LITM Extra - Kiss Me Again: Arthur Russell pt.6 [excerpt]
Love is the Message: Dance, Music and CountercultureShow Notes
This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the full show, and dozens more like it, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod to join.
We made it: what started as a ten-minute conversation and became a six episode mini-series finally reaches it conclusion, with the 1978 release of Arthur Russell’s Kiss Me Again. Jeremy and Tim conclude the genealogy of this epic track, detailing it’s recording, dry runs in the club, how the record was sold to the punky Sire Records, and how the Arthur came to put together the players. Friend of the show Nicky Siano gets an extensive mention as the record's co-producer, and his club the Gallery plays host to its first outings. Tim and Jeremy compare notes on how Nicky’s aesthetic differed from David Mancuso’s, share the story of how Arthur came to begin dancing at the Gallery, and explore his queerness both in contact with the dance floor and with his friend and mentor Allen Ginsberg. Elsewhere in the episode the guys ruminate on soft rock, spend a bit longer talking minimalism, and detail Arthur’s ill-fated trip to Italy to join Le Orme…
Tracklist: Nirosta Steel - Lost in Music Arthur Russell - Don’t Forget About Me Allen Ginsberg - CIA Dope Calypso Le Orme - Canzone D’Amore Arthur Russell - Oh Fernanda Why Barbara Pennington - Twenty Four Hours a Day Desmond Child and Rouge - The Night was Not
More from Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture
In this episode we conclude our survey of 1970s spiritual jazz with some lesser known cuts from the canon. Several of the tunes here were once hard-to-find collectors items, but the renewed interest in this body of work has led to reissues and an enlarged audience for these awesome pieces. Tim and Jeremy discuss the various religious sources on the practitioners of spiritual jazz, from Buddhism and Hinduism to African and Gospel influences. They unpack the problems with the term ‘spiritual’, consider this music’s utopian horizons and conduct a little reception history of how this sound lost and found an audience.
This is an excerpt of a patrons-only episode. To hear the full thing, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.
Today we’re taking it back to the early 70s as we begin a mini-series on spiritual jazz. Psychedelic, cosmic, astral: all words associated with a set of releases somewhat maligned at the time but now firm favourites on our turntables and across the globe. Tim and Jeremy cue up Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Lonnie Liston Smith and of course the great Alice Coltrane for a journey down the streams of consciousness. They examine the genealogy of the term spiritual jazz and the pre-history of some of its early progenitors, dig into the the various belief systems of universal love and peace, examine the Indian influences on both the music and the metaphysics, and give some time to the looming figure of Miles Davis in all this. Plus: an unexpected visit from Louis Armstrong. Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod Loveisthemessagepod.co.uk Produced by Matt Huxley
This is an excerpt from a patrons-only show. To hear the full thing, plus dozens more like it, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod to sign up.
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