Radioactive: Free Association
Boston radio program flies against convention
Grammy Magazine
Bill McDonough
Web
surfers and Boston-area listeners can turn to WZBC-FM, Boston College's
radio station. For three hours each Monday night, "Free Association"
features "the interrelationship between jazz and improvised music and
the revolution-era soul music of the '60s," according to the program's
creator and host, Brian Carpenter.
"Free Association" lives up to its name, as Carpenter
segues handily from turntablism and free jazz to techno and avant garde,
blurring the distinctions along the way. Carpenter maintains there's a method
to his musical madness: "I have a clear strategy, a way of building
a bridge from something generally accessible to something relatively inaccessible."
Carpenter describes one set that began with a '70s soul singer and eventually
settled into a piece by a renowned improvisational artist: "One caller
asked me, 'What is this music? You were playing Al Green and all of a sudden
I'm listening to music I've never heard before. I don't remember how we
got here but I like this.' I was playing Albert Ayler. This listener would
normally never listen to free music. If I had played Ayler right after Al
Green, he would have shut off the radio."
Slightly more than a year old, the program has already
made a name for itself among members of Boston's improv scene. According
to Ed Hazell, co-founder of the Boston Creative Music Alliance, "Radio
programs featuring creative music are increasingly rare. Brian not only
has a good sense of what's going on internationally, he knows the Boston
scene intimately and gives the city's music important exposure."Composer
and saxophonist Ken Field, who has appeared on "Free Association,"
agrees that the program makes a significant contribution to avant-garde
and other fringe music. "A lot of jazz stations around the country
have a tendency to stick with tried-and-true artists," says Field,
who's also a member of the ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. "It's
important to have a show like Brian's that really pushes the stylistic edges
and presents things that don't have the opportunity to be heard on mainstream
shows."
Carpenter sees to it that the program's style of presentation
is as much an experiment as the music he plays. About a quarter of the show
features what Carpenter calls his "thematic layering approach."
Over a bed of electronica that's familiar to his audience -- e.g. To
Rococo Rot or Spring Heel Jack -- he'll add a less familiar track.
"I once had Sun Ra's Cosmic Rays singing doo-wop over Dr. Octagon's
'Blue Flowers,'" Carpenter remembers. "Oh my God, that was beautiful."
Once he feels he's hooked his audience, he'll drop out the electronica underneath
and let Sun Ra, Ornette, etc. stand on their own.
And what would "Free Association" be without
a few free associating listeners? One of Carpenter's fans is a caller who
goes by the moniker, "The Naked Baboon." "He'll give me very
terse and pointed assignments," Carpenter says. "He'll say something
like, 'Just play me a beat, man.' Or, 'Take me out to space, man.' And then
he'll hang up. I do my best."
