Re: Ornette Coleman

[ckk#@andrew.cmu.edu (Chris Koenigsberg)]

Someone told me they saw a new live Prime Time album in the local college
radio station's bin rack. Has anyone else seen or heard this? (maybe it was
Broken Shadows and they only thought it was new?)

For me, the first cut on Body Meta is the purest example of the revolution
that Ornette's "harmolodic theory" induces in music (electric rock, in this
case). The drums start a steady rock beat, the chunky rhythm guitar (Vernon
Reid) joins in, it sounds like maybe it's going to be a cheap "fusion" song,
and then WOW! the bass and other guitar (Bern Nix) come in, in what sounds
like the completely "wrong" key & time, blowing away the chinty rock feel
that was setup originally. And then, once the changes have cycled around, in
comes Ornette with a plaintive cry that defines, explains, calms down, and
satisfies everything - it makes sense now, in a way. From there, things open
out until every player is occupying his own space - independent yet
communicating and responding to one another. Beautiful.

Ornette will often go completely way out, into a zone unrecognizable in the
context of what everyone else is playing, and yet his riff then feels so
simple, so natural, so warm with emotional, that you can't help but say "OK,
OK, I believe it!"

I wish, I wish, I hope that someday I have enough of the architecture under
my command in my fingers and head that I can play out there and have you
believe it, too.