The Reagon Revolution

Sweet Honey In the Rock - Dream Variations

OK, look. I know I said July was done, but I'm kind of pissed off.

I got annoyed enough this morning to whip this entire post up -- from stream capture to remastered to your door -- in one afternoon.

See this lady here? She's one of my all time musical heroes and treasured realest-of-the-real ones.

Two weeks ago, at the age of almost 82, she passed away.

Almost nothing about the event, her life or her impact appeared in the mass media. At least not much that I saw.

In the two weeks since, there's been nary a mention, not of her or the beloved, towering a cappella group she founded over 50 years ago in Washington, DC.

As I've been down on antibiotics-and-steroid treatment for my ear stuff, I've gotten progressively more perturbed that this integral, multifaceted warrior woman has not received a scintilla of due.

Her music, both solo and with her band, has been of unquantifiably soothing solace to me since I first heard her when I was a teen.

Yes, Bernice Johnson Reagon did it all: OG Civil Rights activist, top-level song leader of that movement, founder of Sweet Honey In the Rock, Smithsonian-appointed music historian, ambassador of human rights worldwide.

And not much of a ripple when, after 60+ years in the thick of it, she leaves this mortal coil.

What a chef's kiss of a life, and what a culturally bereft, mnemonically-challenged country the US must truly be to gloss over someone of this passion, power and potency.

ROIOs involving her or Sweet Honey In the Rock are few and far between, but they were at one of the greatest benefit concerts of all time. In Madison Square Garden.

They have one song on the original No Nukes concert LP, but their whole contribution to those 1979 festivities is on (oh no! not that site again!), albeit in somewhat lossy-ish form like they all are.

I felt my ears were recovered enough and my anger was justified enough, so I spent all day working on this -- they were all lossless below 16 kHz, like any FM broadcast might be anyway -- that there be some token of remembrance for BJR as we end the month here.

Bonus tracks are from the Oakland Coliseum (surely the most storied multi-purpose entertainment facility of the 20th century, whatta venue and R.I.P. in just two months from now), at just the sort of Day On the Green vs. South African Apartheid event The Bay is famous for.

Sweet Honey In the Rock

"No Nukes"

Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future

New York City, New York USA

9.20-23.1979

01 introduction

02 Believe I'll Run On

03 A Woman

04 Echo

05 If You Had Lived

06 Cape Fear River Chant

07 A Woman

08 Dream Variations

09 As Long As I Have Breath In My Body

10 You Better Mind

11 Believe I'll Run On/As Long As I Have Breath In My Body (reprise)

12 Crying for Freedom In South Africa (bonus track, Oakland 1990)

13 State of Emergency (bonus track, Oakland 1990)

Total time: 51:45

Tracks 02, 06-08: Madison Square Garden, NYC 9.20.1979

Tracks 03-05: Madison Square Garden, NYC 9.21.1979

Tracks 09-11: Battery Park City, NYC 9.23.1979

Tracks 01, 12-13: Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland CA 6.30.1990

Track 08 is a poem by Langston Hughes

Bernice Johnson Reagon - vocals

Carol Lynn Maillard - vocals

Evelyn Harris - vocals

Louise Robinson - vocals

Nitanju Bolade Casel - vocals

Aisha Kahlil - vocals

Shirley Childress Johnson - vocals

Ysaye Maria Barnwell - vocals

with percussion by the ensemble

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis was lossless to 16 kHz, making this more or less equivalent to an FM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, denoised and slightly remastered by EN, July 2024
321 MB FLAC/direct link

So that's it for July for real, OK? I made it to the customary 5 despite my (debilitating, thanks for asking) physical issues and Bernice Johnson Reagon got a shred of the grain of sand on the metaphorical beach of human acclaim and gratitude she deserves.

I've been looking at August and I will return in a bit to make it fit. But I'm dreaming someone gets next to BJR/Sweet Honey through this little screed and concert mashup I made, and as someone who knew once said, nothing lights a fire like a dream deferred.--J.

10.4.1942 - 7.16.2024

100 Meter Freestyle: Don Ellis 90

Don Ellis Orchestra - Let's Do It This Way for a While (aka Eros)

Sorry I've been away but I'm kind of a mess, with otitis externa messing with my ears and anxiety filling my being on multiple fronts. I got drops for the swimmer's ear but the anxiety and sleepless nights (I've only slept every other night for a while) are ravaging.

I guess that look on Don Ellis' face stems from the thought crossing his mind that this odd-time-signature shit -- and having to have to pay a 600 gazillion-piece band to play it -- isn't exactly gonna provide much sense of financial security or a long, conventionally prosperous life.

What's funny is, the next picture, he's actually ten years younger than the previous one! What's not so funny is that he was dead soon after it was taken.

Music and art -- they're just about the only things humans do that makes us extraordinary and potentially transcendent of our darker, more primal impulses -- are some hard ass going, aren't they?

This world isn't exactly set up for much more than exploitation and needless, monetized suffering, so when it encounters real beauty or is asked to find the worth in something not named Godpaper, it tends to react with exponential hostility and destructive capacity, often at the expense of the creative people moving the mountains.

It's kind of sad that the experimental types and the fringe figures are often so little remembered, and I struggle on this page to not just make it about whatever cokebloated, Anglo-Saxon heterosexual Rock Star got spangled enough by the machine to be put on the King Biscuit Flower Hour.

Don Ellis -- born this day in 1934 -- is one of those cats.

Someone who strived so much to get beyond stagnant, rote forms, and who gave work to many struggling musicians when they'd nowhere else to pay the bills... it's not that it killed him, but his damaged heart was not helped by it all, I'm sure.

He passed at just 44 of cardiac arrhythmia, but the Real Ones can never die and as long as I'm here and not completely deaf, I don't think they should be forgotten and I'm gonna do what I do.

One of the things I seem to be in a phase of doing is going through these concerts on the Site That Had To Be Legally Stopped From Selling Them, and determining which ones can conscionably circulate.

Remember, these are technically lossy-sourced, although they often go lossless way higher in the spectral analysis than some Art Pepper show from 1981 that France Musique rebroadcasts, and then immediately hits the trading trackers.

Speaking of Art Pepper, he's in this band! In this wild two hours of metrical mayhem I snozzed off you-know-where that went lossless to 20 kHZ, even though the music only went to 18.

Don Ellis Orchestra

Great American Music Hall

San Francisco, California USA

4.23+24.1976

01 "French Connection" Suite

02 Slow Head

03 Palomar

04 Final Analysis

05 Do It Easy

06 Let's Do It This Way for a While (aka Eros)

07 Pussy Wiggle Stomp

Total time: 1:59:15

disc break goes after Track 03

Don Ellis - trumpet 

Jack Coan - trumpet

John Gross - reeds and woodwinds

Alan Kaplan - trombone

Ernie Carlson - bass trombone 

Sam Falzone - woodwinds

Ann Patterson - woodwinds

Art Pepper - alto saxophone & clarinet

Charles Black - baritone saxophone

Milcho Leviev - piano

Paul Keane - tuba 

Sidney Muldrow - French horn 

Darrell Clayborn - bass 

Dave Crigger - drums 

Chino Valdes - congas & percussion

Don Palmer - violin 

Pam Tompkins - violin 

Jimbo Ross - viola 

Karen Henderson - cello

plus intermittent vocals by the band

Tracks 01 & 07 are from 6.24.1976

Tracks 02-06 are from 6.23.1976

320/48k webstream from Wolfgang's Vault 

spectral was lossless to 20 kHz but only has music to about 18 kHz, so this is equivalent to somewhere between an FM and a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD audio, edited, repaired, tracked and slightly remastered by EN, July 2024
645 MB FLAC/direct link

If you're totally unfamiliar with Don Ellis and what he was doing, this show would be a real good place to start, featuring all the broad dynamics and counting -- for a drummer such as I,  he can be like going on a game show called Time Signature Jeopardy and being afraid to get the buzzer for saying 21/4 when it was 14/8 -- for which this Maestro of Meter was legendary.

That will likely do it from me for July; I apologize for the short month but I'm not feeling all that awesome and I think I need to chill. I will try to return on August 10th and resume things. But don't worry about me, just enjoy this blast of a performance of a cracking 20-piece orchestra under the direction of today's 90th birthday guy!--J.

7.25.1934 - 12.17.1978

Archives of Oblivion: Brian Auger 85

Brian Auger & The Oblivion Express - Freedom Jazz Dance

I'm taking time out from the ear infection I've developed over the last week -- and the absurd atrocity that would make Voltaire vomit called American "for profit" medicine -- to bring you this milestone birthday.

This guy began in the 1960s first as a session organist (he plays the iconic part on The Yardbirds' For Your Love), and then as the leader of one of the most beguiling English groups, with a full-on chanteuse -- she ended up marrying another keyboard player -- out front casting her spells.

First it was called Steampacket, and then The Trinity.

When the Sixties turned to the Seventies he formed his most enduring group, entitled The Oblivion Express, which as far as I know still occasionally plays.

Perhaps the leading British Fusioneer keyboard player of his time, his music does it all but specializes in the Jazz-Funk and R&B flavors.

Anyways here's this funked up concert that's been circulating from defective, skippy digifiles since the reasonable version of it fell out of the trading circles 20 years ago.

Luckily I had a CDR with the original iteration of it, from back when those were a thing and dinosaurs roamed the Rotary Phone Earth that was covered with red plankton.

Luckily until I listened to it and found out it was likely mixed for FM radio by 100 monkeys with Neve consoles, that is.

Ah, but then that's what the Sound Forge channel converter tool is for, isn't it? It was in dire need of not having the drums in the Bering Strait east of Siberia and the bass in mile high, downtown Denver.

A little stereo reshuffling, a little this, a little that, and now it should be in at least the best shape of its somewhat checkered existence thusfar.

Did I mention it's the pre-broadcast tape? These Ebbets Field shows are many from 50 years ago and I'd sure like to be turned loose in the legendary Ebbets archive of awesome, I know that is right.

Someday, someday... when pigs fly and the first thing they ask you in the Urgent Care office isn't your credit card information, it will happen.

Brian Auger & The Oblivion Express

Ebbets Field

Denver, Colorado USA

4.4.1974

01 introduction

02 Beginning Again

03 Don't Look Away

04 Freedom Jazz Dance

05 Happiness Is Just Around the Bend

06 Maiden Voyage

07 Compared to What/band introductions

08 Second Wind

09 Listen Here

Total time: 1:37:40

disc break goes after Track 06

Brian Auger - keyboards & vocals

Jack Mills - guitar & vocals

Barry Dean - bass & vocals

Alex Ligertwood - vocals & percussion

Steve Ferrone - drums

preFM reels of unknown origin, courtesy of agalli & mr. mags

edited and slightly repaired and remastered -- with channels rebalanced -- by EN, July 2024
402 MB FLAC/direct link

I have to chill for a minute and see what is happening with my ears, so I might be gone for a bit, I don't know. Or I might be able to keep on with the late great Steve Albini on Monday, not sure and I apologize but health comes first, last and always here in Falling Rome.

But never mind my miseries and just enjoy Brian Auger's 85th birthday today, born as he was this day in 1939.... why not? We're all headed for Oblivion anyway, right?--J.