It came in a review of Back to the Bus Babyshambles, a set chosen by members of the well-known British pop group Babyshambles, as representative of the tracks they played on their band bus. This compilation included, alongside tracks by Stone Roses, The Clash and Bert Jansch, ‘Aberdeen Angus’, a tune of mine first recorded in 1969 on Down Another Road, long before any of the band were born.
A subsequent website review praised ‘the Jazztastic Graham Collier’ but try as I might I can’t warm to it as a description of what and who I am. However, the review continued with mention of my ‘amazing drummer', in this case an adjective I could agree with, as it was my long time colleague John Marshall. Subsequent investigations as to how ‘Angus’ had turned up on the CD showed that John had played the track to one of his students, Babyshambles drummer Adam Ficek. Adam was struck by the piece and the playing, and included it in the album with the comment that ‘This is the stuff before British jazz went wrong. Emotional, raw.’
Now is not the place to look at whether – or when - British jazz has gone wrong, but a chance to introduce some actual music into this blog, and to show how my music has developed since that 1969 recording – and hopefully not gone wrong in the process.
‘Aberdeen Angus’ was written in 1967 as an answer to a question from, of all people, Barry Guy who was, briefly, a student of mine. He asked why all modal tunes had to be in a minor key – which was almost always the case. I took this as a challenge and found a pattern using two major chords, which became the basis for what subsequently became know as ‘Aberdeen Angus’. It was first performed in Ronnie Scott’s Old Place by my 12 piece band, with the title coming from Aberdeen in Scotland, the home of Jimmy Philips, the first featured soloist, and of a specific breed of cattle found in that area. (In similar vein, ‘Molewrench’, one of the tunes on Deep Dark Blue Centre, was named when a letter from the hometown of the featured soloist, trombonist Nick Evans, arrived franked with the phrase ‘ship through Newport, home of the Molewrench’.)
As we shall see in a subsequent blog I later realized the tune’s potential as a vehicle for the more open, collectively-improvised approach that I was then developing, but when I arranged ‘Angus’ for the 12 piece and for the Down Another Road recording, the melody and its accompanying counter-line were played as written. In the expected way, solos followed, and the piece concluded with a repeat of the theme (in this case the first half only).
Complete version from Down Another Road
featuring Harry Beckett and John Marshall
For other music from this album, and the complete Songs for My Father and Mosaics, see the first BGO compilation.
In the liner notes to Down Another Road I had said that once ‘Aberdeen Angus’ has been given to the band, it is ‘out of [the composer’s] control and sometimes develops, because of the band’s performance, into almost a different animal’. In his review the much respected critic Charles Fox used the phrase ‘participatory democracy’ about contemporary composers, as opposed to earlier bandleaders who led their bands ‘like feudal suzerains’. He referred to my comments on Angus, adding ‘it may be a different animal, but it always has its owner’s name on the collar’.
This version of ‘Aberdeen Angus’ was performed many times in the late 60s and through the 70s by my own band at various concerts. After a few years in the cupboard, the tune returned to my traveling library when, as I said above, I realised it’s real potential. This will be shown in some extracts from subsequent performances to be carried in a later blog.
In Jazztastic, my blog on April 15th, I discussed the original version of ‘Aberdeen Angus’, recorded on Down Another Road in 1969 and how that track had been included, alongside tracks by Stone Roses and Bert Jansch, in a compilation of tracks listened to on their tour bus by the British pop group Babyshambles .
As I said then, the tune was performed many times in the late 60s and through the 70s by my own band at various concerts. There is a very interesting performance (of which I have a very bad recording) from the Camden Jazz Festival a few weeks after the Down Another Road version where the rhythm section went into 3/4 for the bulk of the piece, which opened up the spatial aspects of the tune. This is what used to happen on gigs and showed – as Miles also did of course – that the tight rhythms of rock, of bebop, are not always necessary.
The articulation of these ideas – as opposed to just doing them – led to my decision to bring ‘Aberdeen Angus’ back into the travelling library after some years of leaving it sitting on the shelf. Somewhat belatedly perhaps, I realised that what we had been doing with it as a sextet could be expanded to larger groups, with the motifs being used as anchors of a performance to produce a more open, collectively-improvised approach.
How this worked – and how different groups of musicians approached the piece differently - can be seen in these two extracts from student performances. The first is from the opening to the performance on Adam’s Marble, a record made in Israel by a combined group of Israeli and British students. As I said in the liner notes ‘Its revival for this project has acted as a welcome reminder that there was an inherent openness in such pieces, a precursor of the style that now dominates my writing.’
The full performance is available on Adam’s Marble and as a download from iTunes and eMusic. The complete version can also be included free of charge in recognised blogs courtesy of IODA’s Promonet scheme.
After the performance in Israel the tune was subsequently played by various bands around the world in workshop and concert performance. The second extract is from a performance – unmastered I’m afraid – by the Mannheim Conservatory of Music Big Band in 2000. The band was more restrained in the collective than most other bands I worked with, but they built up the opening collective dynamically, using the written motifs in an individual way. The written music will be found in the Jazztastic blog below.
Interestingly these two performances, indeed all the performances using this approach, lasted around nine minutes. This is some proof that what I call ‘jazz form’ in the jazz composer book exists.
The most recent appearance of ‘Aberdeen Angus’ – where the motifs are used in a much freer way over a new version of the rhythm pattern - has been as part of Forty Years On, a relook at pieces written during my career. This can be heard on directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, a new double CD and the piece is among those discussed in my new book, the jazz composer, moving music off the paper. A free full length download of this audio, and the music used, can be found by clicking on the title above.