Well, great in this case is a little bit of a stretch. Let's settle for pretty damn good. Johnny Almond was no Tubby Hayes, but he was no slouch, either. Plus, he could play a bunch of other stuff, keys, flute, vibes, whatever. The first JAMM album, Patent Pending, was bought by many hippies in '69 tempted by jazz but knowing fuck all about it. Like me. It's a brilliantly entertaining album, too pop to be jazz, too jazz to be pop. There's some sweet psych touches, a little Mexican samba, a bit of free jazz (for which the listener pays, like always), some groovy funk, and a lot of it sounds like the soundtrack to a Swingin' London movie, which is no bad thing. Think black turtlenecks, dolly birds in miniskirts ... 
The followup in the following year was recorded in the US and A with an entirely different lineup, including Joe Pass. All the pop influences and experimentation are gone, but it's a fine straight jazz album, although does anybody need to hear (or play) Perdido again? I seem to remember Ralph Gleason writing some snootily patronising sleeve notes along the lines of "can't cut it with the big boys, maybe next time", but as he could only play a Remington portable he can shut his yap, right? Again, a nice illustration on the cover, very Pop Art. You'll dig it.
Almond moved on to John Mayall for The Turning Point album, and thence [grammar - Ed.] to Mark-Almond. Interesting guy, shame there aren't more like him.
Brag about some art gallery or museum you saw a life-changing exhibition at. Make something up if you've never been to either.
ReplyDeletePiece of art. Imagine a guy with a welding mask (everybody in the audience wore them, for protection). The guy wears fire proof gloves and holds two bars in his hands, with wires attached. As soon as he let the bars touch each other, a current, produced by ten truck batteries produces the brightest of light, and heat (hence the welding masks, and his gloves) Meanwhile I play on my Roland Juno some music in the basement that cannot be heard down there, but only through the light. Amazing show
ReplyDeleteGoogle default on anonymous again, it's Richard
DeleteThat's okay, Richard. It could only have been you.
DeletePeace Museum in Guernica. Sadly does not have the original Guernica painting, but still extremely moving (its in the Prado in Madrid). There's a 20 min video where they interviewed survivors of the attack (videos taken about 20 years ago) with footage from the attacks. Mans inhumanity to man cuts deep when it hits you in the face.
ReplyDeleteHere, have a Werther's.
DeleteI was blown away by the enormity of Guernica when I saw it in the Museo Sofia Reina where it is housed. Seeing El Bosco aka Hieronymous Bosch at El Prado was up there.
DeleteIn 1960, I went on a class trip to the recently opened Guggenheim museum, which blew my thirteen-year-old brain. Thanks to Frank Lloyd Wright, the building is a work of art unto itself.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 1970s, I saw he Mark-Almond Band several times, as the “opening act”, once with Dannie Richmond on drums.
ANON RF: Danny Richmond on drums with M-A?!!! I'm afraid I'm going to have to go back in time and steal your tickets for that one.
DeleteWhen Jon Mark introduced Dannie Richmond, he got a polite round of applause from a clueless rock audience.
DeleteI saw them opening for King Crimson in Milwaukee at the concert hall where the symphony played. Applause was probably fairly polite most of the evening. I have never had my life changed at an art gallery or exhibition, but there was this one time in the theater... Might have been a drive-in...
Deletemuseums were my thing as a youth the Guggenheim the MOMA where i saw a showing of Pablo Picasso's work and it floored me.took home a poster of Picasso and the Weeping Women dated Sept.4th 1994
ReplyDeleteleft nyc years ago and its the museums book stores like strands and record stores i miss the most (the book stores and record stores are long gone)
woody
Guernica when it came to Madrid in 1981 was intense, but the thing that fucked me up for weeks and lingers yet--what can I say?--was the Walter Benjamin Memorial in Portbou, Spain.
ReplyDeleteThat Walter Benjamin Memorial looks quite something Eric.
DeleteSpain was so fucked up at that time. Franco was cutting deals with Hitler that had areas of Northern Spain, and its residents, used as target practice, and even the separatists were not assisting people trying to flee from Nazi persecution.
DeleteANON RF: Yeah, Guernica will do that, Eric S. See below please. I must look into the Walter Benjamin.
Deletereflecting on the comments here I was reminded of part of why Guernica affected me the way it did. I was an ignorant 23-year old with a young radical's over-romanticized knowledge of the Spanish Civil War, especially the revolution within it in and around Barcelona and a long-standing fascination with Picasso, aided and abetted by Jonathan Richman/John Cale. It was immense, it was intense, it was crowded, and it was too warm, I hadn't eaten (this was my playing my guitar in the Madrid metro phase), and whatnot. Still, I was holding it together until I saw, like in a movie--really, 45 years later, it seems like it and I worry I have fallen prey to some narrative fiction in my imagination/heart--saw a minuscule old man in a heavy coat and scarf and beret (despite the heat) with thick glasses, one lens blacked out, with tears running down his face. So real.
DeleteAs a 12 year old our art class at school were taken to The Southampton Art Gallery, England, we saw many different paintings and a few sculptures, the most impact were large canvas paintings by one featured artist where the perspective was distorted, unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the artist, but I don’t think it was anyone very famous.
ReplyDeleteAs an adult in The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam The Beanery by Edward Kienholz was pretty good to walk into - look it up.
An exhibition of the work of Leonora Carrington in Chichester was wonderful, if you like that sort of thing.
The Rothko Chapel is a non-denominational "chapel" in Houston, Texas, founded by John and Dominique de Menil. It is a small building - maybe 2000 sq. ft. The interior only serves as the display framework for fourteen paintings by Mark Rothko in varying hues of black/purple. There are no other "church things" inside. I have never thought of it as a religious building - only a vessel for the paintings. The building is a small octagon with only a couple of benches inside. It is adjacent to the main de Menil Museum that is open free to the public (as is the Rothko).
ReplyDeleteI have taken friends to the Rothko who hated it, who loved it, who sat on a bench and cried, and others that experienced a range of different emotions. For that alone, I consider it a singularly special place.
Personally, I derived a sense of calm and peace being in the space. I love the paintings. Sidenote - Rothko committed suicide in 1970 before the Chapel was completed in 1971. Rothko painted the works between 1964 and 1967 specifically for the Chapel. He was also given creative license on the design of the structure.
I - Like Babs - experienced the Guggenheim at age 13 (after Babs) and was blown away - I cannot tell you what exhibition I saw - I only remember the architecture - and that ignited a lifelong interest in Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Rothko is something special. A former student works there and was gracious enough to give us a special tour, but any time there will affect you.
DeleteANON RF: (1) Paid-chaperoning a rich young kid through Paris in the early 80's. In the Pompidou Centre he was bored shitless until I showed him a Picasso. His eyes lit up and before I knew it he reached out and dragged his fingers down the face of the painting. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! "Duhh I wanna tell my friends I touched a Picasso." WHY the alarm bells and security didn't go off, I'll never know. But I grabbed him by the collar and frog-marched him down all the escalators and out, in record time.
ReplyDelete(2) An Australian girl I'd hooked up with in Europe came to visit and I took her to MOMA. I tried to explain Dada etc to her (fool's errand), but when we came to Duchamp's "To Be Looked At...", I parked her in front of one side and went round to the other and we looked at each other through the glass. When she stood upright again, she knocked the piece and it wobbled as if to topple. I defended it and set it back into place and grabbed her by the elbow and frog-marched her down all the escalators and out, surpassing the Pompidou speed-record. Are you sensing a pattern yet? All true, I swear it.
And (3) That same visit, earlier in the day, the Aussie girl and I rounded a corner and I was punched in the face by Guernica. I'd seen many little illustrations and postcards of it, but the impact and grandeur of the real thing floored me. So... Many years later I visited the Prado in Madrid with my (then) 14 year old son and my wife. I had talked about Guernica for days leading up to this, and when we approached the painting, they were merely impressed, not blown away. I'd expected them to be gasping for breath; instead it was "yes, we see what you mean. It's very good. Very powerful. Can we go now." I'm tempted to say they grabbed me by the neck and frog-marched me etc etc (but no).
"shame there aren't more like him."
ReplyDeleteBob Downes?
Good call.
DeleteRothko at the Tate London 1987
ReplyDeleteWillie Doherty "blocked border crossing" video, Preston circa 1998
Frans Widerberg & Tare Tvaeter(?), Oslo 1993
LARPing as Richard Long in the parks and outskirts of St Helens 1984 onwards
Pop Art at the Hayward, London 1969
ReplyDeleteJean Tinguely at Palazzo Grassi, Venice 1987
Both exhibitions were mammoth in scale and scope, entire worlds, exciting, fun, beautiful, inspiring, and revelatory.
There's a lot of great art (and architecture) out there, as the previous comments remind me. I can immediately name two exhibits that blew my mind:
ReplyDeleteAmerican Sculpture of the Sixties, LA County Museum of Art, June 1967
Monet's Serial Paintings, Art Institute of Chicago, ...sometime in the 1990s?
The sculpture show completely expanded my ideas of what art could be. That summer was a pretty heady time for me - it's when I discovered I had an interest in politics, at a time when politics was having some impact on youth culture (I was ten years old).
The Monet show was massively popular (although I couldn't find a trace of it online with the searches I ran) - it was as many of the works with identical motifs (the cathedral front, the haystacks) as they could get in one place, hung so as to illustrate the artist's fascination with light, and mastery at depicting it. I had high expectations, but it completely exceeded them (except for the number of people, which was controlled by timed entry).
Interestingly, I was very psyched to see "Guernica" in Madrid, but the environment (schoolkids, forced to look) turned me off and the magnificence of the work couldn't shine through. YMMV! However, not that many steps away, I saw a Dali on the wall. It was pretty small, and he'd never been a favorite artist of mine. But seeing the actual object, for whatever reason, lit up all my appreciation circuits! I ended my visit to Museo Sofia Reina a bit confused, but energized by having my perspectives changed "just" by being there.
D in California
Want albums? Ax!
ReplyDeleteyeah, go on then, Mr Tease.
DeleteI'm not convinced you really want to hear them.
DeleteI used to be a friend of the Royal Academy in London and used to go to their exhibitions quite regularly and the one that stands out in my memory was the Pop Art exhibition in 1991, Rauschenburg Warhole's Soups Cans, Liechtenstein's Blam and 'I Know How You Feel Brad", Paoloozi, Hamilton's Splash. It was a fine exhibition but the one exhibit I could never get my head around was Warhol's Cornflake Boxes. How did they know where to position them and if they put one in a different position did it change the meaning?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite exhibition is the permanent exhibition of Monet's Water Lillies at the Musee L' Orangerie In Paris which I saw before they had refurbished it and sadly have not had chance to go back in the subsequent decades since it was refurbished (the last time i was in Paris it was closed for the refurbishment. If you haven't seen the impact of the 6 amazing enormous Monet works in their oval gallery is quite unique and the sense of tranquility that can be experienced there if there are not many visitors is quite something.
ANON RF: Axing! ElBums please please please!!!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.imagenetz.de/NH3E3
DeleteANON RF: Thankks, Farq!
DeleteYou're very welcome. I've playe the first album beaucoup over the years. A lot of fun.
Delete