1. Sun RaThe Nubians Of Plutonia
You can hear on The Nubians Of Plutonia the first contours of Sun Ra’s later, more abstract music style, which I do like of course – the newer, even more popular style which is more free jazz-based. This is one of my favourite Sun Ra albums, although of course I do like Space Is The Place, the later ones, the more obscure, mysterious ones. I have a real big collection of Sun Ra records, even bootlegs, almost a hundred records of him. More and more I’m going back to the older ones, to the birth of his mysterious music, before he makes the saloon jazz that he ended up doing. It’s very funny, I met him on a panel in New York. To my left side there was the singer from the Ramones and on my right was Sun Ra. Adrian Belew, the guitar player who played with Frank Zappa sometimes was there too – a very interesting round of people! I had a few words with Sun Ra. He was already quite old – it was at least 25 years ago – and I told him that I am a big fan of his music. He was very slow speaking and spoke just a few words, he was somehow a little bit mysterious. But also he was already an old man, kind of standing over everything. He had seen more colours at the time than myself, as I was about 40 or 35 years old at the time.
It was not the first Sun Ra record I heard, although it is very hard to remember what was because I started collecting them after a while as I was totally fascinated by his music. I didn’t start with the old records of his, I just collected them later. Whenever I was in New York or wherever in the world I would just go to record shops and ask for Sun Ra, so I have a few rarities too.
