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Night's Music

by Jimmy Lyons

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    Original 1988 black vinyl, shrink-wrapped!
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1.
Rhythm I 05:17
2.
3.
Spanish Dust 04:22
4.
Eclipse 04:08
5.
Night Love 05:12
6.
7.
Rythm II 10:42
8.
Melody 03:35
9.
10.
Zen Traveler 04:11
11.
Horn Man 03:43
12.
In a Poem 07:37
13.
14.

about

Rent the 2019 documentary about Jimmy Lyons at: vimeo.com/ondemand/jimmylyons

"This album is dedicated to my mother, Loretta Lyons who inspired me to carry on." -Jimmy Lyons

"Unexpected ethereal sax and scat! Lyons is a formidable singer, a voice percussionist who is at home with both ear-bound bebop and the blue, echo-drenched time travel of cosmic rhythms. Born to swing, Lyons and Deal (on saxes and flute) is a futuristic, open-marriage of speech and music, far from the retread journeys of the Beats. They served warning that Armageddon means nothing to the galaxies."
-Paul Hersch, Santa Cruz Express

All songs written by Jimmy Lyons.
Original Release Date: 31 December, 1988.
2019 Remastering by Clinton Day.

Dear Fred McDarrah (Village Voice):
"Your book, like jazz, brought back the spontaneous memory of that vital skin crawling time when everything was raw inside, pulsating within the tempo of now. An honest reflection of our lives when we were blown solos from the frantic angel trumpeters under the Manhattan skyline, a pale moon burning for some; a spiral into the sun for others, sounds gone to zero, sounds gone to stars.

The pulse and beat of your passion for the historical riffs, which were then in the here and now, put me into a sense memory of the village flight, a journey rediscovered. We, the word hustlers living life without a net under us before the electric time, before the contracts and the big money flowed through the village streets. We were always in motion seeking ourselves in the next moment like a zen solo, like the bop outlaws on the fringe of a subterranean landscape, heading toward our evolution.

This letter is about my evolution, its continuing spirit since those formative years down in the Gaslight when I was an a cappella scat singing jazz poet. This letter is about my evolution since that time, and where I've taken that traditional form of fusion / words / sounds / music / poetry.

At that time many critics didn't understand what was happening with jazz and poetry, some thought I was doing Charlie Parker be-bop changes, that was their limitation. Fortunately for me, their were people like Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Wolfgang Knittle, Cecil Taylor, Don Ellis, musicians from Detroit and Boston, who understood. Most important for me was Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney), who had the hippest ears of his generation and an avid listener of all forms of music; Gravy has a sense of history. He heard I was taking the words apart, scatting the vowels, laying textures of sound and rhythms. He was responsible for my continuing evolution at that time; buddha ears picked up on what I was bringing to the form; what we now call the sound experience. The ideas which sought new beginnings are fully expressed on the Night's Music LP.

In this form I use color. Take a jazz tone in an elegy for a Zen Traveler, it's about New York City and the dominant color is red, sprinkled with blue / gray / black and brown. The zen traveler takes on human form pitted against the chaos and dehumanization, frantic rhythms, lyrical shadings always on the cutting edge. Spanish Dust is a requiem, a dirge and the colors are purple and amber, the time is twilight. The flute lines of the piece intend to create a vast sense of space; the mournful chant is the meta sound of the village. We use the Echoplex as another voice, a texture of ethereal sound to stir the jazz cosmos. Midnight Express is a psychological journey on white-heated rails through a tunnel of ecliptic madness.

In this form there is freedom within the sound / word / structure. The rhythms, textures of sound and the element of mystery are equally important. Some of it has left the runways of jazz and poetry to create new journeys. Jazz and poetry were never a perfect marriage for many reasons that are too lengthy to get into at this writing. It was a most important beginning and people such as Larry Lipton certainly had some insight on its potential as an art form. World fusion is happening and can be heard everywhere. Poems can be composed with a sound and instrumentation that can express the essence of the piece, get underneath it; the meta sound. Whatever I didn't express in worlds, hopefully you will hear on the album. I've always respected your eyes / ears / and feel for the pulse and beat of the times. Again, your book brought back that shaped the most important years of my life, the transformation of self.

The poets were replaced by the folk singers; the folk singers were replaced by rock and the evolution continues. We have all paid homage to the New York experience; who hasn't it touched? The bars, coffee houses, and the faces drawn from every cubical rural city small town bus stop arriving in New York City, to speak the word, thus becoming Word Hustlers, America's children before the electric time; I still feel the soul of their being."

Carry on Fred,
Jimmy Lyons (1988)

credits

released July 15, 2021

Vocals & Lyrics by Jimmy Lyons.
Saxophone, wood flute, piano, background vocals, bells by Phil Deal.

Additional Saxophone - Bruce Mishkit
Trumpet - Tim Larkin
Drums - John Xepoleas
Special Effects - Oliver Dicicco.
Guitar - Uri Hertz

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about

Jimmy Lyons Alameda, California

Legendary jazz artist once arrested in NYC at the Gaslight Cafe for his unique vocal style and acquitted with "the right to expand the boundaries of poetry." Jimmy Lyons wrote lyrics about myth, love, family and also penned a song for Johnny Mathis.

A predecessor to hip hop & contemporary to Cecil Taylor, his talents extend to the Actor's Studio.
MOVIE: vimeo.com/ondemand/jimmylyons
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