[HN Gopher] The Interstellar Style of Sun Ra (2016)
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The Interstellar Style of Sun Ra (2016)
Author : hecubus
Score : 88 points
Date : 2023-04-24 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pitchfork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pitchfork.com)
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Sun Ra is one of those artists who I remember listening to for
| the first time and thinking, "this is what music _could be_ ,"
| instead of "this is what music _is_. "
|
| It's a dear experience, to feel your mental territory of music,
| or books, or art, expand outward in that moment. It leaves a
| lasting impression - or at least for me it does.
| asenchi wrote:
| Yep, same here. I didn't get into jazz until late in life and
| toured all the popular and deep cuts. Miles, Coltrane, Coleman,
| Monk, etc. I loved it all, but then I heard Sun Ra Arkestra's
| "Springtime Again" and I was absolutely floored. It opened up
| so many possibilities in my brain, almost like what I would
| expect a psychotropic drug experience would be like (I have
| never tried).
|
| Anyways, I did a deep dive on Sun Ra and have collected as much
| of his music as I can. I've seen the Arkestra two times and
| hope to at least one more time before Marshall Allen departs
| this planet (he turns 99 this year).
|
| Crazy story, again I have never done drugs, but I had a very
| intense dream where I met Frank Zappa and he took me through
| his warehouse(!) of records and introduced me to all his
| favorite Sun Ra records. I'll never forget that dream, I woke
| up energized to listen to all his recommendations.
| alexambarch wrote:
| A while back I somehow managed to watch Space Is the Place[1]
| without knowing anything about Sun Ra. The discovery that he was
| not an actor and was instead a great jazz musician was a wild
| one. If you haven't seen it, Space Is the Place is a super
| interesting look into early Afrofuturist films and Sun Ra as a
| character.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072195/
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I am blessed to be able to say I saw Sun Ra live at the Caravan
| of Dreams in Ft. Worth, back in the day.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Labels fall short (and miss the point? talking about music :
| dancing about architecture)
|
| Musically adjacent but maybe more accessible, in this dark funk /
| hard-bop-acid-jazz realm, I highly recommend "Yo Miles!"
| https://open.spotify.com/album/6NI2WNLTa5E9J5RKQkL25X?si=CEt...
| dmix wrote:
| "Tapestry from an Asteroid" is easily top 10 coolest names for a
| song. The songs not bad either.
| sonofhans wrote:
| The Sun Ra Arkestra is _still touring_ --
| https://www.sunraarkestra.com
|
| I've seen them three times, the last just six months ago. They're
| the best live band I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of music.
| Marshall Allen is nearly 100 years old, and he still melts faces
| when he stands up with his sax. They are the tightest, freest,
| clearest, most incomprehensible band I've ever seen. One moment
| they're doing a jazz standard, perfectly clean as glass; the next
| moment they're tripping right off the rings of Saturn.
|
| If you care about music, make a special effort to see these cats.
| boredemployee wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of some of their music, but I must admit that I
| find the rest pretty annoying for my ears (I mean, when they go
| crazy with higher frequencies instruments). You probably will
| like Hermeto Pascoal if you don't know him already.
| riffic wrote:
| Devo's first live show was in 1975 opening for Sun Ra and things
| were _chaotic_ :
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/15k9kf/devo_hired_as...
| artsytrashcan wrote:
| I prefer to see Mark Mothersbaugh's being known primarily as
| "The Rugrats Guy" to most Millennials as something akin to
| karmic justice for his antics. See also his weirdly derogatory
| comments about disco.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >See also his weirdly derogatory comments about disco.
|
| This won't be a surprise for anyone who knows much about him.
| Mark Mothersbaugh was a punk/new wave guy (though obviously
| not exclusively) and most punks had a visceral hatred for
| disco.
| Rochus wrote:
| unfortunately the video is no longer available
| dmix wrote:
| Couldn't find the video but found this on wikipedia:
|
| > The earliest known live performance of the song was on
| Halloween night of 1975, opening for Sun Ra.[3] The released
| recording of this version is seven minutes long.[3] However,
| according to a 1997 interview with Mark Mothersbaugh, they
| performed a half-hour rendition of the song as a joke to
| annoy the crowd: "We'd play 'Jocko Homo' for 30 minutes, and
| we wouldn't stop until people were actually fighting with us,
| trying to make us stop playing the song. We'd just keep
| going, 'Are we not men? We are Devo!' for like 25 minutes,
| directed at people in an aggressive enough manner that even
| the most peace-lovin' hippie wanted to throw fists."[4]
|
| Edit: here's the audio only version:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82j12E3cpS4
|
| It probably looked something like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcp8osYmU88
| Rochus wrote:
| thanks
| y-curious wrote:
| Huge Sun Ra fan, glad he gets a nudge in the media now and again.
| atentaten wrote:
| Nice read. I've been listening to Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders my
| entire life.
| tmountain wrote:
| If you like Sun Ra, you should also check out Phil Cohran, the
| trumpet player from the band.
|
| He only has a few records, but they are incredibly unique.
|
| Recommendations: "Phil Cohran and the artistic heritage ensemble"
| and "Armageddon".
| lfnoise wrote:
| I saw Sun Ra and the Arkestra sometime in 1988 at Liberty Lunch
| in Austin, Texas. I believe it was just a few days before the
| "Live at the Pitt Inn" album was recorded in Japan. One of the
| best concert experiences I've ever had.
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