Saturday, May 26, 2018

Torn Curtain Call

All right, then. I know it's THAT guy's birthday; Christ I've blogged him more than any other single artist on here. Let's give someone else a chance at May 26th, can we?
Today's honoree turns a big 65 today, and has been cracking his axe wide open, so that new and astonishingly unguitarlike tones might be liberated from its pickups, for almost 40 years now.
Some of his records and bands and projects are among my all-time go-to platters. I think of those two Everyman Band LPs on ECM and the seminal, unbelievable Cloud About Mercury project he led right after that group split, also on Manfred Eicher's exquisite label of love.
And oh, those tones. This guy is definitely one of those guitar slingers that's almost always endeavoring to make it sound like a completely different, as-yet-undiscovered musical instrument.
All this to form the approach of one of our lifetimes' most unusual and instantly-identifiable players, whom we know as David Torn.
He was born this day in 1953, and to celebrate his latest trip 'round the Big Flaming Hydrogen Globe, we have upped into the aether a complete and wildly crazy Everyman Band concert from the midpoint of their early-1980s run.
This is sourced from two very recent European rebroadcasts and is unique, because none other than trumpet deity Don Cherry shows up to sit in mid-set, bringing the already-astonished audience to their knees in total, enraptured reverence.
Everyman Band
Metropol
Berlin, Germany
11.4.1982

01 stage announcement
02 Japan Smiles
03 Happy House
04 Talking with Himself
05 Bruce Yaw talks
06 Nuclear Suite
07 Trick of the Wool
08 Morals In the Mud
09 Fat Blatt
10 Multibluetonic Blues 
11 unidentified title
12 Celebration 7
13 Mummy Club

Total time: 1:18:31

Marty Fogel - reeds 
David Torn - guitar, effects 
Bruce Yaw - electric bass
Michael Suchorsky - drums
with
Don Cherry - pocket trumpet, nkoni on Track 11

lewojazz/Tom Phillips 16/48 remaster of a recent, two-part Kulturradio 320/48 rebroadcast 
comprising the whole concert
I will be back Wednesday with the final May post -- and the first 50th anniversary thing I've ever attempted! -- but today is the day for you to get Torn, I'm afraid! And many more HBDs to the man; long may he grind that axe into new and scintillating shapes.--J.