Glad we didn't order the special
In 1988, our band Curlew takes a vote art a rehearsal in New York concerning an upcoming tour in Europe. The debate is whether to stay over a couple of days in Germany or to come home soon as the gigs are over.
The airline has two returns possibilities, one on a Monday and the other on the following Wednesday. The band decides to skip the vacation time in Europe. Get back and pay some bills or something; anyway by then we'll have been there several weeks already
So we do the tour and come home on that Monday, on Pan Am flight 101. Pan Am flight 103 on Wedenesday only makes it as far as Lockerbie, Scotland, where it meets an horific fate, falling to earth in pieces, and landing into the long history of deliberate carnage.
Thing is, sometimes it's not worth getting famous. Sometimes it's good to miss the boat, however unintentionally. Personally, I have no ambition to become famous for being dead.
All illustrations from Car Crash Series Andy Warhol Photos
Dave Williams
SOLO GIG
iv CHOO-CHOO
VII OUR UNIVERSE
VIII WORKING JUNG´S RIFF
IX PREFERENCES
X When it's OUT of OUR HANDS
XI Glad we didn't order the special
IX PREFERENCES
X When it's OUT of OUR HANDS
XI Glad we didn't order the special
Based in a noted musician's decades of personal experiences, his book Solo Gig: Essential Curiosities in Musical Free Improvisation (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011) examines some crucial and far-reaching aspects of musical free improvisation, with particular regard to live performances. In this illustrated collection of narrative essays, the author looks both into and from inside this uniquely paradoxical, challenging and rewarding way of making music, within the context of an inherently eccentric milieu.
