Underground London: Art Music & Free Jazz / Var Underground London: Art Music & Free Jazz / Var CD

Three CDs. In the mid-1960s, the rigid and colorless British way of life was irrevocably transformed by the emergence of the underground movement, a loose collective of young radicals who introduced new social, sexual and aesthetic perspectives. Operating out of the heart of London, their various activities, from the newspaper the International Times, to the psychedelic club UFO, promoted alternative lifestyles and values and sparked a cultural revolution. The Underground drew it's inspiration from America's Beat Poets; among them Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti; who espoused an impossibly attractive Bohemian culture - a hedonistic lifestyle of art and free love and all that went with it. The counterculture was also invigorated by the fearlessness of such pioneers of free jazz as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor; drawn, in it's search for a 'spiritual elixir', to India and her classical music, embodied initially by Ravi Shankar. Then thrilled at the audacity of an international avant-garde - including such giants as Gy?rgy Ligeti, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio - which pushed courageously at the limits of sound itself and who, in turn, would propose to all mediums of popular art in Britain a new palette of musical colours and techniques to work with. Underground London is a panorama of the influences and inspirations which encouraged a cultural revolution in Britain. If the feeling of community of this generation began with CND and the marches on Aldermaston, the Royal Albert Hall poetry reading of 1965 was the pivot; a direct precursor to the International Times, the opening of the UFO Club, the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream and culminating in the Summer of Love.

1. W.R.U - Ornette Coleman Quartet 2. Dog - Lawrence Ferlinghetti 3. Out of This World - John Coltrane Quartet 4. Left Alone - Eric Dolphy 5. Atmosph?res (From Stanley Kubrick's Film, 2001: A Space Odyssey) - Gyorgy Ligeti 6. Flamenco Sketches - Miles Davis 7. America - Allen Ginsberg 8. Rocket Number Nine Take Off for the Planet Venus - Sun Ra and His Myth-Science Arkestra 9. Bellini - Annie Ross 10. With the Tony Kinsey Quintet 11. Can You Trap Shadows Like This? - Christopher Logue with the Tony Kinsey Quintet 12. Autumn Leaves -Jimmy Smith Trio 13. 3 Jesus Maria - Jimmy Giuffre 14. Raga Jog - Ravi Shankar 15. Pictures - Joe Harriott Quintet 16. Morning - Yusef Lateef 17. Readings from "On the Road" and "Visions of Cody" - Jack Kerouac 18. Theme from Beyond the Fringe - Dudley Moore Trio 19. Pithecanthropus Erectus - Charlie Mingus Jazz Workshop 20. The Ocean (Main Theme) - Daphne Oram ; Desmond Briscoe 21. Moanin' - Albert Ayler 22. Love for Sale - Cecil Taylor Trio 23. 3/4 Ad - Davy Graham ; Alexis Korner 24. Indeterminacy (Excerpt) - John Cage ; David Tudor 25. ?tude Concrete - Karlheinz Stockhausen 26. The Visionary Experience (Excerpt) - Aldous Huxley 27. Serpent's Tooth - Victor Feldman 28. A Rose for Booker - the New Dynamic Chico Hamilton Quintet 29. Mister Walker (Renie) - Wes Montgomery 30. The Bridge - Sonny Rollins 31. Lonely Woman - Modern Jazz Quartet 32. The Invisible - John Coltrane ; Don Cherry 33. Visage for Electronic Sounds and Cathy Berberian's Voice on Tape - Luciano Berio 34. There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie (Take 2) - Thelonious Monk