Thanks Anders, from Gary H (Re: Allan Holdsworth group)

Hi Anders,

I was just passing by and saw the nice things you said about the music of Allan Holdsworth and myself. Just to say thanks very much!

You mentioned though (and kindly provided links) to some of this (to me) rather dreaded footage from Frankfurt. I just wanted to say I really appreciated the nice things you said about that stuff, and it's frustrating to me also that even though I have been affiliated with this musician since 1979 there's still no real film documentation on the music the way it is when we happen to play together.

(I'm going to put that right hopefully, since there is a nice opportunity to do a drum DVD for the company Altitude Digital. The guys there are really enthusiastic about capturing some good stuff on the group, either live or in studio. Fingers crossed it happens.)

The reason I use the term "dreaded" in relation to that Frankfurt footage is multi-factual. Even though there are some nice moments for me on that footage, it was in fact the first day of a European tour back in the early 80s, and I remember this one distinctly. Only half our gear was there - for me, no stick bag and I had to borrow some ridiculously oversized sticks to get through the show - (it's the reason I look so particularly stiff!) - all guitar and bass amps and cabinets were wrong for Allan and Jimmy.. the Synthaxe was breaking down every five minutes and none of us could hear ourselves onstage!! Oh, it was a war!! But of course, televised and now.. world famous!!

So, a particular reason I wanted to write in was to report that I had a wonderfully enjoyable tour with Allan and Jimmy quite recently - particularly enjoyable. Scouring through Youtube I came across some nice documentation of one of those gigs, and I'm really happy it's there, since I feel it's way musically superior to the existing old footage. I thought I'd display some links to it for you and some of the other folks in the hope that you might enjoy it.

I very much hope you do.

Here are some of them..

"Letters Of Marque Part 1" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLPsSo8G8P8&feature=related

"Letters Of Marque Part 2" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-pnvbaowI4

"Gas Lamp Blues Part 1" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFJ0jB5z82Q&feature=related

"Gas Lamp Blues Part 2" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ept9rEVjwE&feature=related

"Fred" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcExX9l-Bi4

Again Anders, big thanks to you for your kind words and comments on the music. Much appreciated!

Sincerely yours and very best to everyone here.

GH

Thank you Gary for your response and the links you provided! Highly appreciated! I will watch and listen to the material tonight. That drum DVD you mention sounds very interesting. The three dvd’s I have with Allan Holdsworth and his group are all with Chad Wackerman, whose also an excellent drummer. There is actually one commercial release with you and IOU I forgot about, namely this: http://www.audiophileimports.com/shop/product.php?productid=20604&cat=0&page=2

I haven’t seen this tape myself. Are there any plans to release this on dvd in a foreseeable future? That VHS-tape seems to be in NTSC-format only?

There is also this videotape circulating among collectors on the internet: “Allan Holdsworth - Hard Hat Area Tour 1994/1995. Excellent audience recording from Argentina 1994. Musicians include: Allan Holdsworth, guitar synthaxe, Gary Husband, drums, Skuli Sverisson, bass and Steve Hunt, keyboards. 86 minutes”. I’ll try to get my hands on this one too

My favourite Holdsworth albums are I.O.U (1982) and Metal Fatigue (1985). There is a nice live sound on that IOU record. The drums sound great too on that album.

Both you and Allan Holdsworth were musicians of high calibre at an early age. Here’s a rare videoclip of the group Soft Machine from 1974 with a familiar guitar player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIC-nJRcgeU

Looking forward to your future releases!

All the best,
Anders

Hi Anders and thanks again,

I'd be very interested in a link to the Argentina 1994 video if you find one(?)

The release under my name that you gave a link to is a strictly no-no. It was a video I got ripped off on, and thankfully was never issued in the DVD realm.

Cheers again,

Gary

Hi Gary,

Good to know the background to the release “Gary Husband – Interplay and improvisation”. Sorry to hear you were ripped off on that one.

Kind regards,
Anders

Yeah the Interplay & Improvisation video was a sad joke. I had a real effective (I felt) educational slant that I wanted to deliver via that video. That's why I chased a company in the first place to try and interest them in it - I wasn't approached. The "performances", (such as they were, and none of them properly approved by me) were supposed to be an icing on the cake idea, and strictly to only by example clarify some of my directions. They took it all, made their own approvals and edited all the musical events together (presumably based on how successful the camera angles worked out), and I was somehow expected at the end of it all to be happy with an (at best) mediocre performance video.
Last thing as I said when I left their editing suite was "if you put that out in this way I'll slag it, and you, off every opportunity I get". Their words were something like "should've read the small print".

Total nightmare.

Reasurring thing was their promotional efforts were about as impressive or well thought out as their devious intentions and the video hardly sold - certainly not enough to qualify the expense of reissuing the "product" as a DVD. Karma I guess caught up with them. Shame on them.

Cheers again Anders.

Gary

Gary, I watched and listened to the tracks you sent the links for. I enjoyed the material. Three virtuosos at work! I hope you’ll make a live dvd with this lineup. On some tracks or sections a keyboard player wouldn’t hurt because then it would be easier for us mortals to follow the structure of the composition . I also agree with this text comment found on the youtube pages: “chad's great, but AH+GH = magic - they are catalysts for each other, they inspire each other, they complement each other - pure magic”.

Kind regards,
Anders