Our Bodies Rich as Night / Giving Thanks to Great Musicians: Seven Tracks for Luke and Friends in Berlin
An Inspiring Request
The seven Tracks, off the top, for you to check out, with this preface of my gratitude to the great collaborators over a span of 33 years, many represented here. The Suspect Many band and its shifting composition (like paintings each grouping) in San Francisco, their kindred quality their excellence and creativity; Dhyani Dharma Mas, superlative with guitars as with writing songs; Hamid Drake, subject of the constant documentary Everybody Loves Hamid; our XPand of John Baker and Terbo Ted and our 100s of hours spent in weaving samples with excerpts from Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Vallejo, SubCommandante Marcos, Los Angeles TV ads, …; Myles Boisen, so exact and expressive as player and engineer, and Natives of Chiapas; Dhyani again, this ‘All of Body …’ Track showcase for his astonishing, in-the-moment orchestrations throught 12-string guitar, 1995, the Guerrila Euphonics studio in Oakland, CA; and Kidd and Morikeba, returning to “Your Body …” from our session with Rick G. Nelson as engineer at his Marigny Recording Studio, pedal-to-the-mettle with 15 Tracks in two hours, July 24, 2014. All of them and many more I’m feeling now—makers of the magic we can never anticipate and can appreciate forever. THANK YOU, this November 23, 2023.
OUR BODIES RICH AS NIGHT
And now a chronicling of how this gathering got started.
Last month, Oct. 10, 2023, out of the blue, the following email came to my sufc2077@gmail.com address.
‘Dear Don, or whoever is reading this.
Hope you're doing well!
I'm writing because of a beautiful chain of events that eventually led me to your name, and finally your website. Around a year ago I listened to a mix where there was a song of yours being played 'Fine As You Are'. The textures and flow of the song completely blew my mind and I had that feeling of needing to know what it was since I was sure that couldn't be the last time I was to listen to the track. I managed to get hold of the guy doing the mix and he told me the name of the album. I went on discogs and found a CD, bought it and listened to it a couple of times and loved it!
'Fine As You Are' remains one of my favourite tracks I've ever discovered.
Anyway, with some more names in the CD I could look you up and I found your site and everything and I felt I wanted to write and say just how much your music means to me.
My name's Luke, and I also do music and so the feeling of finding something relatively obscure and just being blown away by its beauty is something I'll never get over.
Wish you the best in life,
Luke’
Here is the “Fine As Your Are” Track, from the 1990 album We. Could Use The Rain, as it’s presented on the YouTube channel of another generous person whom I’ve never met, so far as I know, his You Tube handle Steven K.
I wrote back to Luke Scerri (his first and last names, there in his email address) three days later.
‘Hello, dear Luke,
Your surprise note is most welcome.
The Internet can be magical in the connections it enables.
I'd like to share your note, with as much attribution as you wish, through my email-tree and through social media. It's such a generous and wonderful example of what online communication can be.
I look forward to links to your music!
In the meantime, let me share recent work with a great band based in New Orleans, Rivers Answer Moons You can check out, if you like, Luke, the Web-page for our Album and Stage-Show in progress, "LOUISIANA STORIES".
“Bobee (What A Spirit Walks That Way)”
This Track with Roger Lewis has to me a feel like "Fine As You Are".
“Little Things” with Roger Lewis on piano and saxophone.
These two Tracks are more in the spirit of improvisation with poetry.
‘It Must Be Love (Word Come Down through Forbidden Radio)’ with Kidd Jordan of New Orleans on tenor saxophone and Morikeba Kouyaté of Senegal on kora.
‘Maybe You See Horses’ with Roger, Herlin and Kirk of the Rivers Answer Moons band.
And this song, as it features other players and tries for tenderness, too--"If I Could Hold The Thought Of You".
It's from 2015 and is on a compilation that the New Orleans Public Library added this year to its online streaming-platform, Crescent City Sounds--another great use of the Internet! It’s the self-named Billy Bonney (‘Billy the Kid’), trying to articulate to Paulita Maxwell how he loves her, he a fugitive murderer age 21, she a painter and mystic age 18, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, June 1881. Both Mario Abney on trumpet and Rick G. Nelson on guitar, bass, and cello, viola and violin play beautifully on this Track, I think.
[ … ]
I agree with you that Lewis Jordan on saxophone, Babatunde Lea on drums-set, George Cresmaschi on fretless bass, Jon Karr on midi-guitar,John Baker piano, and Dhyani Dharma Mas acoustic guitar (co-songwriter) ARE perfectly in sympathy on "Fine As You Are".
Cheers and the very best, Luke,
Don
Five days later, Luke Scerri responded with an invitation to send him six Tracks for a mix that he would pass along online through ‘a. music collective/label of friends and artist that play somewhat different interesting music, [ … “
‘Hey Don,
Thank you for finding the time to write back to me!
I listened to these tracks and really enjoyed them. The internet can be truly wonderful in this way.
On that note, I would actually like to ask you something. I have a music collective/label of friends and artists that play somewhat different interesting music, and I've been releasing a different mix by different artist/band … The requirements are just 6 selected songs and any image you want that would capture the 'mood' of the selection [ …. ]
This is purely non-profitable and it is done solely with the intention of curating music for each other and sharing new music with the community I'm trying to create with the label.
I would love to have you do one [ … ]
It's completely up to you of course I don't mean to impose in any way, but you seem like a very approachable person so I thought I'd ask.
Thanks again Don, it's a pleasure talking to you.
Luke’
Thank YOU, Luke, for the inspiration!
“Your Body Is A Nurturing I Ride Into Night/
New Cars And Power-Lines Are Strung Out To L.A.”
featuring Dhyani Dharma Mas, acoustic guitar
Don Paul & the Suspect Many
John Baker piano
Kenny Blackman drums-set
Dhyani Dharma Mas acoustic guitar
James Henry percussion
Marty Holland electric bass
Don Paul vocal and bhodran
Recorded at Olde West in San Francisco with Peter Eckart engineer, January 1991.
Dhyani’s solo.
‘DurgaKali on Her Mother’s Name for Her’
Don Paul and Hamid Drake from the their album COMPASSION / Poems and Drums
Hamid Drake frame-drum and vocal Don Paul vocal
Recorded at Rick G. Nelson’s Marigny Studio in New Orleans, February 20, 2016, with Rick as engineer.
Charlie Parker Was Like A Laser, Dizzy Gillespie Says; “Well, Earl, They Say Music Speaks Louder Than Words,” Charlie Parker Ripostes Earl Wilson
X Pand (Don Paul, John Baker, Terbo Ted)
Don Paul / John Baker / Turbo Ted, BMI
Don Paul synthesizer and samples
John Baker synthesizer
Terbo Ted midi-guitar
“Chiapas Is Everywhere”
Don Paul and Myles Boisen
Myles Boisen electric guitar and bass, keyboards Don Paul keyboards, percussion and vocal
I’m always drawn to places and times that promise revolutionary change. Chiapas during the Zapatistas’ ‘Relmapago’ in December 1994 was that. So too Tanzania 1977, Nicaragua 1987 and ‘88, the Northeast and Bahia of Brasil 1993 and 1987, New Orleans and volunteers with Common Ground 2006, Venezuela 2006, 2008 and 2009, … right here, right now!
Rich ‘a go Open Doors Always knock down the poor Discos, Bonds off Satellites Patterns like butterflies Fly from our outer lights Respect the old, respect the earth
Everything comes from somewhere Every thing comes from somewhere
They’re comin’ for you, they’re comin’ for you The people from the hills are comin’ for you
The lit’l people from the hills gonna take you through “Little people” from their Hills gonna take you through
Chiapas is everywhere. The Mayan is everywhere.
‘All of Body Good as God’
Don Paul and Dhyani Dharma Mas Don Paul / Dhyani Dharma Mas, BMI Dhyani 12-string guitar
Don vocal
Dhyani in concert.
Recording the album Poems From Flares in Dhyani’s Mission District apartment, Summer 2004.
What is Is natural What is can’t be hid For long or for good. What is are dreams freed. Nothing obscene except what owes to fear.
What is Can't be desecrated, Truth like science A pursuit rather sacred. Christ can't be made piss, Nor water wine, Nor can desire be molded Like Church is sold. Repression stamps on All kinds of love’s flows Desire rides upon All kinds of love's flows. Nothing consensual can be shameful.
Down there below Rings through the lips, Bones through the hose, Hump ampallang along. "Sexual intercourse is a lovely t'ing"; Lust a jewel too. In ev'ry fuh’uh’uh’ck Rafaels and Junos may go To universes without Curse. Nothing of their giving like the tolls of war, Nothing consensual shameful, Nothing obscene except what owes to fear.
What's obscene is starvation. What's obscene are dead babies. What's obscene Are the secrets Of grown boys' mass murder.
And a closing version of “Your Body …”, recorded with Kidd Jordan and Morikeba Kouyaté for our album Women Center Earth, Sea, and Sky,
Please see more about Kidd on my website We Are Revolutions and You Are Here to Shine.
Please remember, too, that your body is your self.
And one of several videos shot on that July 24, 2014 by another, Aristide Phillips, for whom I have so much to thank for collaborations!