Around 1980 I was walking around the Freizeitpark (leisure parc) in Moers with my best friend. It was Pentecost and the jazz festival was on. I asked him what free jazz was and he told me that it consisted mostly of unremarkable, chaotic improvisations by groups of jazz musicians. Usually everyone was just improvising on his own and it all added up to impenetrable cacophony. But sometimes the players would react to each other and would create unrepeatable magical moments of intense musical communication on the spot. Or something like that.

I grew up in Moers. I was there - probably at home in the Venloer Straße - when the first jazz festival (or new jazz festival as nobody from Moers called it) got going in 1972. Somehow I didn't attend the festival before 1985 or something like that.

Suddenly I am getting into free jazz. I have been struggling with listening to music in the past years. Rock or independent rock has lost most of its rebellious novelty charm for me. I am addicted to new, exciting sounds but I can't find them in those genres anymore. Nothing seems to happen, there is a huge recycling machine going on. I seem to have heard it all before and mostly better.

I'd like to write a little about free jazz in the near future. From my amateur point of view. About why I think that it still matters today, that it maybe was the last great innovation in jazz maybe even in music in general. If you think that this is a good idea tell me what your favourite free jazz album is. I am curious and will try to write about it if I get hold of it. Mine is probably still Ascension. Meditations is on the way and I have enjoyed Interstellar Space a lot recently.