Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
I was listening to a lot of Joe Morello with the Dave Brubeck Quartet when I was a young wannabe. There were the fabulous Time Out (1959) and Time Further Out (1961) albums, and the hit single Take Five, but also the slightly less known Jazz Goes to College (1954), a live performance of the Quartet’s US college tour. It seemed the perfect title to appropriate many years later for my band 'Bruford'’s DVD from Oxford Polytechnic in the UK: Rock Goes to College.
Annette Peacock is one of those artists whose vocal approach polarises people. You either love her or hate her. Bowie loved her; Peacock allegedly turned down Bowie's request that she appear on ‘Aladdin Sane’. But bear in mind where she’s coming from, namely a 1960s New York City background of blues, jazz, avant-garde electronic music, rap and free-form poetry. Check her out on her first album ‘I’m the One’, described by John Fordham of the Guardian as “seismically influential”.
Like all artists, in 1979 she was a work in progress – half-singing, half speaking her way to her own identity. Think Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’. This last one connects you to King Crimson’s ‘Beat’ album, and the track ‘The Howler’ (1982). Before Annette, female singers sang the given melody. After Annette, they could sing whatever the heck they wanted.
It may have seemed like a slick band, but this was our first live gig, and on national TV, too. Mistakes were bound to happen. On "Adios A La Pasada" [Goodbye to the Past], for example, in the general on-stage chaos, Dave's keyboards have a short blackout, either electronic or mental, at 4'08"; Annette inadvertently reverses lines two and three above at 4'14"; and there is a small train wreck at 5'30" as the band approaches the very climax of the song. To err is human, to forgive is divine.
Jeff Berlin reminds me so much of a young Jaco Pastorius prowling around the stage with the brilliant Weather Report - the same exceptional command of the instrument, the same central position in the fabric of the music. Weather Report had spotted an interesting avenue for development - the (re)integration of world music influences within jazz - that catapulted Jaco to international fame and marginally eclipsed Jeff's fast rising star.
And what of the mercurial and brilliant Allan Holdsworth (R.I.P), about whom I’ve already said too much? He joins Jeff, Annette and Dave in breaking new ground. More than half of this band were doing things that were new – certainly – to British audiences, and probably others as well. My own role – one I consider it a privilege to have been given - was to provide the international platform on which these things might play out.
The drum kit at this show, by the way, like all my ever-changing drum kits, was emblematic of the times and indicative of my recent past history. As I’ve said elsewhere, I was brought up in the days before the heavy marketing of glossy drums, when a ‘kit’ was whatever you thought appropriate to do the job. Mine had had always sprouted unusual noise-making tendrils. Following (Jamie) Muir’s departure from King Crimson, I assigned myself his percussion function and grew two side racks and a rear rack of steel plates, ratchets, blocks, gongs, suspended triangles and a thunder-sheet. The left-hand rack and the thunder-sheet had fallen by the wayside by the time I arrived at this BBC show, but the remaining instruments were integral to the performance. It wasn’t a pretty kit, with its drums coming from at least three different manufacturers, but it looked like its owner meant business.
Making a successful or happy group has much to do with a balance of wants and needs. Sure, we all want it to be a huge success, but what do the individuals need to make them stick around? They all need the basics of course: a steady flow of reliable bookings, medium-quality hotels and clean sheets, and a leader who pays what he said he’d pay when he said he’d pay it. In this band we could manage that.
But we all also needed a musical challenge. I needed a co-writer in Dave Stewart; a young Jeff Berlin needed to bring his unusual talents to an international audience; Allan Holdsworth needed the sort of textural support for his playing that keyboardist Dave Stewart was a master at; and the band needed the stellar soloist, Allan Holdsworth. Hey presto! Everyone’s cool; everyone enjoys the ride while it lasts. Now, I know all this, but it was more luck than judgement that got us there in 1979.
I was listening to a lot of Joe Morello with the Dave Brubeck Quartet when I was a young wannabe. There were the fabulous Time Out (1959) and Time Further Out (1961) albums, and the hit single Take Five, but also the slightly less known Jazz Goes to College (1954), a live performance of the Quartet’s US college tour. It seemed the perfect title to appropriate many years later for my band 'Bruford'’s DVD from Oxford Polytechnic in the UK: Rock Goes to College.
Annette Peacock is one of those artists whose vocal approach polarises people. You either love her or hate her. Bowie loved her; Peacock allegedly turned down Bowie's request that she appear on ‘Aladdin Sane’. But bear in mind where she’s coming from, namely a 1960s New York City background of blues, jazz, avant-garde electronic music, rap and free-form poetry. Check her out on her first album ‘I’m the One’, described by John Fordham of the Guardian as “seismically influential”.
Like all artists, in 1979 she was a work in progress – half-singing, half speaking her way to her own identity. Think Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’. This last one connects you to King Crimson’s ‘Beat’ album, and the track ‘The Howler’ (1982). Before Annette, female singers sang the given melody. After Annette, they could sing whatever the heck they wanted.
It may have seemed like a slick band, but this was our first live gig, and on national TV, too. Mistakes were bound to happen. On "Adios A La Pasada" [Goodbye to the Past], for example, in the general on-stage chaos, Dave's keyboards have a short blackout, either electronic or mental, at 4'08"; Annette inadvertently reverses lines two and three above at 4'14"; and there is a small train wreck at 5'30" as the band approaches the very climax of the song. To err is human, to forgive is divine.
Jeff Berlin reminds me so much of a young Jaco Pastorius prowling around the stage with the brilliant Weather Report - the same exceptional command of the instrument, the same central position in the fabric of the music. Weather Report had spotted an interesting avenue for development - the (re)integration of world music influences within jazz - that catapulted Jaco to international fame and marginally eclipsed Jeff's fast rising star.
And what of the mercurial and brilliant Allan Holdsworth (R.I.P), about whom I’ve already said too much? He joins Jeff, Annette and Dave in breaking new ground. More than half of this band were doing things that were new – certainly – to British audiences, and probably others as well. My own role – one I consider it a privilege to have been given - was to provide the international platform on which these things might play out.
The drum kit at this show, by the way, like all my ever-changing drum kits, was emblematic of the times and indicative of my recent past history. As I’ve said elsewhere, I was brought up in the days before the heavy marketing of glossy drums, when a ‘kit’ was whatever you thought appropriate to do the job. Mine had had always sprouted unusual noise-making tendrils. Following (Jamie) Muir’s departure from King Crimson, I assigned myself his percussion function and grew two side racks and a rear rack of steel plates, ratchets, blocks, gongs, suspended triangles and a thunder-sheet. The left-hand rack and the thunder-sheet had fallen by the wayside by the time I arrived at this BBC show, but the remaining instruments were integral to the performance. It wasn’t a pretty kit, with its drums coming from at least three different manufacturers, but it looked like its owner meant business.
Making a successful or happy group has much to do with a balance of wants and needs. Sure, we all want it to be a huge success, but what do the individuals need to make them stick around? They all need the basics of course: a steady flow of reliable bookings, medium-quality hotels and clean sheets, and a leader who pays what he said he’d pay when he said he’d pay it. In this band we could manage that.
But we all also needed a musical challenge. I needed a co-writer in Dave Stewart; a young Jeff Berlin needed to bring his unusual talents to an international audience; Allan Holdsworth needed the sort of textural support for his playing that keyboardist Dave Stewart was a master at; and the band needed the stellar soloist, Allan Holdsworth. Hey presto! Everyone’s cool; everyone enjoys the ride while it lasts. Now, I know all this, but it was more luck than judgement that got us there in 1979.
