Odwalla

What the chicken-fried fuck is wrong with the people at Spotify?  Their stream of the 1973 album Bap-Tizum by the Art Ensemble of Chicago doesn't include the climactic composition Odwalla, even though the song title is listed under the album.

Bap-Tizum was recorded live at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, and it was many people's first introduction to the Art Ensemble. It was my first encounter to the trail-blazing quintet. It's a significant recording documenting the transition from the fiery and often angry free jazz of the 1960s to the more exploratory and world-music focused free jazz of the 1970s, as well as an introduction to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an organization that still promotes and supports jazz music today.  Several of the acts that I saw at the 2022 Big Ears Festival had AACM ties.  In 2018, I overheard the Art Ensemble's Roscoe Mitchell play the song Odwalla from Bap-Tizum as he was warming up for his performance at the Big Ears Festival.

On Bap-Tizum, the Ensemble was introduced by the political radical John Sinclair, one of the founders of the anti-fascist, anti-racist political collective The White Panthers (his voice can also be heard at the outro of the closing composition, Odwalla).  His 47-second intro is listed on the album's set list as "Introduction" and segues directly into the all-percussion opening track Nfamoudou-Boudougou.

But although Spotify doesn't list the Introduction track, it includes it as Nfamoudou-Boudougou.  What is actually Nfamoudou-Boudougou is then listed as the next track, the all-vocal Immm.  Immm is then included as the following track, Unanka, and so on.  Finally, the last track on the album, Odwalla, the composition that gently brings the listener back to planet Earth after the alternate states of consciousness induced by the previous tracks, is omitted altogether.

Listening to the Bap-Tizum album for like the 300th time, I find myself anticipating Odwalla nearly halfway through.  To my ears, the whole 1972 set was just like an extended prelude to Odwalla.  That closing cut defines the album.  Listening to Bap-Tizum without Odwalla at the end is like listening to King Crimson's first album without hearing In the Court of the Crimson King. It's like Animal Collective's Spirit They're Gone, Spirits They've Vanished without Alvin Row at the end. It just doesn't work.

Spotify doesn't allow comments on their app, so it's not easy to point out the error.  There is a "Report" feature to complain about copyright infringement or obscenity, but not to point out they messed up the track sequence.  We'll just have to learn to live in a diminished world without Odwalla closing out Bap-Tizum.