SUN RA

Why am I thinking about Sun Ra lately? I listened to his piece Friendly Galaxies from a live album from the early 70's and it still is one of my favorite pieces of music ever. Here is a short clip from his unreleased 1974 movie, Space Is The Place, called "Calling Planet Earth". I got to see him play a number of times. I saw him play with the MC5 in Detroit in the late 60's...the influence on the MC5 was great, they recorded and performed a number of Ra pieces translated from the Arkestra big band to Big Electric Rock Monster Music! One of the best Ra performances I saw was a 6 hour marathon New Years Eve Show in a small club in Ann Arbor, Michigan, about the time they were making Space Is The Place and they performed the music. Sun Ra played an hour of free form mini moog noise...a trip to heaven and to hell and then the band did a set of straight Fletcher Henderson big band charts that Sun Ra had transcribed. His first big gig was playing and transcribing for Fletcher Henderson. Sun Ra has been dead since 1993, but his music still lives beyond the future....