I moved to NYC from Poughkeepsie in October, 1976 at the age of 22. I'd been coming down to the city for various "loft jazz" events since the spring of that year, I think and once situated here, attended them regularly. The crowds, then as now, were pretty small (50 would be a good showing) and you'd see the same people all the time. At, iirc, a Don Cherry gig at the old Kitchen (Grand and Wooster), I got to talking to a fellow named Mark Forman and saw him again at some afternoon Tin Palace show shortly thereafter. Mark, it turns out, was working at Environ and invited me up to work the door at a Braxton show that evening, thereby attaining free entry. I did and ended up hanging on there for a few years, another story for another time. Shortly after I'd moved into our West 24th St., 5th floor walk-up with my college buddy Liviu, our place was robbed (super's kids, presumably) and my stereo was taken. Having no listening equipment for a while, I was liberal in lending out my rarer discs and did so to Mark. Things like the Unit Core release of Cecil Taylor's "Indent", the McPhee/Snyder "Pieces of Light", Frith's solo guitar album and others. Fairly soon thereafter, Mark all of a sudden split for parts unknown. I rued those missing albums, gradually replacing as many as I could. (the Taylor appeared on an Arista CD butI do miss that Unit Core pressing....)

All this by way of...I was checking to see if my previous entry on Muhal hit the google blog search engine and stumbled across a reference to Abrams in...Mark Forman's blog. He's in Taiwan, apparently, has been for a while. I posted a comment on his Muhal remembrance. Hmmm.....wonder if that Taylor LP is still extant! Nah, over that, but still pretty cool coming across someone like that who you hadn't seen or heard of in 30 years.