Anodyne
Thursday, July 17, 2008
 

Some popular favorites

"I bought the Mingus Dynasty album on an experimental basis. I'd never heard him and all I knew was that he was the bass player on Charlie Mingus' famous Massey Hall concert but I liked the cover -- Mingus wearning an absurd Egyptian hat. The first time I played it, I thought it was terrible. I thought the band was a mess and I couldn't figure out why people kept yelling. On the other hand there were some great solos. About a year later, I put it on again, thought it was brilliant, and couldn't stop playing it. There was something about the rootsy feeling that I had come to accept. It was angry, with a lot of church and blues feeling. My older cousins would take me to The Vanguard or Five Spot in New York and we saw Mingus round about this time -- 1962. I was knocked out. It wasn't like a concert, it was a visitation from another universe. Mingus was really brusque with the musicians. Then he began drinking and became nasty to people in the audience too. 'Stop tinkling that spoon in that glass.' Then he started lecturing us on the problems he was having with his record company. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. The last time I saw him, he'd grown enormously fat and was wearing a bathrobe with what appeared to be calamine lotion all over his body, as if he had the worst ever case of poison ivy."
- posted by cjb @ 8:17 AM


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