Charon and the gibbering spirits of squeaks past

   Reading an interview with Jan Gabarek, he mentioned that he never had much interest in geeking about with possible sax/mouthpiece/reed combinations; he had used the same somewhat standard (and a bit  unfashionable) MkVI-Berg Larsen set-up for years, in the meantime creating one of the iconic (and most copied, after Brecker - and it's interesting to speculate whether Brecker had been influenced as well) sax sounds of the last quarter of the twentieth century.  I remember sitting in the Jazz Workshop in Boston in the early 70's, waiting to listen to him, determined to disapprove of some unknown Scandinavian interloper (with the strange "I-come-from-the-planet-Vulcan" haircut seen below) who had replaced my fave guy of the moment, Dewey Redman, in the Keith Jarrett Quartet.... and then he just played a simple, soaring line...




He talks about never giving his gear a thought until  rather recently, when he started getting involved with the Internet. He referred to his sax as  a tool, a 'hammer' something which he not particularly interested in and was invisible to him as long as it did his bidding. This saxophone-as-hammer  is similar  to the idea of Heidegger's hammer (I know, there was the unfortunate business with Adorno, who was down on this guy)  ; an object that is invisible as long as it  fulfills its function. Garberek was happy for years playing in his preferred manner without thought of mouthpieces , reeds or particular instruments .But, of course, Theo Wanne promises everything, and once Gaberek started messing about on the internet, the chimera of a better world hovered just beyond his reach; one where everything spoke effortlessly from low Bb to an altissimo double F... balanced, in tune, rich in timbre. Squeaks are sent to a specific circle of Hell, or perhaps just on Charon's ferry across the Acheron to accompany the wailing of souls on their final journey to damnation...I think all reed players would like to think of that as the last outing of all their squeaks down through the years. One would faint, and find that all the squeaks had been banished upon awakening on the other side. Here is Delacroix's take on Charon, Dante and the Damned (not the band) hearing all the squeaks from the mortal world while crossing the Acheron on the barge, such as all those Parker out takes....

So term is over, marking and deadlines fulfilled, and after a day or two of staring at the walls, chauffeuring the Cruel Mistress of my Heart on a 14 hour round-trip to Aberystwyth (which I can now spell) and going for long cycle rides, my headspace clears enough to start thinking again about being a musician and organizing the quartet. As always, I realize that a lot of stuff has slid all the way down the hill in the last two months, so instead of sitting in the hoped-for sunny uplands of  practicing/writing, as I kept promising myself through the dark moments of being surrounded by mounds of unmarked portfolios, I find myself making numerous phones calls  and emails trying to get things moving again. Inertia is always such a difficult thing to deal with, especially with a project, as everyone else just assumes that it has gone away and needs a thorough prodding in order to take interest again, never mind trying to get a few decent gigs.

I made the mistake of thinking "....oh, hey guys, it would be fun to do a gig in Cambridge when stuff calms down this summer..." so, innumerable phone calls and calendar negotiations later, I find that there is a film crew and a professional photographer involved, along with a nascent re-vamped website made necessary by a  new CD launch, various band health issues, venue problems, and I'm lying awake thinking about stuff and another recording session...and it's goddamn July already; there's the second song of the Holy Goof to write over the summer.

and, for limited time only, a whistle-stop tour of the new tracks....



So along with all that, I've been changing the way I think, soloistically, over the last 6-9 months; and, moving differently while rippling (I'd like to think it ripples) through triads, creating inadvertant shifts and sheets of sounds with sort of fishy (Pisces, after all) lateral motion - plus having the usual who's-the-Daddy issues with Riley the Wonder Dog