Brötzmann Rarities (MP3)
[ There are 11 pretty wild MP3s hidden in this post. ]
My first encounter with free jazz giant
Peter Brötzmann happened more than 20 years ago, at the 1985
Total Music Meeting in Berlin. At the time I was a rather naive teenager visiting (West) Berlin, and I saw that
Wolfgang Dauner was playing at the Quartier Latin. I didn't know what to make of the name "Total Music Meeting" and had never heard of any of the other musicians who were playing that night, but I really liked Dauner, so I decided to go and let myself be surprised. And surprised I was. I had never really listened to free jazz before, so it was quite an experience to see
Phil Minton, Peter Brötzmann, and
Hugh Davies going berserk on stage, with lots of energy and no discernible rules or structure. At least that was the impression it made on me at the time.
I saw a couple more Peter Brötzmann concerts later, with more advance warning and probably less naivete, and at some point I discovered that his son
Caspar Brötzmann made some amazingly heavy, slow and dark music with his band
Massaker. I certainly preferred Caspar's music over free jazz, but one day I heard a track on the radio which was a duo of the two Brötzmanns, and it blew my mind. I should have immediately tracked down the album at the time, but for unknown reasons I didn't, and I eventually forgot about the whole thing until recently.
So then a couple of weeks ago, again for unknown reasons, I suddenly wanted to have this album, and didn't have any information about it. Fortunately we now have the Internet, Google, and
Soulseek to track down rare out-of-print albums. After a few false leads (some people mistakenly believe that it is called "The Vodka King") I eventually found it, and I offer you the whole album
"Last Home" here in MP3 form:
Die, Saurier, Die |
Talk To The Canoe Driver |
Last Home|
Little Man In The Boat |
Doozandazzy |
Yazzihamper |
Witch Hazel In The Dark Afternoon |
Fette Biester |
Tantarabobs. Recorded 1990 in NYC, it was released by the (unfortunately now defunct) Pathological Records label.
Along the way I found another amazing and rare recording of Peter Brötzmann,
Fred van Hove, and
Han Bennink, a 7" vinyl release on
FMP from 1973. It contains their (instrumental) version of the communist anthem
Einheitsfrontlied (United Front Song) by
Hanns Eisler and
Bertolt Brecht (English lyrics
over here). Listen to the MP3s at your own risk:
Side 1 |
Side 2. If you like this stuff, you'll love THE essential European free jazz album of all times,
Machine Gun (fortunately still in print), recorded in 1968 by the Peter Brötzmann Octet. It is the closest that music has ever come to open warfare.
By the way,
here is a rather interesting interview from 2003 with father and son Brötzmann, just before they played a show in France. They explain why
Last Exit and Massaker are gone for good, and that there are too many CDs out there. And some other stuff, but you'll have to read for yourself.
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/0...nn_rariti.html