Ken Nordine ‘Talking All That Word Jazz’ Solid Steel Interview

  • BROADCAST: 1998
  • REMIXED: 2008
  • FORMAT: CD
  • LABEL: n/a
  • CAT No.: n/a
  • DESIGN: Openmind
  • PHOTOGRAPHY: From the original Word Jazz LPs
  • SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Approx 10 handmade CDs
  • EXTRA ZEN: Discogs page
  • LISTEN: HERE

DK noticed that Ken Nordine was going to be in town, playing the role of God in Laurie Anderson’s show at the South Bank, sometime mid ’97. He arranged for Ken to come into the studio for an interview so that we could do a special for Solid Steel in what would become an irregular series of programs about our musical heroes. Neither of us had done an interview before and we had no idea how we would carry it out so I went away and read through every source I could find about Ken the night before he was due to turn up.

The next day, DK, PC, engineer Ali Tod and I met up at the studio and spent a fascinating hour with the one and only ‘Kent Nor-ping’ as he fashioned himself in one radio show drop he recorded for us along the way. Several of us bought records for him to sign and one of mine was the Blue Thumb compilation ‘How Are Things In Your Town?’. On the back cover were the lyrics to his poem ‘The Ageing Young Rebel’ even though the track didn’t appear on the record and it was at this meeting that we agreed to collaborate on a track that would become our version of the aforementioned poem. Selections from Ken’s Word Jazz albums made great graphics as he hangs out with the title. I even redid some of the artwork upon remixing the interview years later.

Postscript: For the 20th anniversary of Solid Steel in 2008 I unearthed the original interview and completely remixed it into a new hour long show with extra material and much better background music. The original show had been my first ever attempt at constructing something in Cubase and ten years later I had way more knowledge and a bigger collection of Nordine rarities to soundtrack it with.