“Weird” is one of those concepts which folks assume has an unambiguous, objective, binary meaning – like “wet” or “pregnant”. For example something either is or is not wet or is or is not pregnant. In the same way, people believe that things either are or are not weird – there’s no in-between (unless, of course, we apply the quantum situation described by Schroedinger, in which an object (say, a cat) occupies both states until it is observed, after which it falls into one or the other state allowing the original, unambiguous either/or definition and the object either is or is not. But I digress).
So, even though “weird” really is a subjective concept, many people think of it as objective, Schroedinger be damned. Some things simply are weird, and some aren’t. Early David Lynch movies, the grammatical structure of Choctaw language, and using a glazed donut as a hamburger bun are unequivocally and unarguably weird.
Of course, just because something is weird (i.e. early Lynch films, Choctaw, and donut burgers) doesn’t also mean that it is bad, or that nobody likes it. Weird may require a specialized taste, or only appeal to a select few, but there’s someone out there who will dig it. I mean, donuts as a hamburger bun doesn’t really sound great to me, but you may think it’s the best thing since adding bacon to coffee.
So it is with the music of Sun Ra. Especially the stuff he was creating from the early ‘60s to the mid-‘70s. A few folks dig it, but most people just find it weird.
Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy is a perfect example.
Side 1:
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Side 2:
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By the early 60’s Sun Ra underwent a change in his music, moving from more or less accessible jazz (such as in Jazz in Silhouette and Interstellar Low Ways) to a much more free, experimental style like in Cosmic Tones. In the process he also started using new electronic instruments and studio techniques to shape his sonic expression in newer and more bizarre ways.
The result is an album that, in many ways, predicts and anticipates the kind of psychedelic and experimental sounds of Zappa, Beefheart, Clinton, Fripp, Eno, and Bowie.
Cosmic Tones is one of those albums that can clear out a crowded room in less than four bars, leaving only those who are drawn to the obscure, strange, peculiar, odd, and creepy. Someone who needs to at least occasionally ditch the squares and let themselves experience something completely and utterly out there. Someone who is comfortable with subversive, alternative, and sometimes just flat out weird things. In other words, someone like me.
Every track on the album is a new adventure. The atonal reeds and seemingly un-related percussion of And Otherness sets the table for a trip into your own head. In comparison, the other two cuts on side 1, Thither And Yon and Adventure Equation sound almost like something by Lawrence Welk.Side 2 opens with the really groovy Moon Dance, which is about as normal a song as Sun Ra composed during the 60's - a wonderful bass & drum bonanza. The album closes much as it opens, with some heavy extraterrestrial vibes in Voice of Space.
For me, the real treat of Sun Ra is that, like a Kandinsky or Pollock painting, it somehow forces me to reflect inward. It’s like getting caught in the time-trip of some serious grass without taking a rip off a bong. The music is at once claustrophobic and liberating. This cat may not actually have come from Saturn, but when he gets into a groove, his music can take you on a trip round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition’s flame and back.
I guess the most concise way to summarize is to say I don’t know if this is any damn good, but I know I totally dig it.
Up next: Blues with a British accent
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