Music of the Underview ASSOCIATION P. C.

drummer Pierre Courbois
bassists Siggi Busch and Peter Krijnen
guitarist Toto Blanke
keyboard players Joachim Kühn and Jasper van 't Hof
saxmen Karl-Heinz Wiberny and Lol Coxhill
flautist Jeremy Steig

Earwax (1970)
	Track listing
	Voorkant (30-10-1970) Spider (Blanke) Hit the P. Tit (Courbois, van 't Hof) Elsen (van 't Hof) Achterkant (31-10-1970) Earwax (Courbois) Round A'Bout Nine (sic) (Krijnen, Courbois, van 't Hof, Blanke) Jazzper (van 't Hof)
	The players
	Toto Blanke (guitar) Jasper van 't Hof (electric piano) Siggi Busch (basses on Voorkant) Peter Krijnen (bass on Achterkant) Pierre Courbois (drums)

 
I can be very specific about the date when the first album of the band which would subsequently be known as Association P.C. was released. The record label is printed "30-12-1970", and according to the liner notes the group made its debut on June 27 of that year "in a pub in the small village of Dieren" in the Netherlands.

"Subsequently known": at this time the group was known simply as Association. Pierre Courbois' initials were added to avoid legal tangles, presumably, with the American soft-rock band, although musically there was never much likelihood of confusing the two. Plus, it was always Pierre's band in the sense that he was the centre around which it gravitated, and he is prominently featured on the above record cover.

Although "Earwax" marked Association's recording debut, it is surprising to note in the liner notes that it was in fact Pierre's 13th LP after working with various other line-ups since 1961. Siggi, Toto and Jasper would all continue to work with Pierre on subsequent recordings, but Peter Krijnen, who had already been playing with Pierre, relinquished his position at this time due to the demands of earning his living in other ways.

Sun Rotation (1973)
	Track listing
	Idee A (van 't Hof) (a) Scorpion (Busch) (b) Neuteboom (van 't Hof) (c) Scorcussion (Courbois) Silence (Courbois) Don Paul (Busch) Totemism (Blanke) Frau Theunissen (Blanke)
	The players
	Toto Blanke (e-guitar, 12-string guitar) Jasper van 't Hof (e-piano, organ) Siggi Busch (bass, e-bass) Pierre Courbois (drums)

 
Siggi Busch expresses one of Association P.C.'s key tenets:

"What you really have to get hold of is the moving force, the rhythmic tension of rock. Especially the ecstatic element which is basic to all rock rhythms provides a mode of expression which you just can't do without. I think it's clear by now that free jazz is not all that free. The free jazz musicians just threw overboard everything which had been there before but then found themselves with relatively little left to make a fresh start. Only a few of them, for example, made any use of rhythm or really tried to play around with it."

Goggle at those drums (above right) and compare them with Pierre's earlier set (above, above right). There weren't many such around at the time. I don't think Pierre is actually in this picture, but the way things were in those days you can never be too sure. 1970 was one of those years. A lot of musical envelopes were being battered into a pulp. The British "jazz-rock" band Soft Machine was gaining an appreciative following in Europe, after a somewhat unlikely period in the previous year or two sharing concert billings with Jimi Hendrix, no less. However, Soft Machine's direction changed dramatically following Robert Wyatt's accident and Elton Dean's departure, leaving the more exploratory aspects of the field wide open. Pierre Courbois picked up the baton, said "thank you very much" and spent the next three or four years with his mates showing those of us willing to listen just how rewarding and memorable it could be.

"When I started doing rock", remarked Pierre, "I noticed that there are really only a very few strokes which are played awfully cliché-like all over the world. That's why I have it almost up to here with the whole jazz-rock business. I try to get away from the usual rock clichés... The expression jazz-rock - that's crap."

You tell them, Pierre. Interestingly, this music in many ways sounds more exploratory today than it did when new. That is a devastating, though not at all surprising, commentary on what has happened to music (and other arts) in the period since 1970. Pierre's words are more pertinent today than they were almost thirty years ago.

Erna Morena: Association P. C. Live (1973 - recorded in April 1972)
	Track listing
	Frau Theunissen's Kegel (Blanke) Erna Morena part 1: (a) Space Erna (All the players) (b) Erna in India (van 't Hof) Erna Morena part 2: (c) Erna Audi Maxima! (van 't Hof) (d) Only Grass in my Stomach (Busch) (e) Schnoor 8 (Courbois)
	The players
	Toto Blanke (guitar) Jasper van 't Hof (electric piano, organ) Siggi Busch (bass, electric bass) Pierre Courbois (drums) Karl-Heinz Wiberny (guest) (alto clarinet, alto and tenor saxophones)

 
"Erna Morena" is one of the two live recordings released by the band, and that was very much in keeping with what they were doing. I was fortunate enough to catch them at a gig at Brighton College of Art on England's south coast. My memory tells me that this would have been around the time when "Erna Morena" was recorded in Freiburg - April 25, 1972. Unfortunately for what it says about my memory, they were joined on the occasion of my attendance by a young flute player, Jeremy Steig, who was already building a reputation as one of his generation's shining stars and has since become a leading and widely- recorded jazz improviser. Officially, Steig and the band came together rather later than that, so this period is still a little hazy for me. I know, that's what they all say...

From the liner notes: "The term "free"", in the context of "freeform music", "after being used in the 60s mainly to mean "beyond tonality, melody and metre"...now stands for an entirely new quality of musical freedom in the music of Association P.C....it signifies really sovereign mastery over all musical areas." Judging by what I saw, I have no grounds to dispute that statement.

Pierre Courbois

Toto Blanke

Siggi Busch

Peter Krijnen

 
Whatever, publicity in Brighton for this unheard- of band consisted of a few handbills pinned to college notice boards, and the audience consisted of, I would guess, some twenty people, who probably thought they were going to see the aforementioned soft rock band. Pierre and Jeremy would have been justified in taking one look and packing their bags, but instead they treated our small group to an hour or two of musical magic, the kind of unstructured but always totally controlled improvisation that only top rank musicians can even attempt. I never saw anything like it, before or since.

I have only learned quite recently that the group played two concerts on the Brighton campus, the one which I attended and one at another location, which I missed. Evidently that other one was an experience altogether more worthy of their talents. A note from Sir Pierre himself has also reminded me that England at that time was in the middle of industrial action which resulted in power black-outs, and must have made life that bit more interesting for musicians on tour, apart from anyone else. I must say that I have very little memory of it. I know, that's what they all say... oh, I've already used that line.

Rock Around The Cock: Association P. C. (1973)
	Track listing	(Above, left to right, signed) Toto Blanke; Pierre Courbois; Siggi Busch; Joachim Kühn
	Side 1  featuring Karl-Heinz Wiberny Phenis (Blanke, Courbois) Polar Anna (Blanke, Busch, Courbois, Wiberny) Mirrored Dimensions (Blanke, Busch, Courbois, Wiberny) Shirocco (Busch, Wiberny) Side 2  featuring Joachim Kühn All tracks by Blanke, Busch, Courbois, Kühn Rock Around The Cock Autumn In March Cap Carneval
	The players
	Toto Blanke (guitar, ring modulator, nogoya-harp) Siggi Busch (bass, electric bass) Pierre Courbois (drums, percussion) Joachim Kühn (electric piano) Karl-Heinz Wiberny (tenor sax, basset-horn, piccolo-flute)

 
Calling an album "Rock Around The Cock" is one of those things people did at the time, and why not? The cover designer must have thought Christmas had come early. Just in case anyone took umbrage, I have seen another version of the same album (with the same cover), with the title taken from one of the tracks: Shirocco. The gatefold cover contains a very informative and nicely written set of liner notes, penned by the group's producer Joachim E. Berendt, and he should know, after all. In fact, Association P.C.'s albums in general include extensive and communicative notes, including detailed descriptions of each individual track.

For example, "Mirrored Dimensions" are "the self-reflecting dimensions, the fifth and the sixth from space and time, at the end of "2001 - A Space Odyssey", where the spaceship becomes the symbol of the soul, the cosmos the symbol of cosmic consciousness. This is "The Great, Big Cosmic Trip 73" which has nothing in common with the "cosmetic cosmos" of certain German rock groups. The latter are nothing but a contemporarily Teutonic pendant to the Germanic raging in the mythical tradition of Wagner."

So there you have it, a connection between two of the main threads of The Underview.

Joachim Kühn

Jasper van 't Hof

Karl-Heinz Wiberny

Jeremy Steig

 
Says Joachim Kühn about Association P. C.: "The essential to me is being open. I don't want to be committed to styles. I don't want any categories. I am open for all kinds of music. And this is what I admire so much in Association: the openness with which they are facing music . . . We select what we want to play quite consciously out of all there is: in contrast to most others who can play only one kind of music. The result of our searching - that's what this record is."

"Stylistically," as observed by Achim Hebgen writing for the June 1973 issue of Music Magazine, Jeremy Steig "is the most advanced flute player on the scene today. He brings functional sounds (valve, blowing, and breathing noises) into his improvisations, giving his flute the richness of tone without which it has usually been used previously only as a secondary instrument."

"No flutist (sic) I have heard," reports another writer in Down Beat, "has taken such a daring approach to the instrument...In his hands it becomes a powerful, masculine instrument of attack and aggression..."

It is a shame that "Mama Kuku", Association P.C.'s last recording, was the only one to feature Jeremy's work.

Mama Kuku: Association P. C. Live with Jeremy Steig (1974)
	Track listing
	Mama Kuku (Busch, Blanke) Bold 'n Steig (Steig, Kühn) Dr. Hofmann (All the players) Ecnelis (Courbois) Bassamagic (Steig) Lausanne (All the players)
	The players
	Toto Blanke - guitar Joachim Kühn (fender piano) Siggi Busch (bass) Pierre Courbois (drums, percussion) Jeremy Steig (flute, piccolo, bass flute)

 
It would be nice if a few more people knew who I was talking about, and why, so in the absence of any CD releases of their work here is some information about LPs which bring strong memories to me of a distant but memorable evening in Brighton, and a time when our lives were brightened by musicians who cared enough to expect us to think about what we were hearing, and who were motivated by something more enlightening than the sound of money chinking.

(Above, left to right) Jasper van't Hof, Toto Blanke, Pierre Courbois, Siggi Busch

In the early 1970s, that was normal. Anyone with at least half a brain was already bored with where contemporary music had gone. In the space of five or ten years, musicians like these had explored everywhere worth exploring. In the thirty years since, only a handful of musicians have bothered pushing the envelope in any direction at all. 21st century humans are showing every sign that evolution has crashed into reverse.

(Above, standing, left to right)Toto Blanke; somebody in a poster; Jeremy Steig.
(Above, sitting, left to right) Joachim Kühn; Pierre Courbois; Siggi Busch.

Down here in The Underview, the quest for Something Better continues undaunted. Sometimes - often - that means reprising what has already been and gone, because it went to places that have not been gone to since. If you have the opportunity to hear any of Association P.C.s work, unload yourself of the baggage of decades of the jingle-i-zation of music and consider what might have been, if the people who might have made a difference had only cared. Sigh...

...then, just as you think that all is lost, along comes the irrepressible Lol Coxhill, who has been a more youthful part of the British and European jazz scene than most of those born since:

Postscript: Toverbal Sweet... Plus (1997)
	Track listing
	Five To Four Clompen Stomp Spirit of Maasluis Association Or Alternatively Nine One To Three P.C. One Toverbal Toverbal Sweet Jasper And Out The Un-Tempered Klavier And Heavy Friends Toverbal Revisited
	The players
	Lol Coxhill (saxophones) Pierre Courbois (drums, percussion) Jasper van't Hof (keyboards)

 
And it's on CD!

Thanks to Aldo Winkler for the tip on this one

This page: Copyright © 1999-2002, 2008

All pictures taken from original record covers and publishings

Home page