Liner Notes

Liner notes:

Re-releasing this material, a decade and a half after the music was recorded, gave me the opportunity (and the fun) of looking over the sleeve notes and the reviews that the LP releases elicited. In 1978 the band published the following text on the first of the two album releases of “Live.’

This music is dedicated to the liberation fighter of the World.

To be an artist it is necessary to express honestly what we see, what we feel and what we comprehend of the world in which we live.

Improvisation in music is a living, developing art form which seeks consciously or unconsciously, to confront society with a picture of the great turbulence breaking through to the surface as a result of the rapidly sharpening class conflict.

Liberation movements in Palestine, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Northern Ireland: the challenges to governments throughout Western Europe by growing numbers of workers - firemen in Britain, printers and engineers in West Germany and in America the miners - the international character of these movements demonstrates with increasing clarity the insoluble contradiction inherent in all social relations arising from private ownership of the means of production.

The old forms, structures and rules which hitherto governed the production of music have become ossified. New relationships enable us to bring our individual social and musical experiences to bear on the rich traditions of jazz and other musics; to break through the now suffocating restrictions of previous musical forms to play with an intensity to match the revolutionary crisis as it is expressed through us.

Far from being a rejection of form, improvisation provides a method through which new forms emerge. Collective improvisation is a conscious process of music making by a group, taking for its starting point the musicians’ own individual social and musical experience: developing by this process forms of expression unique to that group, which reflect constantly changing musical and emotional relationships.

Musicians who participate submit only to the discipline of collective playing, which provides an immensely rich basis for the most powerful individual contributions. We take full responsibility for this music in the individual sense for our own contributions and collectively by our responsibility to the group performance.

Collective improvisation is the process of revolutionizing music.

Our music must contribute to the clearing of the ideological fog necessary for the creation of a classless society based on human needs, and not on the destructive greed of the decaying, skeletal remains of the capitalist system.

But we would be fools to believe that this change can be achieved by music alone.

April 1978

Given the intervening passage of events a cynic might observe that ‘the more things change the more they remain the same’. Certainly, written today, such a text would demand that some of the place names be changed. And, I see now, that its distinctive polemical tone is a quirky hybrid of style that arose out of uneasy political alliances, and is very characteristic of its time. But of course there have been significant, not to say, monumental changes in world history with harrowing implications for the underprivileged, that make stylistic quibbles irrelevant. Meanwhile, Francis Fukuyama’s fertile, if mischievous, thesis that history has ended, suggests that the ideological conflict between communism and capitalism is over. And, that all political debate and action is now to be couched in liberal/capitalist terms. We are meant now to believe that it is only a question of degree in a fixed, albeit social, marketplace. But my reading of Marx sees his ideas developing entirely out of a response to liberal philosophy - his principal work was, after all, called ‘Capital’. Of course, Lenin, Stalin and Mao did not develop Marxism along these lines. Their own national histories and cultures affected their respective actions far more than the intimidating rhetoric of the political machines they, perhaps unwittingly, unleashed upon the world. Like many a socialist, I remember being at the cats tails end of many a verbal lashing justified by such quirky pseudo Marxist outpourings. Luckily for me my life was not at stake! But for sure the story is by no means over.

Maybe a CD booklet accompanying an example of an obscure form of music is not the place for such observations. But if not here, where? Given the marginalization of socialist debate and expression, we could remain cowed and change the rhetoric, or chicken out entirely. And, in the current Thatcherite apolitical culture, some might ask about the relevance of these things to, and in, our music. But even then, in 1978, there was criticism of our interest in political and social issues. Apart from a few ‘commercially helpful’ press reviews - extracts which appear on the back of this CD. Black Music and Jazz Review gave us five stars and engaged with our sleeve notes. Jazz Journal gave us guarded praise for the music but damned our sleeve notes as “muddled”, but irritatingly never explained how, where or why! Melody Maker really only liked the bass and drums and mis-spelt my name. Whilst, Time Out ventured to observe with some predictable foresight: “An album that deserves far more success than it will probably get.” And, more recently The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette (1992), gave us four stars and a general thumbs up, while noting that such extra musical issues had always had a place in my work. But the original sleeve note of ‘LIVE’ Vol 1 still reflects the general sympathies of the members of that band then, and I suspect, now.

What interest me most in this review of reviews is not any praise or the damning and casual dismissing of our work, to which expedient journalism usually succumbs. In some respects it is astonishing that reviews of such work get published at all. But there was one journalist in particular, Bill Henderson, writing then for Black Music and Jazz Review , who obviously thought long and hard about our work and raised almost as many questions and suggested even more narrative, that we had intended. For example, Bill suggested that “Nevertheless, the music can be appreciated without one being aware of its ‘politics’ or even disagreeing with them (although the further removed politically, the less likely this is).” What fascinated me, was Bill’s creative appraisal of the work - music and text. He assumed, reasonably, that the title “Fireman’s Acts’ related to our reference to the then long and acrimonious firemen's strike, he also recognized a ‘klaxon motif’ in the music. Actually, the title was as much inspired by the facial ritual of an inspection which the fireman made of the building on the night of our concert, and of course was also a pun on the word ‘axe.’ And, I’m still not sure where the ‘klaxon’ comes in! But who is to say that Bill’s reading was wrong simply because we didn’t intend or see it? Apart from the kind words about our playing Bill could sense that such music “can only work - in the free, totally open interaction between people.” This observation alone vindicates our rhetoric. The practice of our music meets and delineates our philosophy. (Perhaps it is at this point I should explain that all the pieces were completely improvised without any pre-determined structure or even discussion beforehand). Henderson continued, “It’s (i.e. our music’s) ability to reach the mass with the music, however, is more problematic. This is where the political action fully enters.” He concurred with us that such things cannot be achieved by music alone. But he did not damn us for having the gall to raise such issues. Everybody, no matter the mode of their living has a right, one might say an obligation to observe and comment upon the world. How else is any notion of democratic freedom to be realized?

Needless to say, this album exist on the periphery even of the marginalized world of jazz. But it has been modestly successful enough, critically and economically, to justify this reissue. So there is some sympathy with what we do and stand for in this world. It is an important part of the work to which we have devoted our lives. Perhaps this is justification enough for us to nurture it. In fact the whole artistic project, of which this album is but a part, is a celebration of life. (The tile ‘LIVE’ , by the way, rhymes with ‘give’). Maybe musicians like ourselves, risk censure by claiming that ‘art’ is an expression of life - and ‘possible lives’ - rather than a substitute or an anodyne for experience. More than any other music I know of, improvisation puts the musician at the heart of the matter. Face on and with no time for premeditated artifice: technique, dialogue and heurism are put to a fiery test in performance. And, for a musician to comment upon the aesthetic implications of this work also seems to be a dangerous activity. But I for one, (even if from time to time I am proved wrong) enjoy the skirmish and am determined not to be censored or cornered into self censorship. Any claim that there is no philosophy or politics in art leads, I suspect, to the negation of creative activity. Likewise though, the use of art and artists in the pursuit of political power is riddle with destructive compromises and paradoxes.

Eddie Prévost - March 1993

review : Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD

"Prévost's jazz origins are still quite clearly audible on 'Live', the album which inaugurated his own Matchless label, and one on which he dlivers, as a obstretrician might, one of the best recordings of this period of British free jazz.

Gold and Hawkins make a marvellous partnership, ranging from austere fury to jovial rave-ups which occasionally recall the more experimental Mingus's workshop bands. Gold in particular has a clear, emphatic signature, idiosyncratic enough to make one wonder why he hasn't recorded more often.
Prévost is one of the most articulate exponents of the music. He is author of a book called 'No Sound is Innocent' in which he argues the existence of an aesthetic in which music is inseparable from the relm of ideas and soclal exchanges. The quartet might seem conventioanlly distant from what he has done with AMM nd other groups, but it dies illuminate how generously he opens himself to situations in which hierarchis collapse. There is no 'front line' here, no 'rhythm section.' It is the equiivent of total football, everyone contributing at every level."

(four star rating)
'The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD' ed. Richard Cook and Brian Morton