh and ageless as the greatest Flower Travellin’ Band sides. A schizophrenic Mise-en-scène keeps you in swathed surprise for all of a rolling quarter hour. A primary set up of guitar, drums and bass play through and off each other with blissful psych surf-rock shapes. This is exciting instrumental rock that quakes the feeble ‘lounge’ musak of so many post-rock protagonists. Glorious arcs of guitar that wouldn’t feel out of place on an LSD March or Bardo Pond (circa Lapsed) jam abound with tireless creativity. Some of the sickest bass formations are driven by the fingers of Evan Sobel, without feeling trite or glam. The sun-drenched energy and unabashed bravado of this group’s sound has me on my knees, praying for summer evenings and crates of ice-pearled beer.

The pace dissolves to an ambient tremble as you feel a sense of relief after the chaotic primary chunk of sound. Eventually flange guitar sounds echo and search your psyche with drifting moments in a fade-out - always hoped for but never quite realized in some of the greatest psych outings of the late 60’s. This is continued into the third movement, and then tranced upwards with a classic pounding drumbeat under bird-like guitar and liquid bass. Some incredibly contorted squeals are heaped upon a relentless percussion. Then all explodes into a head swaying bliss-out that tumbles with a damn groovy bass line and heart wrenching lead that will have you punching the fuck out of the air!

The final track is drenched in slides of experiment feeling like a lost Ghost classic. Reverb drenched hypnotica is jumpstarted after a few minutes with another killer riff that demands body spasms. The ability to shift so comfortably through various styles and tempos, gives this band the right to embrace and deliver post-rock as a term to be proud of. 8/10 -- Peter Taylor (12 February, 2009)

Blastitude Gives Holy Mountain the Full Treatment.

The not easily impressed Blastitude.com spares some kind words for all the latest and greatest releases on the Holy Mountain label.
Full online article.

An Unholy Fountain of CD Albums From HOLY MOUNTAIN
That's right, so far in 2007, Blastitude HQ has received SEVEN brand new CDs from the Portland, Oregon based Holy Mountain label. I could be totally predictable and say that the best one of the bunch is the s/t by Blues Control, because everybody loves Blues Control, and it is another goddamn good album by them. It's not as perfect as Puff, of course, but that's a good thing, because not having to be perfect allows the band to goof around a little, have fun, change things up. Not only are they are able to open this self-titled album with the self-titled title-track "Blues Control," a 2-minute broken/stupid distorto bass and drum sample groove with absurd imitation-talk-box fog-vocals, they are able to follow that goofery up with one of their finest works ever, the languid and utterly pleasant instrumental murk-pop of "Boiled Peanuts," a perfect '2nd album' lead-off single. (See the band's MySpace page for other 'singles' and 'B-sides.') They're having so much fun on this album that they not only title a song "The Blue Sheep," they make it sound like the kind of keyboard-led cheese sandwich that someone would sing karaoke over at a restaurant/bar actually called The Blue Sheep -- and it's still a killer psych track. "Frankie's Problem" shows up again, maybe or maybe not the same version that was their MySpace 'debut single' and/or on their first cassette. Is this song gonna follow 'em around forever? Has it always had those insane clocktower bells in it? And just when you think they've tried everything, along comes album-closer "No Sweat," a 9-minute multi-suite epic in which they try everything else, complete with surprise two-minute astro space drums coda. So yes, out of all these new Holy Mountain releases, Blues Control covers the most ground -- but it's the self-titled disc by White Lichens that digs the deepest. This band is the Chicago trio collabo between Lichens, the heavy drony solo guise of Robert A.A. Lowe, and White Light, the absurdly heavy drone duo of Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos. Not that the results are summarily heavy on this disc -- the musicians are smart enough to pull back a little and let the bombs detonate in slow motion. Take the moment from the track "Stolas, or Stolos" (don't ask, they're all named after demons from an occult book, with entire pages reproduced for the track listing) when, after almost a minute of huge silence, someone plays a chilling and crawling slide guitar riff that kinda makes the whole album all by itself as a sort of centerpoint, a locus of control for everything before and after. Too bad the track is only 4 minutes long, but at least opener "Cimejes, or Simeies, or Kimaris" and closer "Bael" are both well over the 15-minute mark, and both made up of exquisite low amp burn tone blend, with more where that came from..... And for a whole different way of mining the vein of extended heavy rock jamming, there's the Zodiacs and their album Gone, so raw-fi and obvious in its lack of pre-composed music that at first I was surprised that an actual label released it. But on my second listen, I could no longer deny that what the guitar and organ were doing had some serious burn/fire/damage metaphorical capability. The sound is basically maxed-out biker blues and who cares if the players (James "Wooden Wand" Toth, Keith "Hush Arbors" Wood, Clay "Davenport" Ruby) actually ride motorcycles or not, there is metaphorical motor acid in this music and it will fuck you up when you metaphorically drink it..... The Shining Path (San Diego, CA) and La Otracina (Brooklyn, NY) have also served up albums of fried and heavy mega-extended jams for Holy Mountain this year, but where Zodiacs come at it from 'biker rock' these two are more 'krautrock' and 'fusion prog', respectively. The Shining Path are the "rock" guise of the experimental duo Monosov/Swirnoff (who have records on Eclipse), and from the experimental world they import a lot of twisting thickets of strange electronics. Of course it's mostly backed up by plenty of pedal-to-the-floor highway-star drumming, because this is a "rock" project. That's why the LP edition also comes with a free copy of the CD inside, because "it's what you'll want to listen to wielding a golf club with your upper body outside the sunroof of your car as you steer with your feet." Their music does fly the freak flag, with memorably loud electronic settings driven by various rockin' beats, edited into five or so medium/long crusher/scorchers, no problem there -- it just errs on the side of 'great sounds, no songs', without the frothing commitment of the Zodiacs. La Otracina, on the other hand, have got the sounds, songs, and the froth, and they've really gone for something massive with their album Tonal Ellipse of the One. Not only is it far more composed than the Zodiacs and Shining Path CDs, it's composed in an extended/exploded 'fusion jazz' sense that ends up being just as wrecked. These five long tracks are credited to the duo of Adam Kriney on drums and Tyler Nolan on guitar and bass. They are joined on every track by Ninni Morgia on guitar (if I'm understanding this interview correctly, his parts were overdubbed later), and a couple other musicians on a couple other tracks, but it all really rolls together as one constant duo/trio prog jam, with the band taking great care to develop its transitions, and also willing to play around with some rather thrilling Teo Macero-style edits. Nolan's bugged-out heavy echo-bass guitar plays slowed-down Keith Emerson riffs that grow into melodic-prog drool crescendos, which Morgia wails over like some sort of wild Richard Pinhas Jr on a made-for-cable film soundtrack. Meanwhile, Kriney bats it all along with unflagging fiery-muso free-jazz drum accompaniment, and it builds and builds into a big oceanic bubblebath of prog excess with appropriate titles like "Nine Times The Color Red Explodes Like Heated Blood" and "Sailor of the Salvian Seas," and I'm telling you, it all really grows on you. 3rd best of the batch, to say the least.... and two more to go, both in a more classic song-based style: Mammatus with some progressive hard rock songwriting from the Santa Cruz scene, and DJ Cherrystones, aka Gareth Godard of London England, with a DJ mix of various bad-ass pop/prog/psych eclecticities from the last 30 years. These are both very enjoyable albums, though The Coast Explodes, the second album by Mammatus, did take a couple listens to grow on me. At first I was comparing 'em to their wild and loose neighbors Comets on Fire and Residual Echoes, and they sounded a little stiff to me, their long and weighty compositions requiring more rigor and patience than I expected. But pretty soon I caught on to the intelligent intricacy of their songs, and how they balanced it with a steady beach-stoner rock undertone that stoked the familiar. And finally, as you may have guessed, the Cherrystones Word compilation by DJ Cherrystones is tons of fun. His liner notes are great fan testimony, like when he talks about playing some Lard Free during one of his sets and making the on-tour Wolf Eyes guys do double takes. There are also lovingly selected tracks on here by Dead Moon, The Deviants, Chrome, Nosferatu, 1980s George Brigman (just to prove that it's as good as 1970s George Brigman), and other epic progressive bands that I've totally never heard of before, like Fusioon, Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue, Kontakt Mikrofoon Orkest.... you get the idea. Hot stuff from one record lover to many others, and the same goes for all of this generous fountain from the Mountain. (And for some more Holy Mountain-related record love, i.e. fan testimony, dig all the 'playlist' style record reviews Mr. HM has been posting in the "news" section over at holymountain.com....)

La Otracina's Prog & Metal List On Dusted.

Adam Kriney of La Otracina kicked out a radical top ten list of progressive rock and metal on DustedMagazine.com today. Apparently he really likes King Crimson.

Adam Kriney has been bumming around the New York psych scene for a little while now. He runs Colour Sounds Recordings and plays in bands like Castanets, Blizzards and Rust Ionics. But for all intents and purposes, today Kriney is La Otracina, the finest provider of Brooklyn acid-prog bliss-out during the early months of '007. The OC , as we like to call it, has been jamming around town for about two years now, but have really stepped in something with its new record, Tonal Ellipse of the One on Holy Mountain. One Dusted contributor described it as, "I think this is what all bands who label themselves "psych-rock" think they sound like, but don't. This is some real shit - dark, hypnotic jams with near-virtuosic playing...wow." (That was after we had already invited Kriney to contribute to Listed, jsyk.)

Kriney and teammates Ninni Morgia and Evan Sobel are on the road as you're reading this. Check them out when they come to your town.

June 15 - Spazzatorium Galleria (807 Dickinson Ave), Greenville, NC
June 16 - Secret Squirrel (766 West Broad), Athens, GA
June 17 - The Whig (1200 main street), Columbia, South Carolina
June 18 - Nashville/Murfreesboro, TN
June 19 - Murphy's (1589 Madison Ave), Memphis, TN
June 20 - Spooky Action Palace, St. Louis, MO
June 21 - Lazer Mansion (133 54th street), Moline, IL
June 22 - Hideout (1354 W Wabansia), Chicago, IL
June 23 - South Union Arts (1352 S. Union), Chicago, IL
June 24 - Basement Show (216 E Hillside Drive), Bloomington, IN
June 25 - Skull Lab, (271 W McMicken ) Cincinnati, OH
June 26 - Columbus, OH
June 27 - Pat’s In The Flats (2233 West Third), Cleveland, OH
June 28 - House Show (114 1/2 Erie Street), Edinboro, PA
June 29 - Garfield Artworks (4931 Penn Ave), Pittsburgh, PA
June 30 - Test Pattern Gallery (334 Adams Ave), Scranton, PA
July 1 - Helderberg Palace (96 Sycamore St,) Albany, NY
July 2 - Brilliant Corners (163 water street), Keane, New Hampshire
July 3 - Grow Room, Providence, RI
July 5 - Soundfix Records (110 Bedford Ave), Brooklyn, NY

Nine extremely important recordings and one DVD, by Adam Kriney

1. Metallica - And Justice For All
This is what started EVERYTHING for me. Seeing the video for 'One' when I was 12 or 13 helped me realize immediately that this type of aggressive music was for me, and such my teen identity was born as a headbanger as opposed to a hip-hop kid, and yes it HAD to be one or the other, and I still dislike hip-hop to this day. I would listen to this album in the shower. I would set up plastic containers in my room and play along with chopsticks as a mock drum set, which is also what ultimately led to me being a drummer. Sure, Cliff Burton was a crucial member of the band, and clearly his absence on this record is obvious (as was JasonNewsted's, hehe ), but nonetheless, an utterly brilliant progressive/thrash/metal album with more subtle and unthinkable and yet-to-be-matched complexity than this time-signature analyst could ever transcribe, and I still listen to my original cassette copy with as much goose-bump/hair-raising excitement as I did 17 years ago. And I even love the production on it!

2. Misfits - Earth A. D.
It was METALLICA, of course, who turned me onto them. I remember so vividly my purchase of this cassette. I had been scoping their albums in record stores for a few months and was utterly terrified and intrigued with their relentlessly evil, scary, and ghastly artwork and song titles.But I also knew my mother would inspect every purchase I made for 'suitable' content, so clearly I could not buy an album with the song "Angelfuck" on it.But 'Earth A. D.' seemed to have the tamest titles, so one night at Monmouth Mall while she was off shopping for clothes, I bought it, nervous and shaking, and shoved it into my sock so she wouldn't know (would she see it?).We got home and I was dying to put it on, so at bedtime, I got mywalkman out, put the tape in, hid the artwork under the covers and hit 'PLAY', and was completely floored and bewildered at the evil and other-worldly vocals and shredding punk chaos of the songs! At some point, my mom did walk in on me, and I froze, she kissed me goodnight, and left me to the addictive and possessed horror of howling Glenn. And I still listen and submit to the same tape that I once tucked into my sock over half my life ago. Another important aspect of getting into these guys was entering the world of record collecting, bootlegs, and mail order catalogs, ah, the good old days!

3. Danzig - s/t
I figured out the MISFITS/SAMHAIN/DANZIG lineage pretty quickly and became obsessed with all of it! The evil-satanic skull cover art of this album drew me in so easily, I was sold. I was probably confused by the album the first time I heard it, as it's pretty bluesy, with some metal leanings, lots ofDanzig's vocal trademarks, but little of the punk energy I'd thought it was gonna have. But eventually it grew to mean as much as 'Earth A. D.' with tracks like 'She Rides', 'Not Of This World' and 'Possession', there was a whole new world of evil lurking in there and I wanted to submerse myself in it! Funny though, even back then I thought 'Mother' was the worst track on the album, and so weird that several years later it'd be a breakout single hit, only as it was released in a live version on the 'Thrall-Demonsweatlive' mini-album. After I heard this album, I wrote a letter to Danzig and received an actual reply from Eerie Von on official 'DANZIG' letterhead(!!), which I unfortunately sold in college along with my entire MISFITS/SAMHAIN/DANZIG vinyl/bootleg collection to help pay tuition. Assignment: Listen to the first 30 seconds of 'Possession' with headphones on and I guarantee it'll scare the fucking hell outta you! I still have my original cassette copy of this.

4. Emerson Lake & Palmer- Brain Salad Surgery
There were some benefits to having a pot-smoking ex-hippy mom, her friends. Jerry Tobler was a guy I always thought was The Coolest, he'd play Frisbee and paddle ball with me at the beach, always blasted wild music in his car, and made funny jokes imitating The Three Stooges. One particular summer day, I was about 13, it was raining, so we didn't go the beach, but we were all hanging out at one of my mom's friends' places, and Jerry puts headphones on me and has me listen to this album as well as The Who’s Tommy, in one sitting, they blew my mind! But theELP stuff really intrigued me the most, especially the complex-otherworldly cosmic weirdness of the second track 'Toccata', what with electronic percussion, unthinkable drum/tympani solos, keyboards and synthesizers I'd never imagined, and the ENERGY of it all. I didn't know whatProg was then, but I know now, and Jerry is surely the one who doth planted that little seed. Goose-bumps still exist every time 'Jerusalem' kicks in and the magic of 'Still…You Turn me On' sweeps me to unknown bliss, but I can understandanyone's shoulder-shrugging dislike of 'Benny The Bouncer', and the B-side totally gets progressively worse till the end, but still I do declare, "Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends…"

5. Honeywell - s/t LP
Having absolutely no one to introduce me to cool music such as punk/hardcore, in my mid-teens, I was left to figure things out myself, and in '94 eventually stumbled onto the local hardcore/straightedge scene in NJ and began immersing myself in it. In addition to the local stuff, I eventually discovered a boatload of absolutely insane music that was being made by kids in the California scene at the time (early versions of the now-taintedemo tag), completely harsh, noisy, passionate, and INTENSE stuff, on labels such as Gravity, and Ebullition, (but that Is not to say that the east coast was lacking, surely theBloodlink scene was pumping out great stuff as well).But when I finally heard HONEYWELL, nothing had ever compared to it then or now. Till this day I have no idea what the hell this record is all about, was it just "Ryan and Bobby, the drums and the guitar…fuck off!" as the opening sped up(?) sounds declared? Did they play everything? And what about all the noise/sound collage brilliance? Were they really 15/16 as rumor told it when they made this, how? And the track "Mesh Control" could level anything that the modern noise scene could muster up, and probably with 1/10th the irony and 10 times the true passion/energy! I would listen to this LP every single day in High School, on my walkman, while all of 'them' went about their normal teenage stuff, I was transported to the noisy void that Ryan and Bobby created for me, a true escape during one of my more alienated years.I didn't know it then, but now I can feel there are parts of this album that truly channel the flow ofavant -jazz as well as the most primal-punk spew as if they just flicked it on like a light switch. I still have the original LP I bought at Vintage Vinyl in Ocean Township, NJ in 94.

6. Faith & Power: An ESP-Disk Sampler
As teens turned into twenties and my punk bands turned into indie rock bands and then into math/avant rock bands, I began to become a better musician and things began to get…weird. Side note, I had absolutely no introduction or awareness to jazz in my life at all growing up, in fact I doubt I ever even listened to one single jazz tune my entirepre-college life, and then during college, it was only at jazz coffee houses that I would half-heartedly watch VERY square groups perform standards, and I was always very impressed with the drummers’ abilities, but never really their energies, you could easily quote me saying "I hate jazz". So around 2000, once I got hip to The Wire which showed me gobs of new music I had never had any exposure to, I began to get into all new shit, like my earlier hardcore days, it was excitement all over again! When I heard this particular sampler that came with The Wire, I had been mildly aware of some of the artists on it (Ornette, Ayler, Sun Ra), but never had I heard so much insane jazz music in my life on one concise little sampler, and I couldn't believe people SCREAMING and HOWLING during jazz songs, and the frantic energy of it all, I was floored and knew this was the first REAL and TRUE punk music, it felt bloody and nuts.I had to study this shit, listen to it, figure it out, and learn to play it. Enter free-jazz into my life.

7, 8, 9 & 10. King Crimson - Beat, Discipline, Three Of A Perfect Pair, and Neal And Jack And Me DVD
About 6 years ago, while living in Boston I was working as an assistant to an estate/antique buyer. One dead man's house we were cleaning out had ELP and KING CRIMSON cassettes in it, so I pocketed them quick. Years later I finally got around to checking out that CRIMSON cassette cryptically titled "Three Of A Perfect Pair" and I was very confused by it, and was that DavidByrne singing? This was unlike the earlier classic-prog I had heard from them before, in fact I couldn't explain WHAT it was, so I kept it in my car tape deck for a LONG time and one day I GOT it.Soon after, at the restaurant I worked at, I was chatting with a (dickhead pretentious) regular customer and remarked about my recent 'understanding' of that album and he asked if I had heard "Beat" and "Discipline" to which I replied that I hadn't. Soon after a CD-R was left for me at thecafé saying "Discipline & Beat for Hippyfuck", (he liked to call me hippyfuck ).Little did I know that CD-R would change my musical world, as I would now be hip to the complete early 80's CRIMSON catalogue, a trilogy of conceptually connected works featuring RobertFripp (of course), Bill Bruford (top form Billy, and what a way with melodic percussives and little/no cymbal use),Tony Levin (oh, play bass/chapman stick and synth at the same time?, no sweat), and Adrian Belew (ex-Zappa/TAKING HEADS multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/genius). This world encompassed a seemingly contrasting entanglement of prog complexity, 80's production, electronic drums, odd guitar/synth sounds, the other-worldy vocals of Adrian Belew (NOT David Byrne), upbeat afro-fueled dance beats, industrial noise/rhythms, curious love ballads, and some very avant-garde rock. But it all makes perfect sense, in fact it's fucking brilliant. It is by far my favorite CRIMSON music and I play it at parties all the time. The real clincher though was last year, seeing the DVD of all these albums performed live in the 80's, and realizing that every single note, nuance, squeal, strum, pick, roll, squawk, hit, hammer, chord, noise, scrape, crash, and thump heard on the recorded albums was actually performed live, effortlessly, gracefully, and enthusiastically, withBelew shining at the helm, exemplifying the definition of a front man.I bow down in honor, truly gone are the days of rock gods.