Search & Destroy: Sun Ra

I remember really like the solo piano concert that ws issued on Leo, perhaps bcz I ws (stupidly) expecting it to be a kind of microcosm of his orchestral music...quite a slow-burner.

so many reissues... a friend loaned me the double CD Disco 3000 reissue, that was great

we got "Purple Moon" at the radio and I dubbed it but haven't listened to it in full yet.

(haha xpost here) so much stuff coming out, still. 4 boot CDs were just torrented on D!m3 a while ago after surfacing on eBay.

media dream >>>>>>>>>>>>>> disco 3000

media dream is incredible. thanks, art yard.

(ps i thought disco 3000 was sort of mediocore)

i still have no idea where to begin! (guess i'll read this thread, then.)

so ... is it just me or are "on jupiter" and "sleeping beauty" more destroy than search?

Search: SOLAR MYTH APPROACH 1&2
Destroy: Atlantis (I know, weird, right? But I find it boring)

I'm not into Atlantis either. I haven't heard On Jupiter or Sleeping Beauty (except maybe in parts).

I am amazed that people can actually listen to Sun Ra. After listening to the Quasimoto album, I was really excited to get into him. Sadly, I don't think I could have been more disappointed. Maybe by a stroke of bad luck I bought his most unlistenable album (Atlantis), but it is fucking painful to listen to and I'm afraid to get anything else of his for fear of the same thing happening.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying -- Atlantis = boring lo-fi noodling with cool album cover and general mystique.

perhaps your problem is where you live? do you live in your parent's basement? it's impossible to *really* get sun ra unless you live in your parent's basement.

you crazy atlantis is good

so ... is it just me or are "on jupiter" and "sleeping beauty" more destroy than search?

first side of Atlantis is excellent, and the big freak-out has its moments.

Want:

http://espdisk.com/official/catalog/4054.html

Yeek, that looks great.

Picked up a copy of "Sleeping Beauty" maybe a month or so back, and it's risen to near the top of the Ra heap for me. Up there with Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth and Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy imho.

that said, i've not heard even half of the sun ra extant.

I have that disc. It's not that great. It's not 1967 Pharaoh, it's 1964 Pharoah, and he's pretty restrained. Had the two of them joined forces when Sanders was into his crazy pan-ethnic stuff - say, anywhere between '69 and '72 - it would have been awesome, but no such luck.

I still want it. I think I would probably like it. My favorite Paroah Sanders playing is probably on Journey in Satchidananda, which is more restrained than what he's best known for. (Of course, it's also a lot later than this CD with Sun Ra.) And I also tend to like this period of Sun Ra recordings.

my favorite pharoah is the one on the quiet parts of thembi and tauhid ... well that and the drone monster from izipho zam

i dunno, still not convinced by "sleeping beauty" or "on jupiter" ... too fusion-y for my taste, or too acid jazz, i guess. not that i dislike either fusion or acid jazz but that's not my go to for sun ra!

<3 this -- its totally like being drunk on a disco dance floor, the way the rhythms are all sorta woozy & sloppy. drunk disco

"you crazy atlantis is good"

yessir!

"boring lo-fi noodling" maybe van gelder was already booked up...

i saw him live a couple years before he died. didn't really know what to expect, i was like 20 and just heard he was this extremely eccentric jazz guy who claimed to be from outter space. paid 10 bucks to see his first show in a 80-seater basement venue. his band were all in these sequined snow-white-and-the-27-alien-dwarves costumes, he had some capoiera dancers in loin clothes (before anybody knew what capoiera was) and his set was about 90% disney tunes and ended with the whole band doing a conga line with the audience. i obviously paid another 10 bucks to see the second set, which was equally good, and contained no disney whatsoever. i was very saddened to hear he died a few years later.

that said, i very rarely hear anything of his recorded material that i really like that much. sorry! i might check out some of these recommendations just to see if i missed something, but i have a feeling i will be disappointed again.

space is the place (the movie) is great though!

I totally dig Sleeping Beauty and On Jupiter, some of my favorite stuff was when the Arkestra gets into those mellow swing grooves.

wow how many verb tenses can I mess up in a single sentence

my hero

messiahwannabe, I don't know what you've listened to so far, but if you've turned to the live recordings to try to recapture what you liked in the live performances, I would suggest trying some of the studio recordings instead and maybe try to put aside expectations based on the live performances. I saw Sun Ra a bunch of times, and have seen the Arkestra without him quite a few times as well (I lived in Philadelphia until recently) but I often find the live recordings disappointing; and on the other hand, some of my favorite Sun Ra recordings are the ones featuring a smaller stripped down arkestra. But that might just be me. If nothing else, there is a wide range of opinion on this thread.

(So, on the other hand, if you haven't listened to many of the live recordings, maybe that's what you need to listen to, or maybe you are right and you really will just be disappointed again.)

The current Signal to Noise has a nice write-up/interview of Marshall Allen which then segues into general discussion of Sun Ra (some of it generic, some of it new to me, especially on the issue of preserving archival Ra-related material). And then more photos of Marshall Allen and company.

And a nice (everything is nice) wrap up of recent reissues and original archival releases (with helpful information about sound quality and what's on things and what's recommended by the author).

I think this is probably the recording of Astro Black I heard back in high school or back when I was an undegraduate. One of the Sun Ra tunes that got me interested in him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPXwnTlbCn8

Oh crap! That's for another post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk5jg5fo0kc

Actually, that's kind of disappointing. I remember it having more of a groove to it and being more like "Strange Celestial Road."

AWESOME

"where every month is 'black history month'"

lecture starts about an hour in btw

I continue to really wonder what the point of much of Allen's soloing is. It all ends up sounding the same to me. On the one hand you have John Gilmore, my favorite saxophonist ever, and on the other you have Marshall Allen consistently making discombobulated ugly sounds. I know this is a bit blasphemous for someone who considers himself a Sun Ra fan, but I have been listening to a lot of live Ra lately (I bought the big Detroit box set) and I can't avoid these impressions.

Also, much more generally, I don't tend to find that kind of full on free jazz blowing really "emotional" in a way I can recognize. Emotion needs to have more of a shape and form than that. It seems almost pre-emotional, just pure excitement-energy. Maybe that's what people like about it.

From way upthread: Listening to Allen's playing on some of those 60s and 70s Arkestra albums you can really hear where John Zorn got a lot of his ideas from.

I've never cared for Zorn's saxophone playing at all.

Fireside Chat With Lucifer is the shit

Search: Strange Strings (!!!), all ESP Disk titles, Magic City, Other Planes of There, The Solar Myth Approach, The Singles, The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums, Lanquidity, Fate In a Pleasant Mood, When Sun Comes Out, Space Is the Place (Impulse), Space Is the Place (OST)

Destroy: nothin really. Janus isn't that great. Not too psyched by the solo piano discs, but that's a personal quirk. ALso, I prefer the more 'out' stuff starting circa 1963 to the things before that. Again, a personal problem I'm sure.

anybody got any opinion on the recent doo-wop stuff reissues...? saw some of these at the store a few weeks ago and was curious but didn't feel like shelling out

Have not heard them but I'm not generally into his doo-wop (or any doo-wop for that matter). There is still a long list of other recent reissues I haven't gotten to yet that I'm convinced are great. If you can find that Signal to Noise discussion of recent Sun Ra reissues (mentioned above), it's worth checking out.

yeah I'm not really a doo-wop fan either, and particularly with stuff this early the actual sound quality is usually a bit of a barrier to my appreciating it. but I am curious

Have you heard any? I have Spaceship Lullaby on Atavistic and I can't say I've listened to it much.

The doo-wop items in The Singles collection are all pretty good & I'm not much on doo-wop in general myself. There is a certain quirkiness even there. Da Man couldn't help himself.

Very good. Spooky and slightly wonky. At least that's my recollection of Singles. Do you think that if you didn't know these were by Sun Ra, anyone could work it out?

damn herman really knew how to close out albums. "tristar" on 'somewhere else' is perfect

Search: New ESP Disk release of College Tour Vol. I: the Complete Nothing Is. Tis sweet.

anyone seen the touring Marshall Allen & James Harrar’s Cinema Soloriens and the Cosmo-Drama thing? film with marshall allen leading a quartet in accompaniment. tickets are kinda $$$ and i'm dithering.

This reminds me that there's a reissue I'm about ready to buy now.