Percussionist and free improvisation pioneer Eddie Prévost returns with a fourth volume of memoir, anecdotes and cultural analysis. Reviewing An Uncommon Music For The Common Man in The Wire 440, Abi Bliss writes: "Any of Prévost’s previous volumes could lay partial claim to its subtitle, A Polemical Memoir, but here formative experience and creative philosophy are deliberately paired... or, as he acknowledges at the outset: “Unintended consequences are where, in my opinion, the most fruitful material can arise.”” In this excerpt, Prévost describes an early encounter between AMM, Cornelius Cardew and the BBC.

Picture the scene: 1966. An ordinary extended working class London family, seated expectantly around a black and white television set. Hold that in your mind.

During April 1966 a series of concerts was presented at The Commonwealth Institute, London. It was the brainchild of Cornelius Cardew, financially supported by the theatre impresario Michael White. The four day ‘Experimental Music’ event was announced by sumptuous black on silver paper A1 posters and leaflets.

Day 1: was the premier of the completed version of Cardew’s graphic magnum opus: Treatise.

Day 2: offered works for four pianos by Terry Riley, John Cage, Earle Brown and Morton Feldman.

Day 3: Experimental works by George Brecht, Toshi Ichiyanagi, John Cage and La Monte Young.

Day 4: AMM – a concert of improvised music.

The artists were listed as: John Tilbury, David Bedford, John Surman, Cornelius Cardew, Keith Rowe, Robin Page, Lawrence Sheaff, Lou Gare, Ranulf Glanville, Eddie Prévost, John White, Peter Greenham and others.

This four day event captured the attention of the producers of BBC Television’s flagship arts programme, Monitor. Subsequently, performers were summoned to a television studio to film an excerpt from Cardew’s mammoth (193 pages) graphic composition Treatise, with Cardew interviewed by Monitor’s then front-man Robert Robinson. At this distance it is difficult to recall everything. Two elements remain firmly in my memory. One, the presenter’s scepticism, voiced in an unyielding, plummy tone and Cornelius’s equally unwaveringly polite, but confident, rebuttal of Robinson’s unqualified prejudices. Two, the contribution of Robin Page in response to Cardew’s graphics.

I learnt a lot from Cardew’s staunch defence of his experimental composition and the social and aesthetic values it professed, utilised, and recommends. My guess is that Cardew and Robinson, despite their contrasting dispositions, probably had a similar educational background. Robinson would have made mincemeat of me if I had been in Cor’s shoes.

The second prominent memory, and undoubtedly the star act arising out of the televisual representation of Treatise, was Robin Page. Cornelius was never one to allow his creative projects to be trapped into neat, anticipated expectations. Treatise might be thought of as a graphic score for musicians. Cornelius made it potentially open to any creative response. Robin duly obliged.

So, this is where I remind you to recall a group of people waiting expectantly around a television set. Those people were my mother, a few aunts and uncles and cousins. Somehow, and I am not sure who to blame for this, word had got out in my family that I was to appear on television. Perhaps I should also apprise you that in the mid-1960s, TVs were not the universal piece of technology in every home. And most sets were probably only able to receive three channels. All with black and white pictures.

The stage is set. And, it will become the founding and immovable realisation, within my family, about what it is that I do. One or two of them might have heard me play drums in Dixieland fashion. But, they were not really prepared for the 1960s avant garde.

So, I sat at the back of the TV studio with my various pieces of percussion, and together with the rest of the ensemble began playing the excerpt from Treatise. Out in front was Robin Page with a stepladder, some cornflakes and a dog. Robin, dressed in brown stagehand overalls, mounted the steps, opened the cornflake packet, sprinkled some on the floor around him. These were duly gobbled up by the dog. All in the pursuit of art.

For the next 20 years, an albeit diminishing ensemble of elderly relatives would enquire, in time-honoured ‘how you doing’ fashion, whether I was still playing concerts with a dog and cornflakes.

An Uncommon Music For The Common Man is published by Copula and is available from the Matchless Recordings website. Subscribers can read Abi Bliss's review in The Wire 440