--Cont. (Interested in the influences part 3)

So all in all I'm a real primitive who writes with an acoustic guitar, a notebook, a pen and a mono cassette recorder.

    When I was at Countesthorpe College when I was 14-19 I heard things like Karlheinz Stockhausen and liked the conceptual element of that a lot..and I knew of John and Yoko and Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, and Terry Reilly, "A Rainbow in Curved Air" and "In C" - I once even took part in a performance of "In C" on the glockenspiel of all things!

    Erik Satie fascinated me too, it was a while before he got picked on by TV commericals and so on.

    I heard people like Cecil Taylor early on - as a pianist he was playing the cracks between the keys so to speak - and got into Miles Davis and John Coltrane, the whole 'sheets of sound' concept - and adored an album I picked up for 50p at a Woolco store "(Turn it Over)" by Tony Williams Lifetime - Tony with John Mclaughlin, Jack Bruce and Larry Young - Young was just the most radical Hammond organist ever and the music was so heavy, heavy in the sense of HEAVY not heavy rock, I mean HEAVY HEAVY.

    That's how Annette Peacock made so much sense to me when I heard her, and, in 1980, when I saw and met Linder Sterling and Ludus.

    If I'm seeming TOO smart TOO hip lol - well I loved my Yes and ELP too lol..I've still got a lot of time for "Tales from Topographic Oceans"!

    People might think I'm a folkie singer-songwriter but I can feel those influences in me all the time.All chords and harmonic complexities come down to one note of melody, one word of lyric at a time.

    Hmm, dunno if that's much of an answer or not but thank you again Wes…

Posted March 23rd, 2007 08:14 AM by McD’s Guy (Wes)            

Thanks. I was pretty sure that you were standing on a solid musical foundation, but the details are illuminating. Thinking about it more, tho’, I realize that the influences don’t necessarily translate into one’s doing things in a particular way, creatively. (Continued on next page--)