A Night in Thursday

KAORU ABE - Mokuyôbi no Yoru

WARNING: The paint-peeling screech of Mr. Abe's alto sax has been known to circumcise goyim at 200 paces, shatter ovaries, generate spontaneous combustion of large and small rodents (depending upon the caloric intake of ironic-mustached hipster douchebag), why, it's even said that upon his first exposure to Abe's subsonic squawk, Anthony Braxton actually blinked!

All bullshitting aside, this live 1972 unaccompanied recording of Kaoru Abe finds him terrifying the (5? 6?) patrons of the small "Pit-Inn Tea Room" in Tokyo. Not to get all Zen 'n' shit, but the reaction seems to answer the answerless, such as, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" In his short, tragic life, bewilderment & terror from anyone other than Masayuki Takayanagi was merely another day at the office. I've listened to this opus every morning over my Cheerios for the last few months (don't laugh-- I've done the same with Ascension and Spiritual Unity), and after initially being intrigued by the Ayler-esque "Military Marching Band From Hell" sections that blaze by in the wink of an eye, it soon began to dawn on me that I was listening to nothing more than one dude blasting away for nearly an hour without the safety net of collaborators... and wasn't bored for even a second! Guess there was plenty of demons in KA's tortured soul to, uh, "entertain" me (he died in 1978 at the age of 29 of a drug overdose).

Speaking of which, apparently there's a biopic out there called "Endless Waltz". Anybody seen it?

Still alive, still in comments.