|
ESP-Disk
ESP-Disk is a New York-based record company and label founded in 1963 by lawyer Bernard Stollman. History Though it originally existed to release Esperanto-based music, beginning with its second release (Albert Ayler's ''Spiritual Unity''), ESP became the most important exponent of what is commonly referred to as free jazz. Early releases included albums by Paul Bley, Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra. ESP also released recordings by uncommercial underground rock acts including the Fugs, The Godz and Pearls Before Swine. The label's motto is "The artists alone decide what you will hear." Bernard Stollman faced allegations of not paying royalties to the artists that were signed to ESP-Disk. Tom Rapp of the band Pearls Before Swine claimed that: "We never got any money from ESP. Never, not even like a hundred dollars or something. My real sense is that he tollmanwas abducted by aliens, and when he was probed it erased his memory of where all the money was". Peter Stampfel of the band Holy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spiritual Unity
''Spiritual Unity'' is a studio album by American free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler. It was recorded on July 10, 1964 in New York City, and features bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray. It was the first album recorded for Bernard Stollman's ESP-Disk label, and it brought Ayler to international attention as it was so "shockingly different". At the same time, it transformed ESP-DISK into "a major source for avant-garde jazz". A 5-star review in AllMusic called it a "landmark recording that's essential to any basic understanding of free jazz", "the album that pushed Albert Ayler to the forefront of jazz's avant-garde... really the first available document of Ayler's music that matched him with a group of truly sympathetic musicians", and stated that "the results are a magnificently pure distillation of his aesthetic." Background In late December 1963, Bernard Stollman, who had been toying with the idea of starting a record label, went, at the insistence of a friend, to hear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearls Before Swine (band)
Pearls Before Swine was an American psychedelic folk band formed by Tom Rapp in 1965 in Eau Gallie, now part of Melbourne, Florida. They released six albums between 1967 and 1971, before Rapp launched a solo career. Early years, 1965-68 With high school friends Wayne Harley (banjo, mandolin), Lane Lederer (bass, guitar) and Roger Crissinger (piano, organ), Rapp wrote and recorded some songs which, inspired by the Fugs, they sent to the avant-garde ESP-Disk label in New York. The group took its name from a Bible passage: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine ...." (Mat. 7:6, KJV), meaning: do not give things of value to those who will not understand or appreciate them. They were quickly signed up, and recorded '' One Nation Underground'' (1967), featuring songs of mysticism, protest, melancholia, and some controversy in the case of "Miss Morse", which spelled out an obscenity in Morse code. The album eventually sold some 200,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Godz (New York Band)
The Godz were a New York City-based avant-noise psychedelic band that originally existed from 1966 to 1973. History The Godz musicians were guitarist Jim McCarthy, bassist Larry Kessler, autoharpist Jay Dillon, and drummer Paul Thornton. They started the band after Larry Kessler met Jim McCarthy and Paul Thornton when they all took jobs in the 49th Street location of the musical instruments store Sam Goody's. According to McCarthy they came up with their musical approach on this situation: "One day Paul came over to visit them, and the three gathered in Larry's living room to smoke a joint." What happened next was purely accidental, according to Jim: "There were all these percussive instruments lying around and out of total frustration, I got up and started shaking a tambourine or something like that, and that's how it all started. We all started to get up and make noise like a bunch of maniacs, expressing our frustration." After this event, "Larry made a suggestion that ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Stollman
Bernard Stollman (July 19, 1929 – April 19, 2015) was an American lawyer and the founder of the ESP-Disk record label. Biography He was born to a Jewish family in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and grew up in Plattsburgh, upstate New York, where his parents owned a chain of women's wear stores. When he was 16, his family moved to Forest Hills, Queens, and he later attended Columbia University and Columbia Law School. In 1960, he started work as an unpaid intern for a law firm working on the estates of Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. Over the next few years he developed a love of jazz music, did some legal work for Moe Asch at Folkways Records, and began advising jazz and rhythm and blues musicians on copyrights and contracts. Bernard Stollman feature in 801 Magazine, 17 April 2008 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fugs
The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver (musician), Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders. Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for ''fuck'' used in Norman Mailer's novel ''The Naked and the Dead''. The band was one of the leaders of the Underground culture, underground scene of the 1960s and became an important part of the American counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of that decade. The group is known for its comedic, even lewd, nature but also earned fame through their persistent anti-Vietnam War sentiment during the 1960s. Some 1969 correspondence, found inside an FBI file on the rock group The Doors, called The Fugs the "most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive". Aside from derision for their scatological lyrics, the Fugs have also been labeled avant-rock noise music. Formatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fugs
The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver (musician), Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders. Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for ''fuck'' used in Norman Mailer's novel ''The Naked and the Dead''. The band was one of the leaders of the Underground culture, underground scene of the 1960s and became an important part of the American counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of that decade. The group is known for its comedic, even lewd, nature but also earned fame through their persistent anti-Vietnam War sentiment during the 1960s. Some 1969 correspondence, found inside an FBI file on the rock group The Doors, called The Fugs the "most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive". Aside from derision for their scatological lyrics, the Fugs have also been labeled avant-rock noise music. Formatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders (born Ferrell Lee Sanders; October 13, 1940 – September 24, 2022) was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound", Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane's groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released over thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with vocalist Leon Thomas and pianist Alice Coltrane, among many others. Fellow saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world". Sanders' take on “spiritual jazz” was rooted in his inspiration from religious concepts such as Karma and Tawhid, and his rich, meditative performance aesthetic. This style was seen as a continuation of Coltrane's work on albums such as ''A Love Supreme''. As a result, Sanders was considered to have been a di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Rapp
Thomas Dale Rapp (March 8, 1947 – February 11, 2018) was an American singer and songwriter who led Pearls Before Swine, an influential psychedelic folk rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Described as having "a slight lisp, gentle voice and apocalyptic vision",Harrison Smith, "Tom Rapp, frontman of ’60s psychedelic band Pearls Before Swine, dies at 70", ''Washington Post'', February 13, 2018 Retrieved February 14, 2018 he also released four albums under his own name. He later practiced as a lawyer after graduating from |
Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led "The Arkestra", an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up. Born and raised in Alabama, Blount became involved in the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s. He soon abandoned his birth name, taking the name Le Sony'r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian god of the Sun). Claiming to be an alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace, he developed a mythical persona and an idiosyncratic credo that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism. Throughout his life he denied ties to his prior identity saying, "Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym." His widely eclectic and avant-garde music echoed the entire history of jazz, from ragtime and ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (). Zamenhof first described the language in '' Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (), which he published under the pseudonym . Early adopters of the language liked the name ''Esperanto'' and soon used it to describe his language. The word translates into English as "one who hopes". Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and ''a'priori'' (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary, syntax and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group. The vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holy Modal Rounders
The Holy Modal Rounders was an American folk music group, originally the duo of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who began performing together on the Lower East Side of New York City in the early 1960s. Their unique blend of folk music revival and psychedelia gave them a cult-like following from the late 1960s into the 1970s. For a time the group also included the playwright and actor Sam Shepard. Origin of the name Stampfel explained the origin of the name in the webzine '' Perfect Sound Forever'': :We kept changing the name. First it was the Total Quintessence Stomach Pumpers. Then the Temporal Worth High Steppers. Then The Motherfucker Creek Babyrapers. That was just a joke name. He was Rinky-Dink Steve the Tin Horn and I was Fast Lightning Cumquat. He was Teddy Boy Forever and I was Wild Blue Yonder. It kept changing names. Then it was the Total Modal Rounders. Then when we were stoned on pot and someone else, Steve Close maybe, said Holy Modal Rounders by mistake. We kept ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Bley
Paul Bley, CM (November 10, 1932 – January 3, 2016) was a jazz pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing and his early live performance on the Moog and ARP synthesizers. His music has been described by Ben Ratliff of the ''New York Times'' as "deeply original and aesthetically aggressive". Bley's prolific output includes influential recordings from the 1950s through to his solo piano recordings of the 2000s. Early life Bley was born in Montreal, Quebec, on November 10, 1932. His adoptive parents were Betty Marcovitch, an immigrant from Romania, and Joseph Bley, owner of an embroidery factory, who named him Hyman Bley. However, in 1993 a relative from the New York branch of the Bley family walked into the Sweet Basil Jazz Club in New York City and informed Bley that his father was actually his biological parent. At age five Bley began studying the violin, but at age seven, after his mot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_by_Wojciech_Soporek.jpg "Click for more on -> Pharoah Sanders")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Sun Ra")
