Monday, December 31, 2007

Naked baby photos, no. 1

In the spirit o' year-end house-cleaning (and stock-taking), I offer up this "early" IJG video (made 5 years ago), which I just rediscovered in my vaults. Obviously, we were a kinder, gentler band back then -- those of you expecting the full-on sartorial buffoonery, circus skronk, or sprawling instrumental configuration of our more recent efforts will probably be disappointed. On the other hand, the production values on this thing (courtesy my good friends / long-time-supporters-of-the-group Matt Smith and Sarah Shute (and their friend Charlie Heath)) are much higher than anything I've been able to produce on my own. (Smith/Shute/Heath also edited/directed the final piece, though I have excerpted/pared it a bit here.)



The performance is decent -- especially given the fact that it took place on a Saturday morning (for reasons I don't fully remember). For those of you interested in the history of the early twenty-first century avant jazz scene in LA, the setting is Rocco in LA, which at the time was probably the most interesting venue for new music in the city (proprietor Rocco Somazzi has since had to pick up and move his presenting aspirations to other venues -- nowadays he mainly books at Cafe Metropol).

The tune is the aforementioned "Anger Management Classes," and the audio is a second or third live take in front of a casual audience of maybe ten people (we didn't have any time to mix or edit the recording, so the performance is pretty raw). The band: Evan Francis (alto), Cory Wright (soprano), Kris Tiner (trumpet), Garrett Smith (bone), Drew Hemwall (drums), Aaron Kohen (bass), yours truly (piano). Audio recorded by Michael Kramer.

Quite a serious buncha fellas, eh?

1 comment:

Kris Tiner said...

Whoaahh... we were so young and carefree...

Post the rest!