Nope, not that Slavic patriarch of Esperanto, though it’s a pretty nifty pair of Classics Illustrated page panels just the same. Just a quick note to alert readers of a recent interview with another mover/shaker in the world of pan-European linguistics and by proxy, free jazz history. Straight from the pages of AAJ-NY, Cliff Allen breaks bread with controversial ESP-Disk owner/operator Bernard Stollman and comes away with what is to my knowledge the most in-depth exposé yet on the man & his work. It’s bound to re-raise some hackles, but if there’s a better, more revealing Stollman confab to be found, net-based or otherwise, please point the way.
Posted by derek on November 26, 2005 11:25 AMStollman's a nice old guy. I interviewed him a little less than a year ago, for Jazziz, but the piece never ran. Interesting to hear about Machine Gun and the Takayanagi thing - imagine if he'd had the cash to get those discs out back then, how it might have changed things.
Posted by: pdf at November 26, 2005 3:23 PMHm, getting to the point where we need a Stollman interview/feature bibliography. I've lost track of the number of interviews I've seen.
Posted by: N.D. at November 27, 2005 3:01 PMHm, how high can you count? :) I'd still wager ducats this one's the best.
Posted by: derek at November 27, 2005 5:20 PMThanks for posting the link, DT...
At the very least there is compelling testimony for why reissuing the ESP catalog on CD again is necessary, especially under Stollman's helm.
Poor Giuseppi Logan, though - what an unfortunate life that cat seems to have led.
Posted by: clifford at November 28, 2005 7:36 PMI love this bit: do you (or BS) happen to know Clifford which piece he's referring to on the album? I'm tempted to listen to it all again to see if I can spot the join:
"At one point, I was standing with the engineer in the control room, and I thought the piece they were playing was stunningly beautiful. It sounded totally spontaneous, as if they were ad-libbing and commenting like a gorgeous conversation. Suddenly, I heard a ‘thwuuunk,’ and I realized that the tape had run out. The engineer and I were so absorbed, we hadn’t been paying attention. I thought “oh God, this remarkable thing is lost. It was interrupted in the middle, and it’s gone.” Richard Alderson was the engineer, and he got on the intercom and said “Giuseppi, the tape ran out.” Without a pause, Giuseppi said “take it back to before where it stopped and we’ll take it from there.” So he did, he wound it back and played some bars of it and took down the record button, and they resumed exactly what they were doing—there was no way of telling where one or the other ended. It was unreal."
My guess is that it's "Bleecker Partita," the last tune. I think I've caught something on that one before.
Posted by: clifford at November 29, 2005 1:28 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................