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| Street art mural in East Atlanta Village |
Although we've never seen it officially stated or otherwise in print, we think the title of Sun Ra's 1982 LP A Fireside Chat With Lucifer is a sly reference to Slugs' Saloon. As noted earlier, Slugs' was named for the "terrestrial three-brained beings" mentioned in the book Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson by George Gurdjieff, and "a fireside chat" is not all that different thematically than "tales to his grandson."
Although most of Sun Ra's recordings during the '80s were of live sets, Fireside Chat was a studio session from September 1982 recorded at Variety Recording Studios in New York. Located at first on 46th Street, Variety Recording Studio moved to Bush Tower at 130 West 42nd Street following a 1968 fire. Both locations were near Times Square and one block off Broadway - in the heart of showbiz according to a memoir written by one of the studio owners. Sun Ra had frequently booked sessions at Variety throughout the '60s and '70s due to its affordable rates ($60/hour, as opposed to $75-$100/hour at other studios), and numerous Sun Ra dates have been recorded there.
The 30-story Bush Tower building was constructed in 1916, but by the '60s, Times Square and the surrounding neighborhood were home to sex shops, peep shows, and theaters screening porn, sleaze, slasher flicks, and poorly dubbed martial-arts films from Hong Kong. As early as 1960, the area around 42nd Street was described by the New York Times as "the 'worst' in town." Times Square was depicted in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy as gritty, dark, and desperate, and conditions only worsened in the 1970s. By the time that Fireside Chat was recorded in 1982, Times Square had deteriorated to the point where the owners were considering demolishing the historic Bush Tower building. Fortunately, they renovated instead and the building still stands today.
Fireside Chat was one of the Arkestra's final sessions at Variety; except for three tracks recorded there in 1985, it would be six years before Sun Ra again made use of the studio. In 1988, he recorded the Disney tune Pink Elephants on Parade there, as well as the album Blue Delight, and that was it.
The 30-story Bush Tower building was constructed in 1916, but by the '60s, Times Square and the surrounding neighborhood were home to sex shops, peep shows, and theaters screening porn, sleaze, slasher flicks, and poorly dubbed martial-arts films from Hong Kong. As early as 1960, the area around 42nd Street was described by the New York Times as "the 'worst' in town." Times Square was depicted in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy as gritty, dark, and desperate, and conditions only worsened in the 1970s. By the time that Fireside Chat was recorded in 1982, Times Square had deteriorated to the point where the owners were considering demolishing the historic Bush Tower building. Fortunately, they renovated instead and the building still stands today.
Fireside Chat was one of the Arkestra's final sessions at Variety; except for three tracks recorded there in 1985, it would be six years before Sun Ra again made use of the studio. In 1988, he recorded the Disney tune Pink Elephants on Parade there, as well as the album Blue Delight, and that was it.
The rambling track is not unlike the "space suite" Calling Planet Earth - We'll Wait for You, recorded live at Slugs, or any of a number of other Sun Ra compositions for that matter. Sun Ra biographer John Szwed wrote that Fireside Chat "sustains a lyrical edge in spite of an open framework and textures which encourage sonorities to surface and emerge from the band as if there was no human intention behind them. Ra's organ playing here was built less on bombast and sonic terror than it is on whispers, stutters, shivers, and swells." In any event, Fireside Chat is a Sun Ra session recorded in Times Square at its most debauched period.
Fireside Chat was pressed in limited quantities with hand-made Xeroxed covers (without personnel or credits) and sold only at concerts. Original copies are incredibly rare.
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