3. Ornette ColemanBody Meta
There used to be a radio show every Wednesday night in Sydney called Le Jazz Hot And Cool. And I had a reel-to-reel player and I would put it on the slowest possible setting and record every single show. And I think it was a three-hour show, where for the first 90 minutes he would play more straight-ahead stuff, and in the second half, he would play stranger stuff. I would record the whole thing. I remember hearing the Ornette track ‘Ramblin” from an early one with Charlie Hayden, Ed Blackwell, and Don Cherry. I remember hearing that track and being absolutely mesmerized. It had this kind of African chant feeling about it, it was really hypnotic. The next day, I went out to buy anything I could find by Ornette Coleman. I found this one called Body Meta, which has Shannon Jackson playing drums, who much later in my life, I was lucky to see and meet – he was a huge influence and an amazing drummer.
Body Meta is so wonky and bizarre. A renowned jazz guitar player who I looked up to and who often helped me out, came over to my place. I put it on and he just started laughing about it, telling me that these people didn’t know how to play music – he thought it was a complete joke. I would have been about 14 then, and I remember being really confused at why he would say something like that, but also knowing that he was wrong.
