8. TESTLive!
I moved to New York, basically, so I could go see TEST [the free jazz quartet of Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Tom Bruno and Matthew Heyner] in the subway. I saw them in 1996 and I was 20 or 21. I was working for Michael Ehlers who does the Eremite record label. He was putting on a series of concerts and I was doing the door, putting up posters around town, because I was, you know, a broke 20-year-old. I could get in to see all the concerts and it was just amazing collective free improvisation. Super high energy, super great interaction between all the players. Again, that thing where you sound greater than the sum of the parts and there’s this collective push. That was a really big, brain breaking event for me. I wasn’t at either of the concerts [captured on this record], but on the Boston set you can hear the audience shouting along with the band. I’ve been at TEST shows where everyone gets swept up in this moment. And when I lived in New York, I went and saw them in the subway, and I’m facing them, they’re on the platform and my back’s to where the train would be coming in. I’m just watching them. They’re really getting loud, and it sounds super fierce and triumphant and gorgeous. It’s an empty platform, then all of a sudden, a sea of people are walking by me because TEST had played louder than the subway train. Every time I saw them was, one way or another, a psychedelic, brain bending experience.
