DMG's SECOND Release on Downtown Music Gallery's newly formed DMG ARC label is considered by many fans to be the best of the six releases [certainly the best of the five live ones] by the improv super-group Last Exit, and the least widely distributed. Originally released as a limited edition on Robert Musso's MuWorks label, this CD item commands high prices ranging to $50-$75 from collector's shops and auction websites including eBay.
Ronald Shannon Jackson is on drums, occasionally adding creepy blues vocals worthy of a serial killer. Sonny Sharrock play nasty blues lines when he isn't beating his guitar to a pulp, while German sax madman Peter Brotzmann veers between similar extremes with his squealing and honking. Laswell was the perfect bassist for this unit, his dirty, hard-driving lines retaining a feeling of downright meanness throughout. (Please, someone lay "My Balls/Your Chin" and "Pig Cheese" on a Najee fan!) An over-the-top live recording of frighteningly talented musicians improvising as a unit, this album is what you REALLY want to scrape out your cerebral cortex!
"Never let it be said that Last Exit didn't take advantage of recording their live shows or playing in front of adoring Europeans. With cover art and song titles courtesy of the late avant-garde British poet Kenneth Patchen, Headfirst kicks off with the brain fry of "Lizard Eyes" only to launch into a Sharrock improv called "Don't Be a Cry Baby, Whatever You Do." Brotzmann blows wild and free here, and his squeal and blurt provides a great counterpoint to the rumble of the rhythms and the pummeling sonic overload of Sharrock's guitar. Another piece of blurt that will make you head spin!" - John Dougan
"One of my favorite recordings of all time, PERIOD! What a joy it is to present this as an early entry on our own label!" -MannyLunch, DMG
Headfirst Into the Flames, culled from 1989 European dates, has a more refined sense of interplay. While cutthroat power is still very much part of the group's repertoire, the emphasis is more on give-and-take. On "So Small, So Weak, This Bloody Sweat of Loving," Sharrock sculpts feedback before a swaggering tempo is introduced by Jackson, a more successful "rock" excursion than anything on Iron Path. "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows" engages in evocative shadow play before erupting, and "Jesus! What Gorgeous Monkeys We Are" simmers rather than boils for all of its eleven minutes, a four-way conversation of the type rarely heard on the earlier albums. - Trouser Press |