The Moon, The Moon, There Goes the Moon
Jun 30th, 2005 at 7:37 am by Susie
When I was in high school, a couple of us decided we were going to visit Sun Ra’s house in Germantown. When we got there, we found out he was in Europe. But it was still a crazy musical scene, nonetheless, and we hung out for a while:
“We still get cats coming by here like it’s the old days,” said Mr. Allen, who had been spackling the bathroom ceiling. “I can’t run the place like that no more. It was different when Sun Ra was alive. He could take in all these nutty musicians and bring out the good in them, but I ain’t that talented.”
In those old days, the band lived communally in the house, where Sun Ra wrote songs and arrangements and rehearsed and recorded the band, often around the clock.
Hi all. Happened upon this site a few days ago via kos or atrios or the usual somesuch. I’ve been a daily visitor since - I really like the “tone”. Now it’s cinched. I work with a (musical) group in Vermont called Magic City. It plays the songs of Sun Ra with a very un-arkestra line-up (prepared guitar, viola, trombone, bass, drums, voice.) To have found a like-minded political site that links an article about Mr. Re, well… Im a goner. thanks
There was a wonderful mini-renaissance of Sun Ra about 6 or 7 years ago when the guy who ran 3rd St. Jazz in Philadelphia re-released about 50 of his albums, and ESP records re-released the three that he did for them. (Heliocentric Worlds 1 and 2, and Nothing Is.) Sorry to hear that the band didn’t get royalties from them. (For those who don’t know Sun Ra, the Heliocentric Worlds albums and Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy are a good place to start)
I used to see Marshall Allen playing for change on Chestnut and Walnut st. pretty regularly about 10 years ago. I got the impression that he needed the change. You’d think that the US would treat its artists better. Sigh.
I went to see the Arkestra about 30 years ago. We (audience and band) took the A-Train, but it went right through Harlem and ended up somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn. It was a wild night, and I remember it a lot better than many other concerts I saw at the time (no snarky remarks about illegal substances - that was the same for all concerts in those days). The good old days…