Last Of The Wailers Wails

Bob Marley nothin', actual wailing self-expression in the music industry came from Ornette Coleman & his ilk, of whom he's now the sole exemplar.

The intro to an interview:

Ornette Coleman spoke to LAist last week, via phone from his home in New York City.

A word about the length and format of this piece: Most of my interviews over the phone tend to run about fifteen minutes, during which I ask and receive answers to anywhere from five to ten questions. Ornette and I spoke for nearly an hour, during which I managed to ask two of the questions on my list, and I’m not sure if he directly addressed either one of them. Instead, he started interviewing me at several points, and I’m horrified to say I ducked several of his questions. (Though to be fair, how would you respond in the moment to something like, ”I don’t have no idea of how much the human race controls the value of life. Do you?”) For the first fifteen minutes I kept waiting for him to say something that might naturally provide a segue into any of my other questions, written out on a sheet of paper, which I kept glancing at while trying to follow his stream of consciousness. But around the fifth time he started to make a point by talking about the mathematical distance from C to F sharp, I looked down at the list, thought, “this too is improvising, keep your eye on the ball”, and pushed it away. And after that, things improved noticeably.

Ornette Coleman appears at UCLA Live’s Royce Hall on Wednesday, November 3 at 8pm. Tickets, $49.25 to $90.25, available from [REDACTED, because we aren't a pimp, & who fucking cares?].

Sorry, fans, but we won't be making a personal appearance.