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1.
Introduction 00:40
2.
3.
4.
Evidence 01:25
#17 "evidence" for penny if it were just you, just me, or as monk would have it, justice would be served but our sentence is not so short & our courtship's been so long—oh, if it were just the 2 of us, to start a new life together, but let the record indicate, the evidence is piled up all over town— my older daughter living here with me, my younger with her mother, your older daughter over with your mother & the little one holed up with you— a chord structure under pinning whatever melody or song we can make of it— not just us, baby, but the fine fine thing fate has made of us —detroit june 24, 1982
5.
#3 "suburban eyes" for mary they say the grass is always greener on the other side of the street but when you get there it's not, it just looked like that for a minute there, & then it's gone. you're in the same old place, only the people are changed, & the surroundings, & the quality of life which is not there. only you are the same, everything else is completely different. now you are not there, no, now you are the thing that has changed or has not changed in all the confusion. you carry all the places you've been around inside of you, the virginia countryside, the streets of paterson, new jersey, the apartments on the east side of detroit, the northwest side, in oak park. & now the house where you brought me to be all the men in your life, absent like your father, present like your two husbands, or like the uncles who misused you as a child— just like that, there were too many of them & only the one of me at hand. so, although i was there to stay you sent me away & as fate would have it, the woman i left for you was good enough to take me back into the city & into her heart again where i intend to remain (this is not, by the way, a monk piece. monk never left the middle of the city until his work was over & consequently the city never left monk. & for me, well, i should have stayed there in the heart of the city where i sure enough belong —oak park, mi may 30, 1984/ amsterdam january 6, 2013
6.
I Mean You 01:35
#20 "i mean you" for penny it's not just a case of wanting to be in love as if it didn't matter just who you are or the particularities, like the way you make my blood race, the certain taste of your skin, or just how soulful you are in every way, & how deeply & completely you understand me in all the nutty complexity of my being—it's your intelligence, your exquisite taste in music, & the warmth of you i want, baby, the warmth of you i want like i've never wanted anyone else —detroit september 18, 1984
7.
Four In One 00:30
8.
Reflections 01:33
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Locomotive 01:20
15.
All Alone 02:12
16.
17.
18.
Bye Ya 02:35
19.
20.
21.
Sixteen 01:07
22.
Criss Cross 01:47
23.
24.

about

Comes with bonus items: video and photographs from the live session.

How It Came To Pass

In Amsterdam, early February 2014, John and I were scheduled to hit the studio for a follow-up session to our previous album, Mohawk. A few hours before leaving home, John received a phone call from his longtime friend and collaborator Michael Ray, in town for a gig with Kool & The Gang. One thing led to another and a few hours later they were together again, in the studio.

John was stood in the vocal booth and Michael in the control room with his trumpet and Zazzle, dialing in special FX channels, assisted by our sound engineer Tim. Over two sessions, John delivered the word as Michael interpreted and translated the energies through his mind-body-trumpet interface, every track a first take, resulting in a complete 24 tracks.

With John’s guidance, I went back into the studio in 2015 to record a series of percussion overdubs and mixed the album at home in 2016. It's lay dormant until it’s release today in 2020. I remixed the tracks for this album (Foundation Records 35) to include a sprinkling of turntables and touch-ups.

The album speaks for itself, the content of the poems with the experience of the air-music is the message, go listen. If you wish to stick around here, I’m going to investigate the work in its broader context, with luck shedding a little moonlight on what lies beneath the surface.

One possible beginning for this work is a bus stop in Detroit, back in the early 1980’s shortly after Thelonious Monk passed away. John was waiting at the bus stop and was moonstruck. The moon was full and gleaming and John experienced an epiphany, Carolina Moon! Monk was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and he composed a song titled “Carolina Moon”. Not letting this get away from him, John poured it out into a poem which led to his ongoing work: a book of monk. A poem to accompany every single recording of Thelonious Monk from the Blue Note Recordings through to the Prestige, Riverside and Columbia sessions.

John’s performance poetry could be described thematically as a mixture of biography and autobiography about the history of blues and jazz. It’s heavy with historical fact and presents subjects in their own words, neighbouring John’s equally rich breathtaking, up-close and personal life experiences. In contrast to the poems featured on our previous album Mohawk, that zig-zag between historical details of recording sessions with Bird & Dizz, i mean you is an introspective meditation on his relationship with Penny, expressed on a bed of Monk’s moods.

In these poems, scafolded by Michael Ray’s tone-science, you get a rare insight into John’s personal life at that time, a snapshot of life in Detroit in the aftermath of the tumultuous 60s and 70s. Here is John the husband and father poet, in the struggle to get by and get on with his relationship with his second wife, these are confessions in some sense, confessions of honesty and above all else, of love. Let me ask you, dear reader, how you would approach writing a suite of poems about an ex-partner and having it released to the public? I’m moved by this example of the tender-side to the sixties counterculture revolution and am reminded of the similar depth of sensitivity found in the poetry of Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac. And as a great oriental mystic once exclaimed, Gods can be recognized by their cheerfulness.

After all these blues and adversity, much like the music of Thelonious Monk, John manages to turn these heartfelt pains and life lessons into pure poetry, to mean words selected and charged with the highest possible meaning. In the tradition of Charles Olson, John exhibits the persistence of place, to paraphrase the sentiment from his album with Pinkeye Orchestra: Tearing Down The Shrine Of Truth And Beauty...you can take down and remove our physical geography and buildings but you can’t remove experiences captured eternally in art, music, photography, film and poetry. Hold your horn high and give thanks to the legends and forefathers who brought us here today, in the shadow of the silent majorities, the artist-activists and grass-roots organizers who carry the torch of integrity, kindness, excellence and respect.

Special thanks to John and Michael Ray for giving their time and total energy on this recording for little reward besides the creative act itself. Thanks to Tim Egmond for his studio time at Ei-Complex Studio’s and his live recording skills. This album is testament to what is possible on a shoestring budget when dedicated disciplined artists come together for the sake of art, story and love of music.

The following is from, i mean you: a book for penny. It details the origins of each poem selected for this compilation of 23 poems. (The new album with Michael Ray features an additional introduction, pushing the track numbers up one digit)


"i mean you: a book for penny

Amsterdam - Detroit - New Orleans 2014

[Intro by Creely...]
[01] “doube dealing”………………………………… may 26, 1982
[02] “when will the blues leave”………………….. june 3, 1982

from always know: a book of monk

[03] #17 “evidence”........................................ june 24, 1982
[04] # 3 “suburban eyes”............................... may 30, 1984
[05] #20 “i mean you”.................................... september 18, 1984
[06] #29 “four in one”.................................... december 6, 1984
[07] #48 “reflections”..................................... january 14, 1985
[08] #93 “light blue”....................................... march 21, 1985
[09] #86 “crepescule with nellie”.................... august 7, 1987
[10] #46 “these foolish things”....................... october 2, 1987
[11] #36 “hornin’ in”....................................... october 31, 1988
[12] #76 “i surrender, dear”............................ may 21, 1988
[13] #54 “locomotive”.................................... june 21, 1988
[14] #78 “all alone”........................................ july 24, 1988
[15] #135 “boo boo’s birthday”........................ november 1, 1988
[16] #118 “(just one way to say) i love you”…... january 1, 1989
[17] #43 “bye-ya”.......................................... may 4 & 25, 1991
[18] #34 “willow weep for me”....................... july 26, 1993
[19] #129 “i didn’t know about you”……………. august 17, 1993
[20] #37 “sixteen” (“unorthodoxy”)................. december 22, 1995
[21] #30 “criss cross”…………………………….. january 7, 2004
[22] #40 “i’ll follow you”…………………………. august 20, 2005
[23] #119 “that old man”………………………….. october 2, 2005"


Michael Ray was born in Trenton, New Jersey 1952. Widely respected and appreciated as a tone-scientist, recording on Saturn Records with the Sun Ra in the 1970s and recently a part the latest incarnation of the Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen. Michael also heads a New Orleans based jazz collective called Michael Ray & The Kosmic Krewe. Michael started out playing with the legendary soul artists, The Stylistics, The Delfonics and Patti Labelle, Michael has played across the musical spectrum, from Phish, Widespread Panic, Medeski Martin & Wood, Kool & The Gang, Bruce Hampton, Stanton Moore/Galactic plus his projects with vocalist Larana Phipps.


Steve Fly was born in Dudley, UK, 1976. A drummer and DJ, Steve toured the United States extensively with Jam Band supergroup Garaj Mahal and appeared on multiple albums (On turntables) together with jazz heavyweights Kai Eckhardt, Benny Rietveld, Fareed Haque and a host of Bay Area musicians. Steve plays the drums for John Sinclair & His Amsterdam Blues Scholars, when John’s in town and can be heard on the album Beatnik Youth together with a gaggle of UK All-Stars led by Martin Youth Glover (Killing Joke). He played multiple instruments music on the critically acclaimed album: Mohawk (2014). Together with guitarist Vicente Pino, Steve performs in Amsterdam as Dr Marshmallow Cubicle, releasing a full-length album in 2016. Steve produces four 1-hour radio shows each month for Radio Free Amsterdam and works tirelessly with the John Sinclair Foundation.

--Steve Fly
16th November 2020.

credits

released November 16, 2020

John Sinclair - Vocals
Michael Ray - Trumpet
Steve Fly "Pratt" - Percussion.

Recorded at Ei-Complex Studios, Amsterdam. 3rd February 2014 by Tim Egmond. Mixed and edited by Steve Fly at Fly Agaric 23 Studio's, 2016-2020.

Produced by John Sinclair & Steve Fly 2020.
(A Project Of The John Sinclair Foundation)
www.johnsinclair.us

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John Sinclair

Foundation Records-35 (2020)

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John Sinclair Detroit, Michigan

"Sinclair is an iconic figure of ‘60s counterculture, famous for, among other things, having co-founded the anti-racist White Panther Party"

daily.bandcamp.com/features/beatnik-youth-interview

"John has taken the Blues, many Blues, many Blues singers, their words, their feeling, their lives, their conditions, the places and traces of where they was and is.

--Amiri Baraka.
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