Wednesday, May 31, 2006

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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mea Culpa-I remember the Fred Frith album for sure, not so sure on the Cecil Taylor one though. All of my vinyl long gone. I'm a cyberpunk these days listening to most stuff on mp3 with the occasional cd. Sorry about not returning to righful owner on the mentioned discs. I was always pretty good about that.

I moved to Tucson, AZ in '77 so that might be part of the reason we didn't hook up. I lived there for 10 years before moving to Taiwan.

Glad you made the effort to locate me. I did similar thing with a friend's son recently (hadn't seen him in 20 years...) Poughkeepsie, it's all coming back now. Maybe some day I'll pay you in Friehoffers chocolate chip cookies in kind.

Brian Olewnick said...

Man, excellent memory on the Freihoffer's! Not sure they're still being made....

Yeah, don't sweat the LPs. I managed to get back most of them over the years. One was my (still) favorite Rahsaan recording, "Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata". Although it was originally on Atlantic, I don't think it was ever reissued on disc by them. I remember coming across a Japanese disc for some absurd price once and still almost pulled the trigger. But then, about 6-7 years ago, it was released on 32Jazz as part of a 3-disc set, so I snatched it up.

I still have all my vinyl, about 1000 albums. Twice as many discs. Way, way too much music to listen to so I don't do mp3 or other downloads though occasionally some kind soul goes out of their way to burn things for me. As is, I probably receive an average of 3-4 discs a week for review and, you know, I actually have to listen to them several times before writing about them (what a concept!) so....