Word: avante
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...Pacific Western Distributing Corp. of San Francisco came out with a mass-produced isobutyl nitrite product called Rush. As a result of aggressive marketing, poppers quickly spread to avant-garde heterosexuals. Marketed under such trade names as Bullet, Crypt and Locker Room, isobutyl nitrite is sold openly in some record stores, boutiques and pornographic bookstores. Poppers sell for $4 to $6 for about half an ounce, enough for up to 15 sniffs. According to Pacific Western Chairman W. Jay Freezer, retail sales totaled some $20 million last year; he forecasts a 15% to 20% increase this year...
...Says Avant-Garde Musician Rivers: "It's not really in the tradition because the tradition is the solo voice. Fusion never goes anywhere." West Coast Jazz Pianist Paul Potyen thinks that most fusion albums have lost the sense of jazz's uniquely personal sounds and interactions. "The 'in' cuts are really slick; they're turning out musical TV dinners," he says...
...Rivbea sounds Rivers' own extended free-form music: "Spontaneous on-the-spot creation and improvisation." Perhaps the most vital avant-garde spawning ground of all is Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a collective that was created in 1965. It encompasses all styles from straight African rhythms to bebop to the avant-garde's specialty: grunts and wails and bizarre instrumental effects that were ignored during bebop's preoccupation with fluency and speed. A.A.C.M.'s alumni include two emerging jazz stars: Saxophonist Anthony Braxton, 33, and Pianist Muhal Richard Abrams...
...avant-garde jazz is more accepted overseas than at home. Kahil El-Zabar, 25, percussionist and composer with A.A.C.M., recently played to bigger audiences in Rome than in Chicago. And when Rivers toured Europe, audiences numbered 10,000 to 15,000, compared with around 2,000 in America. Says...
Austrian Peter Handke, 35, first achieved fame in Europe as a flamboyantly avant-garde dramatist. His best-known play, Offending the Audience, did just that: insulted by the actors' dialogue and by the evident purposelessness of their actions, spectators stormed the stage when the drama was produced in Frankfurt. Handke's reputation in America is altogether more modest and is chiefly based on four novels that are less strident than his plays but every bit as puzzling and unsettling. The Left-Handed Woman, a novella, will provoke more admiration and head scratching...