holiday Free-Jazz + songs about Gomelsky

new releases to end a year and start a new one

Jan 01, 2025

Santa arrived early for me with the Happy Holiday Music release from the San Francisco Free Jazz Collective record label. This is NOT another sappy collection of Xmas cover songs done in a jazz style. In fact, it’s not Xmas songs at all. It’s instrumental free-jazz played by musicians who have been doing it for decades. They happen to be doing it during the holidays, so I guess it’s holiday music.

For this release the group called themselves Noodle Truck. The core members have released many projects under different group names. The free improv approach remains the same throughout.

I’ve known the guitar player, Ron Kukan, since 1990 when I was booking the first weekly series of improvised music in SF. His group back then was called Fracture, and as you might guess their improv was heavily tinged with a King Crimson influence. And heavy it was. One of the biggest shows I ever did at the small venue I was booking saw Fracture open for a relatively unknown Buckethead. What a night.

Ron always preferred playing in the studio, so he built himself one not too long after we met. It was in this same studio that he and his studio partner Jai Young Kim (Secret Chiefs 3, Job) recorded PAKT earlier this year (see related story below). That’s the improv supergroup featuring Percy Jones (Brand X) on bass and Alex Skolnick (Testament) on guitar, Ken Grohowski (Imperial Triumphant) on drums and Tim Motzer on guitar/electronics.

Ron and Jai Young have been doing weekly improv sessions at the studio with a rotating cast of characters for many years now. Eventually they have a collection of music from these sessions that they want to release. This time they called the band Noodle Truck.

The bass player for Noodle Truck is Carl Stanley who is also an original member of Fracture with Ron. Yes, these two have been playing together for a long time. Carl’s bass has a uniquely deep tone on this recording that I find almost hypnotizing. He gets pushed into different directions by the wonderful drumming of Menasche. On many of the songs I wish his drums were a bit higher in the mix. They seem to purposely avoid getting into a groove, but their rhythms still become surprisingly danceable at times.

Speaking of dancing, the interaction between the two guitars also has that feel that they are dancing around each other, sometimes chasing, sometimes following, sometimes simply slamming.

Noodle Truck is:

Ron Kukan: Guitar
Carl Stanley: Bass
Phillip Hermans: Slide Guitar, Guitar
Steven Menasche: Drums, Synth
Special Guests:
Todd Wolfe: Guitar
Jai Young Kim: Keyboards
Efrem Towns: Trumpet

Steeped in free jazz because of its pure approach to improvisation, this album sounds more like rock with a touch of fusion in the best possible way.

Is it HAPPY music? Makes me happy. Is it HOLIDAY music? Again, works for me at this time of year, or any other.

Shifting musical gears, let me take you back to the 1960’s where we find Giorgio Gomelsky pioneering new styles of music. He’s also the reason I started The Non-Writer (see related story below).

By the end of the 60’s Gomelsky was working with Soft Machine and producing extremely adventurous jazz records including John McLaughlin’s first solo album Extrapolation, and the free-jazz of John Stevens Spontaneous Music Ensemble.

In a different musical universe just a few short years prior, Gomelsky was helping to shape the sound of The Swinging 60’s of London. Whatever musical landscape he found himself in, Giorgio would look for the boundaries and start pushing. In mid-60’s London his vehicle for this was The Yardbirds. His venue was The Crawdaddy.

Author and close personal friend of Giorgio’s, Francis Dumaurier, wrote a book about him. At the book release party in London, Francis met up with the group The Hornets who play Swinging 60’s covers and originals. They collaborated on this recent release that tells the story of Giorgio’s Crawdaddy. It’s a Rhythm & Blues concept album in 12 songs!

The songs are not long and they pack in a lot of lyrics that cover the major events surrounding the club. This includes: what led Giorgio to start the club; how the Rolling Stones got started there and betrayed Giorgio; how the Yardbirds took over and saw Eric Clapton boot himself out of the band; how Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page follow before Giorgio gets fired by the band.

There’s more. Song 11 is called ‘Marmalade’ which was the name of the record label Giorgio started after getting fired by the Yardbirds. This label would release many ‘first’ albums by artists that would later become hugely famous.

Whew, that’s a mouthful of lyrics … check’m out at the link below and follow along with the songs.

Want to know more about these stories? Get Francis’ book ‘For Your Love’ at the link below. And look for Francis in the latest editions of Shindig magazine. “The January issue of Shindig! will be wholly dedicated to the book, and the February issue will be half the CD and half the book,” according to Francis. He also says he’s working to produce a musical documentary based on the songs.

So there you have it. Two recent releases covering contemporary free improv and music history in songs. Not a bad way to start the new year.