update: The Gomelsky Recordings
list additions + burning questions
List Additions
In my announcement last week about The Gomelsky Recordings I asked you for any additions to the list that you might know of, and you responded! Two of you did anyway. Here’s a big THANK YOU to Dave Soldier and Raul Gonzalez.
From Dave Soldier:
1983 The House Band, Mondays summer of 1983 at the Bitter End , guests were Wayne Kramer, Frank Wright, Earl Cross, Billy Bang, Elliott Sharp. (Dave Soldier has some recordings that he will provide when found.)
1987 One song for a scene in Rachid Kerdouches’s movie Her Name is Lisa, starring Bill Rice and Rockets Redglare. Pam Brandt on bass, Wayne Horvitz on piano, Jeff Ausfahl on guitar, Richard Dworkin on drums, Michael Callen lead singer, Dave Soldier and Robin Casey on violins, Tamara Lyndsay and Barbara Gogan back up singers. The song was written by Charles DeForrest for Nat King Cole, arrangement by Dave Soldier, produced by Giorgio Gomelsky at his club Plugs.
1989 Plastic People of the Universe Benefit Concert at the Kitchen Jan 29 1989 with about twenty American artists including Ed Sanders from The Fugs, Elliott Sharp, Yuval Gabay, Gary Lucas, Allen Ginsberg. Ivan Bierhanzl has the recording.
1994 Performance of “Mark Twain’s War Prayer” composed by Dave Soldier, a setting of a little known Twain story. The preacher (tenor) is Jason White, the bum (bass) is Wilbur Pauley, the gospel choir Lavender Light, and the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra conducted by Richard Auldon Clark. Filmed by Giorgio Gomelsky for his cable TV show, “Escape-SHift-Control”.
2000 Concert with John Sinclair on October 20 2000 at Green Door NYC, recording whereabouts unknown.
2009 Video of Gary Lucas and Dave Soldier at Gomelsky’s 75th birthday party.
2011 Spinoza’s concerts at Green Door with Ladell Maclin every Sunday in June. (Dave Soldier has video recordings.)
From Raul Gonzalez:
2006 Barra Libre’s EP 45 Orchard Street.
While reviewing these additions, I remembered another one I found some years ago. You’ll find a nice description and documentation at the link below, and you can hear it all in a YouTube video I created.
Burning Questions
As I’ve uncovered stories for the book, a few burning questions have come up along the way. I’m hoping someone out there can help me answer them, or put me in touch with someone who can. Here they are:
The sitar question. Gomelsky told a story in interviews about a sitar at the Yardbirds recording session for “Heart Full of Soul” in 1965. The Indian musicians he brought in to use on the piece did not work out. Before they left, Jimmy Page (a friend of the band) dropped by. He bought the sitar. Soon after he showed it to George Harrison who would later write “Norwegian Wood”, considered the first use of the instrument in pop music. Page claims to have ordered a sitar from India around this time. He doesn’t mention buying one at the above session. I interviewed 2 people who were at that session (drummer Jim McCarty and engineer Eddy Offord) and neither one could remember Page buying the sitar. So, is Gomelsky’s story true? Would Page remember? If you know how to get in touch with him please ask.
The Extrapolation question. Early on in my research I sent an email to John McLaughlin asking about working on his first solo album with Gomelsky. I was surprised and delighted to get a fairly quick response. I was disappointed at what I read. He briefly stated that Gomelsky never compensated him properly for the album and he was not interested in talking about him. At the time Extrapolation was released McLaughlin was not well known. The album did not sell well until after Gomelsky’s label Marmalade went bankrupt. Polydor took over the rights. That’s when McLaughlin became famous with Mahavishnu, and Extrapolation started selling. If you have a copy of it, it will likely have the Polydor label. I have no knowledge of the legal and business details. My interest is more in the recording session itself. How did it happen? What was Gomelsky’s involvement as producer? Once again I talked to session engineer Eddy Offord about this but he couldn’t remember details from so long ago. Another person who is still around and was at the session is John Surman who played saxes. If you know how to get in touch with him please help me out with an introduction.
The Eno question. Gomelsky and Eno arrived in NYC at about the same time for about the same reasons. They were both recruiting avant-garde talent that they thought had the potential to be pop music. They were no doubt trolling the same haunts, so they must have run into each other on multiple occasions. Eno would record the “no wave” album No New York. Gomelsky would record, but never release, the Zu Manifestival featuring many no wave bands. Eno would discover and produce The Talking Heads. Gomelsky would discover and produce Bill Laswell, who would later go on to work with Eno. In spite of all of these connections in a fairly close knit music community in NYC, I have only found one eye-witness account of Eno and Gomelsky meeting — a brief encounter at Gomelsky’s underground club/loft where a no wave band was playing. Eno walked in and was promptly thrown out by Gomelsky. If you know how to get in touch with Brian Eno, please send him my contact: rick@rickrees.com
And finally, the “just what is a Gomelsky recording” question. Most in the list are obvious … he’s in the official credits. Others that seem like live bootlegs are less obvious. But what exactly does a music producer DO anyway? Over Gomelsky’s career, the tasks could vary wildly. Did he provide the studio time? Did he direct the musicians and engineers? Did he have his fingers on the faders? Did he push the “record” button? Was he even present during the recording? The short answer is, he made the recording happen. I’m sure there are more recordings. Let me know.
There was a time when I was producing live avant garde music in San Francisco. I recorded many of those shows and cobbled some into presentations for radio. Did I set up the microphones? No. Did I push the record button? Probably not. But I made it happen, and I have the tapes to prove it.
The sitar story brings to mind this quote from GG on his 75th birthday:
"You sort of travel through your memories. You don't quite get to know if it was true or not that you lived through something. Am I kind of inventing this, or...?
But them it doesn't really matter, because, as the Neapolitans say - if a story's not true, they say - È ben trovata! It's well invented."
https://youtu.be/uqRgzK1nFUs?t=92
I think a production credit can mean almost anything, and doesn't necessarily indicate the one credited had anything much to do with the recording. Gomelsky also has some 21 writing and arranging credits and 19 written by credits. I doubt that he ever wrote any songs. Fred Frith noted that The Yardbirds Got to Hurry, which he transformed into a whole other animal with Bittern Storm Over Ulm, is credited to O. Rasputin, Gomelsky's alias, but is clearly a group jam as it was common at the time for producers to take the publishing on B sides.
The number of people still living who worked with Gomelsky is shrinking rapidly. You might reach out to Julie Tippetts. Gomelsky is credited as producer on her only solo album under the Driscoll name, 1969, and co-producer on Sunset Glow, her first I think under the name Tippetts. The latter was released on Gomelsky's imprint, Utopia (through RCA). You could probably reach her through Martin Archer with whom she's collaborated several times, most recently on 2022's Illusion. Archer runs the highly prolific Discus Music Label in the UK.