Sitting here at home this early sunday evening listening to some early seventies bootlegs with Miles Davis.
Not only that it's winter solstice today, also the music makes my mind goes spinning and remembering.
In 1973 both Yan and I went to gymnasium, as well as our close friend TC3, the vivid caterer. On saturday mornings we tried to earn some extra money by working as mail-men substitutes, carrying out letters to different parts of our city.
Yan and I were working in the central parts, TC3 in the northern, where we all also lived. At the same place TC3 worked was another substitute, let's call him Hoffe. He was 4 - 5 years older than us and had some very interesting records we could borrow and some of them bacame some of the most influential in our lives as listeners.
One of these records was 'Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East', recorded june 17 - 20 1970 and released the same year as a double LP set, with sidelong edited versions of each nights concert and titled Wednesday Miles, Thursday Miles, Friday Miles and Saturday Miles, all in the already classic Miles "I don't care a shit what the fuck you call the tracks" Davis manner.
Sometimes in may or june 1973 we borrowed it from Hoffe and put it on the grammophone and thought it was terrible. Just chaotic noise and irregular sounds, none of which we liked. It was put aside.
A few weeks later we all were at a heavy party (and let's leave all told memories from THAT to another biography) up the coast. They day after both Yan and me and an undescrible hangover and was sure we both should if not die at least not survive (?!?!). We needed a rest (all the others from that party went out fishing with someone's fishingboat).
We went back to my parents place, where I lived.
The regular behaviour was always to put on some music when at home, but this time I just couldn't find anything suitable to put on as a soundtrack to our poor souls.
What's suitable to chaos? (This was before Merzbow and the other noise-artists)
Then I saw the Miles at Fillmore record and putted it on and laid down on one of the two sofas not already occupied by Yan.
And Miles and Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland and Steve Grossman and Airto Moreira just turned our minds on and both Yan and me look at each other from our opposite sides of the room with big eyes and in between the terrible headache we both shouted out: This isn't bad at all! This is exactly how we feel! This is real soul music!
Then we probably both fell asleep and I remember myself just getting up to change LP sides over and over again.
This was an important moment in our lives when we converted from Don't Like It to Like It A Lot. Our minds became opened up.
From this point there wasn't almost any music we couldn't stand any longer because it was too demanding.
A couple of weeks later I bought Miles' 'Live/Evil' which I think is a better record, but the Fillmore one was the Important one.
Hoffe? Two and a half years later I moved to my first own apartment in some rough house half the way to the central part of the city. It was my brothers OneRoomPlusKitchen. He and his then girlfriend, now wife, just moved two gateways to a bigger apartment. Their closest nighbour was Hoffe. I didn't see him much, just met him a couple of times in the foodstore and was impressed when he sometimes whistled some Charlie Parker solo note by note. He was a jazzman.
Now on the stereo is a Miles' boot from 1973 with Mike 'Finger' Henderson on bass and Al Foster on drums, two other of my Miles' idols. But that's another story.
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