target with four faces

last night horsemouth developed a sudden interest in jamaican saxophonist and early free jazz musician joe harriott, and in particular the cover of his 1960 album freeform - a faux anthropological assemblage involving a toby jug, some wooden boxes and a penny bank in the form of an elderly black gentleman's head and shoulders in cast iron. horsemouth's grandparents once had one of these. the coin was placed in the gentleman's hand, the lever pressed, the hand would lift to the gentleman's mouth, his large eyes would roll up and the coin would slip down his throat into the piggy bank within. as a child horsemouth found this, and his grandmother's singer sewing machine (the legs of which were also in black cast iron) fascinating. they both lived in the same corner of the kitchen.

horsemouth could find no details on who had made the thing on the record sleeve or the cd re-issue - he thought (perhaps) it looked like jasper johns target with four faces (and it doesn't look a lot like that), eventually (after some blade runner style enlargement business) horsemouth discovered two names on the photo - donald silverstein and ken deardoff. donald was a noted music industry photographer doing many covers on the formula jazz musician + work of art, he also photographed jimi hendrix for the axis bold as love cover, ken deardoff a noted record cover designer - could it be that they made the assemblage themselves?

joe harriott also recorded with goan prodigy guitarist amancio d'silva who, later on, taught for a while at jenako arts in hackney (where horsemouth, in the graceland years, briefly studied african (ghanain) guitar with folo graff of orchestre jazira). people (well the guy from agents of chaos) told him amancio was good and that it was a real opportunity to study with him but horsemouth was busy with other things. (this is something he can now beat himself up about).

last night horsemouth should have made music (but, even though he was bored, he was also feeling a little tired).