Vision Quest

If flying out to L.A. this year to see Jack in Complexity doesn't pan out, and it's highly unlikely it will, I certainly wouldn't protest checking out the Vision Festival in NYC this June considering that both Sam Rivers and David S. Ware are going to be there. Even though I own only one album by each of these guys just hearing these pieces makes me itch like mad to know how they pull these amazing sounds off live.

I'm especially interested in hearing Rivers' Big Band (June 14th 7:00) if only to experience a simulation of the madness that goes on in the fiery and free Crystals album which runs straight at you like a


warrior horde and swings you along on some of the most excitingly vertiginous hills and valleys that I've heard on a free jazz album in quite awhile at the time, I guess about 2 years ago when I first took it home from work. And swing it does, and throws down a touch 'o funk while they're at it, which as most cats know seduces me faster than an easy lay. I just found my copy after the move but alarmingly it has appeared to have lost it's CD jacket and it's got some dings on it that I fear may never be repaired. One of my projects for this week I suppose. Damn, I can't afford one of those bloody SkipDoctors right now. Do those things actually work, by the way?

I'm also a little concerned but not quite at freakout level yet that I haven't found my copy of David S. Ware's Freedom Suite, who will also be appearing at the Vision on June 18th 9:00 with the same

quartet from this album, especially with Matthew Shipp whose piano really seems to anchor this work to the earth and keep it from completely taking off into space. But this to me is a good thing, as I've always believed that the best of free jazz keeps things one half up in the air flailing like a kite in a thunderstorm while someone stays back on the ground controlling the strings. This is, by the way, Ware's interpretation of Sonny Rollins' 1958 "Freedom Suite" and what I enjoy the most about it is what feels oddly like that quiet, unexplainable "invisible data" in between the synapses, if that makes any sense. It reminds me in a way of that episode of The Simpsons when a man in a coffee shop is complaining about a woman's violin playing and Lisa explains "You have to listen to the notes she's not playing." and although I get the joke of the scenario, I could almost place the same analogy on the opposite end of the spectrum to this record, although Ware and Co. are hardly amateurs at anything they do. There's something vaguely subliminal locked into this piece, and I think that in part is what makes me keep coming back to it over and over, perhaps hoping to see that elusive white vase in between the black silhouette of two people facing each other.

Anyway, two very worthwhile CDs to explore. And all the more incentive to drag my happy ass up to NY again and get a taste of something bigger than myself for a change. And I'm not talking about the bagels at Ess-a-Bagel this time.