Yep, belt buckle has been to the side since 1975. Ha!
OK, well ... since this is the only place on the web where I post, I've gotta take a moment to give some background on this particular gig. Bear with me.
Allan would have been horrified to know that they had chosen this show to package and sell in dvd form. He once said to us (paraphrasing): "You think people take advantage of me now? Just wait 'till after I croak!" This is not really "taking advantage" because it's his family's decision and he's not here to argue about it. But he was appalled that, for instance, every note John Coltrane ever played was released and sold, even the outtakes and musical trainwrecks which were never meant to be heard by the public. So Allan was always careful to erase any "alternate takes" of whatever he was working on. He purposely did not want to leave anything behind that he felt did not meet up to his lofty Artistic standards.
I understand and appreciate that diehard Al fans are excited to hear any recorded moments that can be found regardless of the quality. And I will admit that I'm happy to hear some of the moments people have discovered on their old cassettes used to clandestinely record the gigs. (Unlike the Dead, recording of these shows was generally not allowed.) So I suppose this "for television" recording could not be passed up by the family and they actually paid for the rights to release it......
Still, Allan would have hated this. I think, because of the nature of his music and the way we all tried to play at the very edge of our reach - often falling off the cliff - Allan really disliked live recordings. The two sanctioned live albums done in Japan were difficult ordeals and it's amazing they ever got released. The original "Tokyo Dream" video was released without his approval, but that's another story.
This particular gig was at the Frankfurt Musikmesse in 1986. That's the EU equivalent of our NAMM show here in the States but actually a larger exposition. I don't remember the exact circumstances which brought Kei Akagi into the band on keyboards, but this was his first and only tour with the band. He did an excellent job of dealing with the music but never had the chance to get very comfortable with it. Furthermore, I'm sure Allan and I got together with him in LA for a couple rehearsals but it's possible he had not yet played with Gary Husband until the day of this show.
This was the very first gig of the tour - and likely funded our flight expenses to get to Europe. So we had flown in the day before, then spent almost all of this day jet-lagged and running around the Muskmesse collecting gear which had been offered from various manufacturers for use on the tour. But as I said, that convention is HUGE so picture us trying to find the Mesa Boogie booth (or whatever he was using at the time) on the floor of the show, then finding a handcart to wheel speaker cabinets the 2 miles to the venue, dealing with security to get the gear out of the building, etc... I have the feeling we had to chase down a drum kit that same way. That took all day leaving us precious little time for a soundcheck or a much needed rehearsal with the full band.
So we had done what we could to get set up with the borrowed gear and get the monitors working so we could hear each other. We understood that we were contractually obligated to let the "festival" be recorded for a one-time tv broadcast. What we had NOT anticipated was that as soon as we started playing, 2 or 3 handheld cameramen and their cable wrangling assistants were running back and forth on stage basically in our faces. To the point where they were stepping on our pedals! Complete disregard for us trying to concentrate on the music. It was one of those situations where you needed to completely close your eyes and not see what was happening around you. But then my chorus effect would suddenly turn on. HA!!
And as you can see in that keyframe, Allan had brought his SynthAxe on this trip. That's an amazing midi-controller device which Allan used to its fullest extent. He wrote and played some beautiful music with that machine. But it's a very complicated and very fragile "computer peripheral" which was not built for the road and did not travel well. This very clip demonstrates that problem well. It's the moment in the song "Atavachron" when we've come to Allan's solo ... and the SynthAxe fails. The guy calling cameras doesn't know what's happening so he just focuses on Kei who is playing the background chord sequence while I'm in the background watching Allan scramble to reboot the SynthAxe and get the correct solo sound up. Which he does for only the final few bars of the fixed-length solo. (And he plays some appropriately angry notes!)
That was about as close as we got to a complete musical train-wreck on this gig. The only thing worse would have been if he could not have revived the controller and we would have had to stop mid-tune.
And here it all is for the public to pay for and enjoy. Poor Al.
It is what it is, and I suppose it's at least a historical archive of sorts because there was only one Holdsworth. And theoretically his kids might benefit from some dvd sales - even though the entire set has been available on YouTube for years.
Sorry for the lengthy tale. I've given you a glimpse of the tornado of chaos that surrounded Allan. Most of his battles in life and business were brought on by his own decisions - but that's because his brain was wired 99.9% to deal with music and harmony. I've never met anybody close to his musical orbit. But it made "regular" life difficult for him.
Thanks for your patients!
Take care all,
Jimmy J
