Saturday, January 08, 2005
MUSIC CORNER: CHARLES GAYLE AND WIRE
Recently I've been going back and listening to my collection of CDs by Charles Gayle, a high-energy free jazz tenor saxophonist. (He also plays other instruments from time to time.) In the first half of the nineties, when I was buying huge amounts of jazz and rock from Forced Exposure, they were plugging Gayle in extravagant terms, so I dutifully purchased his CDs. After listening to them a few times, I put them away and basically forgot about them. As part of my current drive to dispose of CDs that I'm not going to listen to, I pulled them out and went through them; and, unlike a lot of the music I was buying at that time, I really do find myself enjoying a lot of it. I particularly recommend Homeless, Spirits Before, Raining Fire (all Silkheart), Testaments (Knitting Factory Works), Consecration (Black Saint), and Gayle's fourteen-minute track on the anthology Avant Knitting Tours 1993 (Knitting Factory Works). Touchin' on Trane (FMP) is his most lauded album, but I found it too restrained and deliberate in its channelling of Coltrane. All the above are from 1995 or before; I don't own any of Gayle's post-1995 releases.
Wire's "Ex Lion Tamer" is the greatest song that mentions superheroes ever. And Pink Flag as a whole is pretty damn great. I am a bit sorry that they stuck "Options R" on to the end of the CD, though. Not that it isn't a good song, but the explosion of "1 2 X U" was the perfect ending to the album, and now that's spoiled. Also, the difference in production between "Options R" and the original album is very audible, and distracting.
Recently I've been going back and listening to my collection of CDs by Charles Gayle, a high-energy free jazz tenor saxophonist. (He also plays other instruments from time to time.) In the first half of the nineties, when I was buying huge amounts of jazz and rock from Forced Exposure, they were plugging Gayle in extravagant terms, so I dutifully purchased his CDs. After listening to them a few times, I put them away and basically forgot about them. As part of my current drive to dispose of CDs that I'm not going to listen to, I pulled them out and went through them; and, unlike a lot of the music I was buying at that time, I really do find myself enjoying a lot of it. I particularly recommend Homeless, Spirits Before, Raining Fire (all Silkheart), Testaments (Knitting Factory Works), Consecration (Black Saint), and Gayle's fourteen-minute track on the anthology Avant Knitting Tours 1993 (Knitting Factory Works). Touchin' on Trane (FMP) is his most lauded album, but I found it too restrained and deliberate in its channelling of Coltrane. All the above are from 1995 or before; I don't own any of Gayle's post-1995 releases.
Wire's "Ex Lion Tamer" is the greatest song that mentions superheroes ever. And Pink Flag as a whole is pretty damn great. I am a bit sorry that they stuck "Options R" on to the end of the CD, though. Not that it isn't a good song, but the explosion of "1 2 X U" was the perfect ending to the album, and now that's spoiled. Also, the difference in production between "Options R" and the original album is very audible, and distracting.
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