ESP Disk: Search & Destroy

someone talk about randy burns! i'm assuming he's not the same guy that produced possessed's "seven churches" album.

And as a young Lester Bangs fan, I was happy to find (& still own) Contact High With The Godz, which I "like" in theory but never listen to, of course.

xpost:
I think they are all worth hearing at least once.
maybe at the listening station.

if i saw the esperanto album for sale at any kind of reasonable price and condition i'd buy it in a shot.

It's true the Pharoah Sanders is album is pretty poor by the standards of his Impulse stuff..

nickn beat me to it

(Not to derail the thread, but what's this "i'm in such a bad mood with Rhino tonight because of Nuggets 3" aboot?)

i've just seen the track-listing for their 'Nuggets 3' box set and i wish it was better. a lot better. i'm not excited about it at all and i was about nuggets 2 when i saw its' track-listing.

It's perhaps looking better with time. . .or is it?

Whose course?

42nd Street bu Barry Titus, which I bought knowing nothing about only because it was on ESP, is a must to avoid, though. Totally uninspired "singer-songwriter" crap.

Since ESP Disk is now poppin' out new discs again, as opposed to just being re-ished repeatedly by various labels, I thought I'd give this a bump.

Search: Talibam!, Flow Trio, Barnacled, Yuganaut, Hans Tammen, Norman Howard [!!!]
Destroy: Yximallooo [wanna like it. can't.]

Still need to hear: Totem, Naked Future, Speed Cheek & Ludovici

I have that Ed Askew record & would possibly trade it for a pop

LOL. Yeah, I'm not feelin' the Ed Askew either. Its badly overhyped due to ESP Disk association, IMO.

Snop Snitchin, I will trade you something for that first Ed Askew LP. lol @ being an ESP completist. (i like the record tho. i even like the second one that was eventually issued by de stjil.)

also, i love barnacled and i think talibam are sometime great live but i can't get so much into the recordss

I flirted w/ the ESP completist quest for some time, but then I played the Sweet Pie LP I'd paid quite a few bucks for. I was all: OK, well screw that! lol! Besides, I don't have that kinda discretionary income any more. The Custard Sucking Band disc rather toots the root as well, IMO.

i LOVE the custard sucking band! you're insane. what i got bored of was the endless lo-fi free blow outs.

Got it. Well, we are polar opposites on that point.

Found this in an old magazine I picked up recently:

http://i61.tinypic.com/141qsy0.jpg

No mention of the oral history book that came out over last couple of years. Been meaning to buy it.
Have enjoyed most of what I've heard on the label to some degree I think. Not sure if I need to hear the longer murkier Cromagnon tracks again but do love Caledonia.

The Manson lp was out on cd in its Lie The Love & Terror cult form as was asked at thread start. Unfortunately I lost my copy years ago

RIP Bernard Stollman: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204254034016661

RIP. what a label.

Ab-so-lutely. I think Bernard was a little bit of a rogue but, you know, but for him... I could list the records but I'd be here for a while. What I'm driving at is RIP Mr. Stollman and thx.

fascinating in-depth interview with Stollman from 2005 here:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/bernard-stollman-the-esp-disk-story-by-clifford-allen.php?&pg=10?page=1

AAJ: Well, at least for the improvisational spectrum of the catalog, you never referenced the term 'jazz' on any of them.

BS: There is a reason for that. It's because the musicians, at least the ones I knew, more than one, expressed a great disgust at the use of the term 'jazz' as a racist thing. It's not a music thing—if you play the sax and you're black, the word itself is so imprecise and racist in general. Duke Ellington, as you know from his autobiography Music Is My Mistress, he detested the word 'jazz.' He did string quartets, symphonies, musicals, and here they're summing him up as a 'jazz' artist, which is a profound insult because the word does not describe what he is doing. He was not alone; I found this thread among many of the musicians I knew who opened up to me and said they detested the word. I constantly tried not to use the word.

anyone read that oral history of ESP that came out a few years ago? i should get it...
http://www.amazon.com/Always-Trouble-ESP-Disk-Outrageous-Interview/dp/0819571598

Just thought I'd post this on a more label related thread than the reissues one I initially posted it on. Could be that bits of it are answered in things I haven't read in this thread.

I'd assume that with it being 50 years later (since the mid 60s heyday of the label) the latest version of the label didn't have him running it. MIght hope for more ethical treatment of artists etc & possibly some attempt to pay royalties. Though if Stollman stitched everybody up through lousy contracts they might feel they had no onus to do so.
Would hope it was being run on a different basis but it's still a record label.

I need to read that Oral History of the label. Apparently it does detail much ripping off.

I still love the idea that there was a label like that releasing the music it released in the 60s both jazz and leftfield rock stuff. Not sure who else would have been doing that prioor to the setting up of something like Impulse and I'm not sure if they got as weird.
Would think Coltrane and those artists he endorsed would have a pretty assured market by the time he signed to the label.
& maybe you needed something like ESP to act as a springboard to get at least some recognition for artists. But I don't know who else was around at the time. & maybe ESp was more recognised because of the weirdo lps on it from the white rock or whatever scene whereas a black underground label would have only been known in certain circles and not broken out of those at least until crate diggers years later inspired labels to rerelease things. I don't know.

There were other labels putting out some of the new music at the time. Fontana put out stuff by the New York Art Quartet, Marion Brown, The New York Contemporary Five, and the Jazz Composers Orchestra. Savoy did a number of releases as well: Bill Dixon/Archie Shepp, Marzette Watts, Marc Levin, Sun Ra, Robert Cleve Pozar, Ed Curran. Debut put out an early Ayler record, in addition to European labels that released some of his work. And in 1966, Milford Graves and Don Pullen started SRP (Self-Reliance Project) to put out their At Yale University and Nommo duo records.

So, the springboards were already there. And while the ESP catalog added significantly, I think it's likely something else would have taken that spot (for one thing, the Jazz Composers Guild was in the process of trying to establish their own collectively-run label).

Don't forget Sun Ra's El Saturn label

Actually I think Impulse! predated ESP (Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard came out in 1962, first ESP was Ayler's Spiritual Unity which came out in 1964)

There was also BYG Actuel but they came a bit later

Coltrane was Impulse's most "out" artist until he convinced Bob Thiele to sign Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler. BYG Actuel started in '69, and got its impetus from a Paris-based festival to which a bunch of American artists traveled, and then wound up sticking around for a while. And they were even more notorious than ESP for not paying anybody.

Indie labels not paying their artists, who'd've thought it?

Cool beans, hope Rolling Stone does something like this, maybe in Fricke's Picks?
http://www.stereogum.com/1796816/remembering-bernard-stollman-10-essential-esp-disk-albums/franchises/list/

a bummer to hear that musicians felt screwed by esp. such a weird thing - like, how much money could a lot of those records ever make? maybe over the years, it'd accrue, I'm not sure. and the nytimes obit says that the pearls before swine record sold more than 200,000.

but like, if Stollman hadn't been there, would someone have put out something like Spiritual Unity? Like, that record (as we know it anyway) wouldn't exist if he hadn't thought it was important.

True, and since the beginning, or very early on, musos were urged to think of records as promotional devices, cos most make their real money on the road, if at all). Al Jolson had hits in 1900s and/or 1910s, but quit because expected to get paid, imagine.

Also for the record, just one recent first-hand account of being ripped off by Stoleman, several times, although at least one could have been avoided (read comments too)(incl. by Pat Thomas, who sounds like PT of Light In The Attic)
https://www.facebook.com/peter.stampfel/posts/962826580414551

Most people didn't have means to put out own records; Sun Ra made friends with owner of a pressing plant, but how many even had possibility of doing that? (The guy let him put in orders way under minimum etc)

if Stollman hadn't been there, would someone have put out something like Spiritual Unity?

Probably. A European label had already put out a record of Ayler's, and was getting ready to release another by the time Spiritual Unity came out.

Another question might be, what if Stollman had never attended the October Revolution In Jazz? That's where he signed the bulk of the label's roster, and likely the first time he (and many others) realized that a loyal and significant audience for the music existed.

xp well, i guess i mean, like *exactly* that record - stollman was there to document ayler at that very moment, which I think is pretty key when it comes to musicians like that. just with so many of these obscure/great/weird records, i always think that the guy putting up the cash could've just been like "oh man, what am i doing, i should NOT do this" and boom, we wouldn't have this amazing piece of art. ayler would've recorded and released things, yeah, but we wouldn't have Spiritual Unity in its exact form... i don't know, just thinking out loud here.

Don't think *imports* of underground jazz and other genre mutations would have had same early effect; ESP releases got some reviews and music junkies finding them more quickly than if weirdo imports (which had even less reliable distribution in early 60s than ESP did, judging by testimony of even older friends & other music junkies)