Description
CD
Price NOK 199
Catalog number: NARKCD001
MOOSE LOOSE – LIVE AT KONGSBERG JAZZ FESTIVAL 1973
The seventies were a magical decade for anyone interested in music that tested and pushed boundaries. The cross-pollination between the rhythmic music originating in the culture of the slaves and currents from Asia, Africa and the Middle East created exciting results with microtonality, new instruments and unusual scales. Some rock bands played with a symphony orchestra, others with saws. The most ambitious stretched the elastic so far that it almost broke...and occasionally it did.
Jazz was unfaithful with rock, rock with folk music, pop with contemporary music, and everyone was curious about the French gypsy jazz.
One of the young Norwegian musicians who was noticed was a long-haired guy in a flannel shirt who played the guitar so that it rumbled in the stomach and echoed in the walls. Some suffered permanent hearing damage from standing too close to the speaker when he gave it his all and then some. The guy had grown up with straight jazz, but then he discovered free improvisers like Pharoah Sanders and brilliant innovators like Jimi Hendrix. There were rumors about this young guitarist. The name was Jon Eberson, a fast and versatile guitarist, full of both energy and subtlety, and he played music in a borderland that had only just opened its gates. With him he had Brynjulf Blix on keyboards, Pål Thorstensen on bass and Espen Rud on drums.
While Norwegian jazz at this time pointed more towards the European, more lyrical, direction, Moose Loose was inspired by Miles Davis' electric music, from Bitches Brew onwards, but also by modern jazz musicians such as John Coltrane and style creators in rock such as Jimi Hendrix. In any case, they had their own expression, their own distinct signature. The band name came from a children's book with English and Norwegian lyrics, where the goal was to create something fully Norwegian ("Moose") and also sound loose ("Loose").
It was a young band, all in their early twenties, who stood on stage during the Kongsberg Jazz Festival on this June day in 1973 - on the day 50 years before the result was available on double LP and CD.
From the stage they were introduced as follows:
“They play a kind of rock jazz. The music can get a little strong, so those who can't fix it can move a little backwards."
The songs:
1 Moose Loose (Jon Eberson/Brynjulf Blix) 8:56
2 O-meat (Brynjulf Blix) 4:26
3 Ebers Funk (Jon Eberson) 6:21
4 Eber's Space (Jon Eberson) 10:14
5 Eber's Heavy (Jon Eberson) 8:35
6 Easy to Forget (Jon Eberson) 4:32
7 Purple (Miroslav Vitous) 8:09
8 Boston Miles (Miles Davis) 5:22
Recorded during the Kongsberg Jazz Festival on 30 June 1973.
Boston Miles is based on a Jan Garbarek variation on a Miles Davis theme from 1971. Recorded 30.6.1973 by Hans-Egil Arntsen on a Telefunken M5
Jon Eberson – guitar
Espen Rud – drums
Pål Thorstensen – bass
Brynjulf Blix – organ, electric piano