A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH ROBERT D. RUSCH OF CIMP

(November 20, 2002)


As a preface, I interviewed Bob Rusch, whom I admire very much, the first month the Roadshow began for a piece on who I deemed were the most influential people in the music. Since, I have interviewed artists (too many to remember or name) that recorded for Rusch's CIMP and Cadence labels. To Rusch's defense, not one has mentioned a problem with their sessions in Rusch's Spirit Room, until Sonny Simmons, one of my favorites. Equal time baby is what makes a democracy great and Rusch was kind enough to sit down and give his take on Simmons' comments, as always, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: When I spoke with Sonny Simmons, his impressions of CIMP and his sessions there were not positive. Those sessions are some of the best CIMP releases. I have no issue with the sound, but I am not an audio freak, nor do I care to be. Clarify some things. Simmons had implied that you had approached him about recording those sessions.

BOB RUSCH: No, no, we, as a rule, do not approach anybody. Other than the first recording we did, which is sort of how the label got started. It was simply because Barry Guy, Paul Lytton, and Evan Parker wanted to come up and hang out for a while and that is how that lead into that. We said, "Would you like to do a recording?" And we tried it. Other than that, we don't solicit artists. We never do. I think philosophically, were there is nothing really wrong with it, I think philosophically, I would like to believe that when an artist is ready to do something, they will search out how to get it done and I don't want to be in a position of pushing that process. I want to facilitate the process. So we have never solicited anybody and we still don't to this day. I get five or six demos a day and most of the people, I have never heard of. Sonny simply called up and said, "I hear you are doing records." We worked out an agreement and then he finished one and then he immediately wanted to do another and I said, "Well, while I think that that is a great recording," and I do. He is a powerful player and it is just a wonderful recording. We called it Transcendence because it had a transcendence feel to it. He immediately wanted to do another one and I said, "No, we've done that. Let's do something else that exposes another side," and so we worked out a quartet thing this time and he came up and he did that and then a few months later, he wanted to do another and we couldn't. He wanted to do a thing on English horn and we couldn't agree on it. There have been a couple of times since that he has called and asked if we could do another recording and for whatever reasons, I said, "No," not because I don't love his playing. I think he's a great player. In fact, Fred, he called about four week ago and wanted to do a recording with the Cosmosamatics group and I turned that down even though it has a drummer on it that we have worked with a ton, Jay Rosen and other people. I enjoy his work. I turned it down simply because he had done it. He had done it on a couple records on Boxholder. It has been done. It is fine. There is too much stuff out there to expose before we go out there and start repeating stuff. I saw the comments that Sonny Simmons made and he said that he would never record for us again and I keep asking him and I have never asked him. He also said he didn't like the sound and I should tell you that on the first recording, he and Moffett, Charles Moffett and Michael Marcus, Marc Rusch, myself, all went to the listening room and played it, played the whole thing. He loved it. In fact, Sonny's comment was that, "Now, that we have done that, I don't know what else we can do. Where do you go after you have done that?" He loved it and he loved the sound. Now, all of the sudden, he has got another story. I think it sounds fine and most people do. Sometimes the sound isn't completely balanced, but we're not trying to replicate what Verve or Columbia or anybody else does. We have a certain mandate and it is explained. Every issue has a thing and it says that this is what we do, a statement of purpose. If you don't like it, that's fine, but we know what we're doing and some musicians absolutely love it. I will tell you a funny story, Fred. Can I do this?


FJ: Floor is yours.

BOB RUSCH: Ernie Krivda and Ernie, we may be recording again, so Ernie Krivda, who came up very early in the ballgame, the first month of our existence. We record him and his comment at the time was, "That is the first time I have heard the sax as I hear the sax the way I sound to me." When he got the record, he said, "I don't like the sound." We said, "Why not?" And he said, "Because I like to be able to play it on my cassette player in the car." And of course, he doesn't like the sound because they are not meant to be played like that. We realize we are limiting our audience because ours do not translate well to cars because they are not compressed. It would be sort of like going to Lincoln Center and you hear the concert. You expect to hear the concert. You don't expect to hear the concert in the middle of Times Square with all the ambient noise. That is not what we're trying to do. I will tell you, Fred. I am a long distance driver. I drive all over the United States and very often non-stop from coast to coast with other people. I take about forty CDs with me. I have stopped taking CIMPs because I drive in a big van and it has a lot of ambient noise and I can't hear them. It is as simple as that. I can hear something, but all the dynamic shading, all the dynamic range is lost because I am traveling in a great, big can. We know there are limitations. We're not trying to compete with the boom box listeners, or even there are times in the office that I will listen to a CIMP and I can't hear it. This has actually happened. I will say to Marc, "Isn't this very low?" And he says, "Yeah, you are listening to it in the office with all that other noise. Go listen to it in the listening room." So I go into another room and I can hear it fine. He is constantly trying to improve the sound and it has changed over the years, but we do what we do.


FJ: Misunderstanding would be lessened if you did what everyone does.

BOB RUSCH: Everybody has their own way to do it. My feeling is if some people hate what you're doing and other people love what you're doing, you must be doing, if they all loved what you were doing, you probably are doing nothing. If they all hated what you were doing, I really would question what you were doing. It is an extreme. There are news groups. There is an audiophile and I guess these people are high end audio people, which I am not and the general consensus last time, when somebody showed me their stuff, was that CIMP has the best sound of anybody. Their problem was that they just don't like the music, which is OK.


FJ: It's not for everybody.

BOB RUSCH: Yeah, and many audiophiles don't like the kind of music that we deal with. They basically like very familiar stuff.


FJ: Can't please everyone.

BOB RUSCH: No, and we're not trying to. We definitely aren't trying to.


FJ: Why not be the everyman's label?

BOB RUSCH: First of all, Fred, I don't think I would be any good at it. I don't know what everybody likes. I know what I like and I like music that stimulates me. I like all sorts of music, but with CIMP, I am trying to do a music that stimulates me, that takes me from here to there, that doesn't intellectually insult me, that challenges me, but allows me to go on a trip and be moved. That's what CIMP does. Now there is other music. I can tell you some of them insipid music I like. I don't want to hear it all the time, but there are times when I want to hear that. When I travel, I travel with everything from the Bach B minor Mass to Ethel Merman. Music has different purposes and this music isn't all purpose music. It is not vanilla. And there is a small audience that appreciates that.


FJ: Are you content with the audience's size?

BOB RUSCH: You know, Fred, that is a funny thing. When we first started, we basically said that nobody would buy these records and it hasn't quite been nobody buys these records. We have built up a following and an audience. You are never content. Of course, I would like more people to get it and I would like the record label to be a little bit more solvent, but I have to remember when we started and so I am very appreciative of the audience we have and the exchange and the communication we have, even with people that don't always agree with what we're doing. At least most of them come at us intelligently and we can have a fair and honest discussion about this and all, and we record such broad range of unpopular music, shall we say, that many people get all the CIMPs, but they don't necessarily like them all.


FJ: They may grow into it. Certainly, my tastes have progressed through the years.

BOB RUSCH: They might. So has mine, so has mine. I have recorded things on CIMP that I would have never thought in a million years that I would ever record, areas of music that I have never appreciated or liked and I can't say that what we did was just better than anyone else did it. I don't think that is true, I think what it was is, that it forced me to expose myself to it and all of the sudden, the wonders of it became clear to me. It may not be a steady diet for me. I am not a big fan of minimalist music, but we have recorded some of it and I love it. I think we expect a lot from the listeners, maybe unfairly. The other difficulty is that we live in busy times. How many people have fifty or sixty or seventy minutes a day to have a private concert? And basically, that is what it is. How many people have time to sit down, have dedicated listening, and see what it has to offer? I will tell you, Fred, that is what I love about CIMPs more than anything, that occasionally when I am lying down or I am not feeling exactly well, I put that stuff in, I have dedicated listening, and it just thrills me to death.


FJ: CIMP is advanced citizenship.

BOB RUSCH: It is not for everyone and not trying to be. We don't ever want to be accused of playing our audience cheap because we don't. We don't put records out because we think they will sell. We've had a couple of records that have sold better than others and the temptation is to say that those sold and maybe we ought to do some more of those, but we resist it. I've probably said this in an interview before that we've had extremely well established musicians come through us and want to do what is essentially their fourteenth recording of the same recording. I may love the first thirteen of them, but it has been done. It is already there and I don't have to do it. If they have done thirteen of them already, obviously somebody has figured how to sell these things, so let them continue to do it. I want to expose fresh material, expose people that haven't been exposed, or expose people that have been exposed in fresh ways without being gimmicky or hung up on some concept. It really is about the music and it is about the artist's expression and I think if you talk to any of the five hundred musicians, or certainly, if you talk to most of the leaders, they will say that that is pretty much what they do and either it works or it doesn't.


FJ: Tests of time, which waits for no man, bodes well for you.

BOB RUSCH: Yeah, it does.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and can't believe $50,000.00 was stolen by a talking kangaroo. Comments? Email Him