THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS – The Golden Palominos (CEL 6662 / LP-1983)

Label: Celluloid ‎– CEL 6662

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: France / Released: 1983

Style: Avantgarde, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Radio City Music Hall Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Mixed at RPM Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Design [Layout] – Jan Luss

Photography By – Thi-Linh Le

Engineer – Don Hünerberg, Martin Bisi

Engineer [Assistant At RPM] – Mike Krowiak

Mixed By – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Martin Bisi

Executive-Producer – Karakos, Roger Trilling

Producer – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell

Producer [Associate] – Arto Lindsay, Martin Bisi

Repetiteur [Vocal Coach] – Peter Blegvad

Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

side 1:

A1 - Clean Plate   (Fier, Lindsay) .............................................................................. 6:32

A2 - Hot Seat   (Fier, Noyes, Miller) .......................................................................... 5:13

A3 - Under The Cap   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................ 5:32

A4 - Monday Night   (Fier, Lindsay) .......................................................................... 6:29

side 2:

B1 - Cookout   (Fier) ................................................................................................. 4:38

B2 - I.D.   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................................... 6:45

B3 - Two Sided Fist   (Fier, Lindsay, Frith) ................................................................ 7:42

Musicians:

ARTO LINDSAY – vocals, guitar

ANTON FIER – drums, oberheim DMX, percussion

FRED FRITH – guitar, violin

BILL LASWELL – bass guitar

JOHN ZORN – alto saxophone, clarinet, game calls

NICKY SKOPELITIS – guitar on "Monday Night" / "I.D."

THI-LINH LE – vocals on "Monday Nigh''

MARK E. MILLER – vocals on "Hot Seat", turntables on "Hot Seat" / "Monday Night"

DAVID MOSS – percussion on "Clean Plate" / "Under the Cap" / "Two Sided Fist"

MICHAEL BEINHORN – drums and Oberheim DMX on "Hot Seat", piano on "Cookout"

JAMAALADEEN TACUMA – Steinberger bass guitar on "Clean Plate" / "Two Sided Fist"

ROGER TRILLING – tape on "Cookout"

The group first featured drummer Anton Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others.

Arto Lindsay / Anton Fier

For twenty years, the Golden Palominos have been musical chameleons, continually changing lineups and styles. The only constant has been drummer Anton Fier, whose vision and interests have steered the group through two decades of music making.

The Golden Palominos were formed in the early 1980s, as a joint project, by drummer Anton Fier and noise-guitarist Arto Lindsay. Fier came from Cleveland where he had played with new wave cult band Pere Ubu. In 1978, he left Ohio for New York City. Once there he moved through various bands including a band he formed himself, the Feelies and the Pedestrians. At the end of the 1970s, with Lindsay and John Lurie, he co-founded the Lounge Lizards, a band that played an indescribable combination of noise, rhythm, and jazz. “Actually, when I first started playing with the Lounge Lizards, Arto and I wanted to call the band the Golden Palominos,” Fier told Down Beat’s Bill Milkowski. “We liked the name but Lurie didn’t.” Lindsay, Fier said, was the reason he joined the Lounge Lizards. So when Arto left the band, Fier did too and decided the next step was for the two of them to form a new band together, which they were able to name the Golden Palominos.

The group’s first incarnation was as a super group of the late-1970s New York downtown improv scene. Its participants included luminaries such as saxophonist John Zorn, guitarists Fred Frith and Nicky Skopelitis,and bassists Bill Laswell and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. The music the band made was a marvelous combination of incongruous styles. On the one hand, the music was improvised, free, uncontrolled even. Lindsay, the Palominos de facto frontman, played chunks of noise on his 12-string guitar which he deliberately refused to tune and squawked out truncated, nonsensical lyrics, while Zorn was as likely to accompany the band with bird calls as with his horn. On the other, when the band played it locked into a throbbing, unrelenting funk groove driven by Tacuma and Laswell’s basses and Fier’s unerring backbeat.

The group gave a series of critically well-received concerts in the New York City area in 1982, and in 1983 released a record, simply titled Golden Palominos, on Bill Laswell’s Celluloid label. The New York Times lavished praise on the album. Down Beat called it “a masterpiece…an enormously important and satisfying album” and gave it five stars, the magazine’s highest rating.

If you find it, buy this album!

ORNETTE COLEMAN – Body Meta (LP-1978 / Artists House – AH 9401)

Label: Artists House – AH 9401 / Artists House – AH 1

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold / Country: Canada / Released: 1978

Style: Free Jazz

Recorded at Barclay Studios, Paris, Dec. 1976 / Mixed at Sound Ideas, N.Y.C.,1978

Artwork [Booklet] – Robert Rauschenberg

Artwork [Cover Backside] – Elizabeth Atnafu

Artwork [Cover Front] – Chief Z.K. Oloruntoba

Artwork [Cover Inside 1] – Barbara Hager

Artwork [Cover Inside 2] – Guy Harloff

Photography By [Artwork Booklet] – Wallace Litwin

Photography By [Artwork Cover] – Mike Hoeye

Photography By [Portrait] – James Hamilton

Engineer – Francis Maimay

Mastered By – Bob Ludwig

Mixed By – John Snyder, Kathy Dennis, Ornette Coleman

Composed By, Producer  – Ornette Coleman

Matrix / Runout: side a: AH9401-A AH-1-A

Matrix / Runout: side b: AH9401-B AH-1-B

This release can be found with least two different versions of the booklet. One with the Rauschenberg art and another (later? more commonly found) version with art by David Sharpe.

A1 - Voice Poetry ............................................................................... 8:10

A2 - Home Grown .............................................................................. 7:45

B1 - Macho Woman ........................................................................... 7:30

B2 - Fou Amour .................................................................................. 8:30

B3 - European Echoes ....................................................................... 9:25

Ornette Coleman – alto saxophone

Bern Nix – guitar

Charlie Ellerbee – guitar

Jamaaladeen Tacuma – bass

Ronald Shannon Jackson – drums, percussion

The establishment of Ornette Coleman's self-determining Artists House label and his electric double-trio Prime Time coincided with the release of Body Meta, which changed many of the business and musical contours of jazz in the mid- to late '70s.

It was an indisputable new music amalgam that Coleman could claim as his own, yet which sprang forth into the so-called M-Base music movement of New York City.

This album was the 1st ever to be released on the Artist's House label back in 1978, & that translates literally to the cover of Body Meta, a gatefold featuring 4 works by different artists, that one on the front is by a tribal leader, probably from when Ornette went to Morrocco to see the Jajouka musicians which inspired Dancing In Yr Head...

Staccato drums then guitars open the album on Voice Poetry, & it flows along brilliantly to feature this new band of guitarists Bern Nix & Charlie Ellerbee, bassist [electric that is] Jamalaadeen Tacuma & drummer Shannon Jackson for a couple of minutes before the arrival of the man himself. He is the star & his playing is as pure & soulful as it was back on the Shape of Jazz to Come, & in a way it's unfortunate that everything else gets buried underneath it after this but it works well. The comparisons to the Trout Mask Magic Band do make sense although this is not as cacaphonous & seemingly chaotic [Beefheart although being highly influenced by Coleman, like to only have himself allowed to improvise while his groups must stick strictly to what he composed & his personality is a bit more obsessive too], Body Meta is one of the rare things worthy of being played directly after that in-a-world-of-its-own masterpiece. Each track here is around 8 minutes which is enough time to explore without losing the listening audience. The next 2 tracks move along nicely in a similar vein whilst Fou Amour [i.e. Mad Love] is a ballad & the guitars are playing parts normally designed for a piano. European Echoes if I'm not mistaken was an older tune from the Golden Circle & is rather graceful but thankfully lets loose a bit on the outro, by which time I want to spin the whole platter again which I could do for hours on end. This is music of pure soul expression & deserves a lot of repeated listening, it's highly danceable/funky too. I would highly recommend it to anyone, for the body and the mind.

By Funkmeister G on April 17, 2001

Every track is different, Coleman's vision has a diffuse focus, but it's clear that things have changed. Even his personal sound is more pronounced, unleashed from shackles, and more difficult to pin down.


And of course, HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!

If you find it, buy this album!