The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

Lost Tapes: Heather Leigh's Baker's Dozen
Jennifer Lucy Allan , July 22nd, 2020 10:15

Heather Leigh takes Jennifer Lucy Allan on a wild ride from teenage dancing on acid to Depeche Mode to collaborating with Peter Brotzmann via Britney Spears, Miles Davis, DJ Screw and The Dead C in this week's Baker's Dozen

Miles_davis___sketches_of_spain_1595246005_resize_460x400

Miles Davis – Sketches Of Spain
I first found out about this not through the record but through an experimental filmmaker named Bruce Connor. He did a film about an artist called Jay De Feo who had a work called The White Rose – I cannot recommend this film enough. She started this piece in 1957. Eight years later, it weighed 2300 pounds. She was moving out of her studio in San Francisco and to get it out of the apartment, they had to hire workers and cut open the building to get it out with a crane. And the soundtrack is Sketches Of Spain. Even now, talking to you I get goosebumps because there's something in that film.

She ended up getting lead poisoning from that work – she dedicated herself so seriously to this work that in a way it was partly what killed her. The feeling watching the film is that this is someone who has actually given their life for their art, and how moving that is. I can't divorce this record from that film. When I hear Sketches Of Spain, that that imagery comes into my head, and also that feeling, of the importance of art.