Pan Kola - Without a song (Get the fuck outta here)

"We did the whole thing live, right there on that spot on the Williamsburg Bridge where Sonny Rollins used to practice during his time out, just set up the drums and jammed on Sonny's version of Without a Song whenever the subway rumbled by and did the spoken bit in between. We had wind, rain, people passing by, we were so nervous about getting caught, I mean in those days you could serve more time for playing music on the street than Sonny got for armed robbery back in the day, it was scary, we got back to our apartment and listened back and couldn't believe we'd really managed to get it on tape. The problem back then was that even though you could release non-musical recordings, who the hell wanted to listen to that? We called it a sound poem or something like that but we really wanted music in it, I mean that was the whole POINT of the exercise, so we buried it behind the subway and just read the lyrics. There was no way to cut out those folks walking by without cutting out the whole section so we just left them in, and then we had a brainwave to emphasize the swearing to maybe deflect attention from the music you know, like they would be so dazzled by the F word that they'd miss the horn behind it, but that was just us being young and naiive, they probably didn't even get that far before they trashed it out of hand, out of sight and into the garbage can. Still it was important to do these things you know, to keep the spirit alive no matter what. Back then we thought the main thing was to get the record out somehow but now I think it was the DOING of the thing that was important. Out there on the bridge in Sonny's shadow, hearing them beautiful notes float right out the horn and down the east river, that's something I look back on and think YEAH! We were ALIVE back then. If music was the tracks we were like a train thundering right along them, a music train, and you knew it was always gonna come out the other side of all that nonsense and keep on rolling forever and ever amen. No question."
Pan Harry
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