Thursday 20 November 2008

Sun Ra Arkestra.

We went to see this on Sunday night after working all day on that animation below and the night after the Stockhausen gig. Gravenhurst were playing too, but due to a complete useless fuckwad of a tape operator we missed it. Dumb. Gravenhurst are cool. Still Sun Ra. That should be sweet. Well it was to start with. Many black jazz performers come out on stage in there many, mythical, 1970s ideal of what the future is, sparkly hats and capes. Sunglasses seemed fairly important too. They started off doing a cool number that had plenty of noise all over the place and that sweet, sweet way in which everybody on stage sounds like they are juuuussssssttttt out of time with each other. Like everyone plays to a different metronome. Sun Ra is good at that.
Two songs to start about space. Sweet as.
Problem is, that then they turned into a covers band. They played Jazz and blues from a whole bunch of famous people who I am sure are wicked, but when you want to see some Sun Ra it doesn't really cut it. They did a couple more Sun Ra tracks at the end, but it wasn't enough to save the boredom in the middle of what was basically a good covers band wearing space outfits. I wanted more songs about space. More organ freak outs. If only the Ra was still alive.
No 'space is the place' or 'spaceways inc' in sight.
I could have saved the night by buying a Space is the place t-shirt, but I didn' cause I was saving money. I regret that now.

2 comments:

Lyndall-O said...

I regret that too. they were good t-shirts.

Greg said...

I'm amazed there wasn't more peer pressure of each other to get the t-shirts. Specially you cause I know how much you love space.....and as far as you're concerned it IS the place.