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"Don't tell me I can't lose what I don't have, because I can lose everything I want".
"And I want you".
Could it be any clearer than that...
For the series: who remembers? A moment of madness in its own right, that debut. Neither more nor less. That is, the debut of someone named K.H. (who was he...?). Entrepreneur, fixer, jack-of-all-trades, skilled navigator of vaguely ambiguous environments between the original Bronx and the musical Manhattan that in '81 (more) mattered. A depraved Piazzolla, he who had spun Piazzolla’s records over and over relentlessly and could now say he knew Piazzolla almost as well as he did his own soles, Puerto Rican blood and an still uncertain artistic (?) future as a conga player from infamous lowlands, Cuba and the Antilles seen from the metropolis. The version between the perverse and the lunatic of Ray Barretto, for those who have the good will to remember that good soul of Ray Barretto, since now no one pays attention to him anymore except for some old jazz encyclopedia left to collect dust on the shelves of any bookstore. Only, when Ray wanted a drummer, he called Steve Gadd. He, Kip, no; but how, you want your beautiful intriguing fusion of jazz/latin/salsa/mozambique and you don't call someone like Steve Gadd to play, who can play on certain things with his eyes closed...? No. Better Anton Fier. And there you go, or so I think. And on bass either Bill Laswell or Jamalaadeen Tacuma, naturally. And on guitar... no, never mind because I already get it, there he is, there he is exactly who I expected on a record like this... that ricketty bespectacled neurotic with a passion for Brazilian music, in fact he himself is half Brazilian, that joke of a man that everyone in N.Y. knows for having played in that group where there was also that Japanese woman a meter and 20 tall who played drums or at least tried to, let’s put it this way - and he "played" the guitar, but let’s put quotes around that because "playing" would already be a big word, more than playing it he assaulted it and drew something that had never been heard and resembled the wailing of a beaten stray dog or the last words of a jammed washing machine on its last legs. And just to make it more chic, to the bespectacled guy we even add that other crazy Englishman who played with Enrico Mucca and made that groundbreaking record with the Befana stocking on the cover, ah how can we forget it. But there's more.
And what else do you want? I want an alto sax and a tenor sax, first and foremost. First one and then the other? Yes. Yes, but also no. Yes, but also both together. And I want you, just you, you who goes by the name Teo and last name Macero, who knows a thing or two about jazz, to blow into that tenor. But this isn't even enough for me, unless you also bring along Dave Liebman’s soprano, and then we can start talking. And some musicians from Rio and its surroundings, but the bespectacled one must have already thought about that, because he knows his way around surdos and stuff like that. And then? Then I want a woman. Not just any woman, since I can have any woman anytime anywhere anyhow I want, the rest is talk. I want someone like this Lisa Herman, who can blurt out these four ramblings I scribbled down, whether senseless or morally questionable doesn't matter. Then I want a woman, actually I want two. I also want Carla Bley, and here I aim high, aim high because only someone with that French accent of hers can make this "India Song" night-club version something grand, something special, something unforgettable. Unrepeatable? Also that.
But as I said at the beginning, this was just a debut.
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