Favourite stoned listening

'Favourite stoned listening included electronic music by Luciano Berio; the IBM computer singing 'Daisy, Daisy'; John Cage's Indeterminacy - some stories were longer than others, but he read each one in two minutes, some speeded up, others very slowly; a two-volume Folkways recording of a Japanese Zen ceremony - on one track a bell rang once a minute, and it was always great when it finally rang; and lots of the latest squeals and shrieks from the ghetto: Albert Ayler's Bells and Spirits Awake; Ran Blake; Pharoah Sanders; Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra (photo above); Eric Dolphy's honking bird imitations; Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet: two reeds, two bassists, two drummers, two trumpets, thirty-eight minutes of spontaneous collective improvisation with no preconceptions' - Barry Miles recalls stoned listening with Paul McCartney in the out-of-print but not out-of-mind In the Sixties.

Now playing - The Brad Mehldau Trio's take on Nick Drake's River Man from Art of the Trio, Volume 5. Nick was no stranger to stoned listening, more here.
The book actually misspells Pharoah Sanders by adding a 'u' to his surname and also says Ron not Ran Blake, I've corrected the errors in the quote. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Beatle to Berio to Boulez to birthday boy

Pierre Boulez was born on March 26, 1925. Quite obviously my photo is not of Boulez, but this path leads to him. The photo was taken at the Italian Institute in London in 1965, Paul McCartney is talking to Luciano Berio and between them is Barry Miles who was a key figure in the 60s counterculture. The photo comes from Miles' memoir In the Sixties which places Berio, Cage and others alongside better known icons of the decade and is one of the best books on the period. Like so many good books today it is out of print, but is still available if you search.

One of my favourite Berio CDs is the 1984 Erato recording of his Sinfonia with the New Swingle Singers and Orchestre National de France conducted by birthday boy Pierre Boulez. The Sinfonia is the composer's best-known work and blends Samuel Beckett, Martin Luther King, Claude Levi-Strauss and, of course, Mahler in Berio's unique style.

Barry Miles went to Cirencester Grammar School where his music teacher was Peter Maxwell Davies. In the Sixties describes how Max invited older boys back to the converted apple loft where he lived to drink claret from eighteenth-century goblets, and how, when required to play the piano for the hymns at morning assembly, Max placed a lighted candelabrum on top in the style of Liberace. Miles' other books include an excellent biography of another counterculture figure Allen Ginsberg, read more here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk