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Concerts of 2012

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Here’s some kind of list of the most memorable concerts I attended this year. (By the way, you won’t find a list of albums of the year here. I hardly ever listen to recorded music any more; increasingly, music to me means live music.)

It’s been an excellent year for my kind of music in Vienna, and shows by The Walkabouts, Tindersticks, Shearwater, The Cherry Thing and Bruce Springsteen might all have made the top ten on a different day. I was also gutted to miss, for one reason or another (work, illness, domestic commitments) many shows which I was looking forward to, including those by Brötzmann/Lonberg-Holm/Nilssen-Love, Death in June, Broken Heart Collector, Bulbul/Tumido, The Thing, Kern & Quehenberger, Sonore, Nadja, Josephine Foster, Double Tandem, Kurzmann/Zerang/Gustafsson, Glen Hansard and A Silver Mt Zion, not to mention the entire Konfrontationen festival.

A few of the concerts listed here have links to the reviews I wrote at the time, but most of them do not. This is partly because I haven’t had time to write those reviews, but mostly because it’s getting harder and harder to keep this blog going, to the point where I’m considering giving it up altogether. Very few people read these pages, and of those who do, only a few bother to leave comments. Those people, and they know who they are, have my eternal gratitude; but it’s rather disheartening not to be making more of an impression on the wider world.

In chronological order, then:

1. Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach, Barbican Centre, London
2. Codeine, Szene Wien, Vienna
3. Peter Brötzmann’s Full Blast, Chelsea, Vienna
4. Anthony Braxton, Jazzatelier, Ulrichsberg
5. Peter Hammill, Porgy & Bess, Vienna
6. The Thing, Blue Tomato, Vienna
7. Marilyn Crispell/Eddie Prévost/Harrison Smith, Blue Tomato, Vienna
8. Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Martinschlössl, Vienna
9. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arena, Vienna
10. Swans, Arena, Vienna

Marilyn Crispell/Harrison Smith/Eddie Prévost, Vienna Blue Tomato, 4 November 2012

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The Blue Tomato in Vienna is thirty years old this year, an anniversary well worth celebrating. Ken Vandermark has described it as one of the best jazz clubs in the world, and who am I to disagree, especially given the number of incredible gigs I’ve seen there over the years. Going there with Jandek to see The Thing was an especially memorable occasion, but there have been many others. My first visit to the Tomato was for the legendary (and now, it seems, defunct) duo of Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink in 2007, and most of my evenings there since have included one or more of Brötzmann, Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson and Paal Nilssen-Love in some combination or other. Here was something very different, though: to mark the 30th birthday celebrations, and also the tenth anniversary of the Soundgrube piano festival, a trio featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell in collaboration with AMM percussionist Eddie Prévost and British saxophonist Harrison Smith.

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Letter to The Wire, October 2006

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Thanks very much for the AMM Primer. A shame, however, that in an otherwise comprehensive survey, Philip Clark couldn’t find room for Evan Parker’s collaborations with Prévost (Most Materiall) and Rowe (Dark Rags), both of which are essential.

Clark signs off his article with the line “with AMM a duo again, the game is still afoot”, but sadly that was not the message I took home from their concert at the 2005 LMC Festival. Prévost didn’t have his full drum kit with him, and spent most of the evening morosely bowing a couple of cymbals. The trite inclusion of what sounded like sampled radio sounds seemed to be an acknowledgement of Rowe’s regrettable absence. Guest David Jackman brought little to proceedings, and for the first time at an AMM concert, I was bored. Perhaps, after 40 years, it is finally time to put the beast to sleep.

Returning to the subject of Parker, Brian Morton refers, in his review of Parker’s Topography of the Lungs, to the “much discussed falling out” between Parker and Derek Bailey. Strange, since although I have seen many references to this feud, I have never, in The Wire or anywhere else, read an account of exactly how, when and why the two men fell out. Far from being much discussed, this subject appears to be the elephant in the room of UK free improv.