Search & Destroy: Sun Ra

Live:

Angels and Demons at Play
Spontaneous Simplicity
Space Aura
'S Wonderful
It Ain't Necessarily So
How High the Moon
China Gate

Studio:

Majestic 1
Ankhnaton
Posession
Tapestry From an Asteroid
Majestic 2
Majestic 3
Majestic 4
Velvet
A Call for All Demons
Interstellar Lo-Ways

Since "El Viaje" is going to be on at 9:00.

(I could go hear Charles Ellerbee tonight at the Tritone, but I'm too tired and that place gets very smokey.)

I listened to We Travel the Spaceways/Bad & Beautiful on the way to work.

Anyone wanna do a POX sonny tunes?

Heliocentric Worlds, Vol. 3

Is the soundtrack available anywhere or am I about to record this off the DVD? I think I'm about to record this off the DVD. It's one of the best things I've ever heard from them.

I've recently given Sun Ra mixes to two people coming from very different backgrounds, and their main comment was roughly, "I was expecting something more bizarre." It's pretty much Sun Ra's fault (and probably intention), but I think there's a lot more to his music than that. (This isn't exactly directed at anyone here. I just fear that people aren't always listening in a way that prepares them for what is there in the wide stretches of Sun Ra's music that are neither retro-swing nor hardbop nor freakishly weird/campy nor high energy free jazz jamming.

???

pls explain!!

I see what mr. rockist is saying though, that there are a lot of things in Ra's catalog that are kind of in-between the out-OUT freakouts and the reverent swing/bop homages, but most people don't really expect that.

x-post:

Personally, I don't get too interested until the early 60s. I like some of the 50s things, but they don't hit home as much as the material that starts to emerge at the beginning of the 60s.

(I guess you know he arranged for Fletcher Henderson. Interesting that you mention him, if not. I wouldn't know what Fletcher Henderson sounds like, really.)

It's pretty much Sun Ra's fault (and probably intention)

what is?

people aren't always listening in a way that prepares them for what is there in the wide stretches of Sun Ra's music that are neither...

i am wondering which wide stretches you are talking about? what way do you think people listen to sun ra?

honestly, i don't think many people listen to sun ra at all. i mean, everybody pays lip service but sometimes i think i am the only person buying sun ra albums at the record stores i shop at. they never restock and stuff never goes off the shelves ...

what is?

He created a very a strong image, obviously. That's what I mean. He brought that into the foreground. (And I'm not saying I don't like the spectacle aspect: I generally have loved the Arkestra's concert spectacles, and especially did when Sun Ra was still alive.) I think he was very interested in being deceptive (or maybe just appearing to be deceptive). He talked about his being a Gemini and that dual nature, and how you don't necessarily get what you see. I think he might have been happy that people would come to his music with false expectations. I don't think any of this is original. I probably just haven't been very clear. (I'm taking a lot of this from impressions of Space is the Place, either directly or indirectly.)

i mean, everybody pays lip service but sometimes i think i am the only person buying sun ra albums at the record stores i shop at. they never restock and stuff never goes off the shelves ...

Hmmmm. He seems to sell in Philadelphia.

haha yeah you should hear him on the ark & the ankh, the interview disc with henry dumas.

at one point he is all "you can never know a real person, just their image ... it's like presidential elections, you never vote for the person, just for their image" and henry dumas is like "so why do you choose the image you choose" and sun ra says in his good natured drawl (so you can almost hear the sly smile!) "well, you know, everybody has to be themselves, and i just got to be me!"

Dude, I didn't know that! I do know that Sun Ra was a big fan, or maybe I assumed. One of the things I like so much about Sun Ra's music is that he really synthesized the history of jazz, or his love of jazz music, and warped it and did his own thing with it, and continued to push it. The big band arrangements are really suggestive of the glory years of the '20s in a lot of ways (the start-stops, harmonically, structurally), even as the band got more 'out' it was still BIG, and very meticulously & smartly arranged (a la Fletcher's arranger Don Redman). I think that's why the music continues to be exciting in a live setting w/o Sun Ra's 'interplanetary' (ie weirdo) prescence. It has the beauty of the spontaneity and the telepathic improv relationships between players but also the composition signposts of Henderson or Ellington in that it's very thoughfully composed in a very studied jazz way. I guess the word 'jazz' can be interchanged with 'American music' (or maybe that's what vahid might say!). I think if you say anything about Sun Ra, he knew what he was doing or what he was trying to do, nothing's tossed off.

My theory is that this is why the players stuck around so long. Not necessarily b/c they bought into the space/intergalactic spirituality, but b/c the music was consistently interesting to play, complex and spontaneous, and dependent on the individual personality of each star player (like in Ellington's band; Cootie Williams had parts written for him, and his solos were written into the music b/c of the personality of his playing).

There were some interesting loose ends in the last posts to this thread. Unfortunatly, I don't have any knowledge of the areas being brought up, but maybe someone has something to add?

I'm pretty sure they'll get to show it on BBC two at some point so maybe we can all talk about this a bit more then.

"Fate" is kind of typical of Arkestra stuff from Chicago '60/'61, a mix of influences - Latin/ exotica/ big band/ some bop - all nice stuff, that track "Space Mates" (a flute/piano ballad) is especially good.

"When Sun Comes Out" is an odd sort of record. First track is ca. 4 minutes of gongs and assorted tinklings and patterings with a female vocal towards the end which suggests Sonny owned a few Yma Sumac records! The second track sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a mineshaft - a very deep mineshaft - but the rest of the album is very professionally recorded (it's in stereo!), with none of the heavy reverb and sonic jiggery-pokery of other albums recorded around the same time (NYC '62-'63). It's not as "out there" as contemporaneous Sun Ra recordings but still pushes a few boundaries and has THE definitive version of "We Travel the Spaceways", which lurches menacingly and unsteadily ever onwards like an evil robot in cheesy 50s sci-fi movie.

http://www.youtube.com/w/Sun-Ra?v=3oJZgZqG8CM&search=sun%20ra