forgot about ra

should always be mentioned in conversations about the synthesiser



feel like he is Rev's lost brother, especially  here



Disco 3000 is still my favorite, taped off Stubbsy back in the day



do you know, I've seen Sun Ra and the Arkestra twice?



once in  late 1985 at the Fridge, Brixton...  just amazing... the full procession of the band through the audience in all their finery

and then, once again, in 1989  at the Knitting Factory - not quite as amazing, but still a grand sight and sound



and then - pinch myself in disbelief at the thought - around about that time I actually had an audience with the great man

it is really rather unbelievable to contemplate - i mean, it's a bit like having interviewed Miles Davis or Coltrane, or - in non-jazz terms -  Stravinsky or Stockhausen  -  these would be equivalent figures in terms of 20th Century modernist out-there-ness....

but there I sat for a couple of hours, in a New York hotel, listening and taping, and I do not believe getting in so much as a word edge-wise

and - what's truly absurd - then having to edit it down to be a third-of-a-page featurette for a section of Melody Maker called Sidelines generally dedicated to up-and-coming bands.

an outrage!

(although in mitigation, I'm not sure NME or Sounds or Select would have given him any space at all by that point - MM  was pretty much alone in holding fast to the cover-everything spirit of the golden-era music press)

(still, in the early 70s, Melody Maker would have - and in fact did - give Sun Ra a double-page spread)