Friday, January 22, 2010

This Doesn't Swing! Call the Police!

It's Friday and things are slow here in Belltown, so I thought I'd pass along something that my pal Jim sent me. It seems that this American sax player named Larry Ochs was playing with his group, Drumming Core, at a jazz festival in Spain. During the performance, one particular audience member became so distraught that he called the cops to arrest Ochs and band. The original story is here. Larry and his guys play a kind of post-free jazz. It's not for everybody, but I really doubt whether they should be arrested for it. Me, I like his playing, but I can't get into his music. Here is what he sounds like:

Pardon the awful camera work. As you can see, there's somebody painting in back of Larry. Plus, there's an Asian guy looking bored in the middle of the stage for the first three minutes of this video. Now that's how you put on a post-free jazz concert! Like I said, it's not everybody's cup of tea, but should these guys be arrested for it? If that poor, distraught guy in the audience had any gumption, he should have sued the concert promoter. Why the heck did he bring the police into it? And how did the story get to the press? It was probably the Spanish cops themselves with their funny hats and machine guns trying to make the guy feel like an idiot. Well, it's nice that Larry can laugh about it. Jazz musicians go through a ton of crap, but being arrested for playing at a jazz festival shouldn't be on the menu.

1 comment:

Jim said...

I don't think we'll see this happen at Tula's any time soon, but I might be tempted to try it.