spaf@gatech.UUCP (07/19/83)
The following has been excerpted (with permission) from a note Donn sent me after the last article. I hope somebody finds it as interesting as we do. About Allan Holdsworth: Holdsworth has appeared in lots of weird bands. I hear that the reason he leaves groups so often is that he gets acrophobia in airplanes and hence can't tour. In the past he has joined and left Sunship (with Alan Gowen), Soft Machine, Jean-Luc Ponty, Gong, Bruford and of course U.K. He made a big jump to California with his latest band, I.O.U.; I wanted to see them when they played San Diego not too long ago but I missed out due to heavy end-of-quarter workload. I haven't bought the I.O.U. album but I do have a jazz duet album by Holdsworth and Gordon Beck (on piano) entitled THE THINGS YOU SEE, which is very nice if you like jazz (and I do). It's a French import. I think Holdsworth is a fantastic guitarist and he would be truly great if he could just sit still in one band and develop with some other musicians... About Terry Bozzio: Apart from being in Frank Zappa's band at one point (ZOOT ALLURES), he also appeared on the album GROUP 87 with Mark Isham (previously of Art Lande's Rubisa Patrol) and Peter Maunu. GROUP 87 is a very nice album if you can ignore the disco tendencies on side 1; it's a pity they haven't made another album (as far as I can tell). About Bill Bruford: Bill Bruford had a band called Bruford which produced four albums: FEELS GOOD TO ME, ONE OF A KIND, THE BRUFORD TAPES and GRADUALLY GOING TORNADO. The most popular of these (and my favorite too) is ONE OF A KIND, which you didn't mention... Bruford was originally made up of Bill Bruford, Dave Stewart (a favorite musician of mine; played in Egg, Hatfield and the North and National Health), Allan Holdsworth and Jeff Berlin; Holdsworth was replaced by 'the unknown' John Clark when the band started touring. Bruford was just incredible about touring; according to my usually unreliable but in-the-ballpark memory, one year the band Bruford did 88 dates in 93 days. I managed to see them twice... (I wish National Health or Brand X would tour...) Nice to see that other people are interested in this stuff. At Bruford and King Crimson concerts I have been to, it was quite clear that almost no one except me among the people in line at the door had ever heard of these bands, much less had any of their albums. The reason people came was because they knew Bill Bruford had been in Yes (sigh). Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn -- "The soapbox of Gene Spafford" CSNet: Spaf @ GATech Internet: Spaf.GATech @ UDel-Relay uucp: ...!{sb1,allegra}!gatech!spaf ...!duke!mcnc!msdc!gatech!spaf