Rip Rig & Panic - Storming The Reality Asylum

I didn't want to write this...I had to write this...

Anarcho-funksters, Jazz-punk pranksters, avant-garde groovers, jesters in the court of Jazz...Rip Rig & Panic...

...time is a trick of the mind, as Neneh Cherry sings on Storm The Reality Asylum, but 30 years really have passed since they closed the gates of their sound asylum - unbelievable - and now that Cherry Red have reissued all three albums I'm drawn back inside one more time, reluctantly, because what happened cannot be recaptured in words...

...the Soho Brasserie...on the wall in the hallways is a small poster featuring Jack Kerouac advertising a night called The Hot Sty run by Rip Rig & Panic - of course we went - there Michael Jackson rubbed shoulders on the decks with Duke Ellington - that's all I remember - that and thinking 'This is the best club I've ever been to'...

...memory fades...their gigs were memorable but time dims the details, then erases them completely...anarchic, naturally, the chaos only just controlled enough to play everything properly, as in honestly, recognisable - they did The Tightrope all right - now it looks as if their whole lifespan was one tightrope walk...

...on the horizon in 1981, the Jazz Revival (official) - meanwhile, here's this mob farting in the faces of everyone who wanted to be Cool, their very core comprising of Roland Kirk - Rip Rig & Panic, a perfect name - rip up self-imposed formalities and hopefully spread panic amongst the squares - it was all about putting on the squares, just as hipsters did back when Kerouac was getting his Jazz fix - and if Rip Rig & Panic spoke some jive talk when interviewed, their true language was more akin to Dada - whilst others were knee deep in Political shit, they pushed their own red button and went nuclear on everything - your ass has got to go somewhere, so why not free your mind and let it follow...

...if Punk Rock was anti-music, Rip Rig & Panic were pro-professionalism as if played by free-spirited kids - the joy of instruments as toys, with Gareth Sager's saxophone wailing somewhere between Gato Barbieri and Albert Ayler and Mark Springer's piano strung out on the spirit of Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett (right down to some of his vocalising)...

...right, we'd never heard anything like it, and those older heads who could spot the influences probably hated the sound of their idols being disrespected...it was one big middle finger to po-faced reverence and if you didn't get the spirit of the thing, tough...

...has it all dated? No, but it dates us, the listeners who heard it first time 'round - and it revives us too because the Rip Rig & Panic experience was one of a revival meeting - sing 'Hallelujah!' - in a demented church of holy rollers speaking in tongues, possessed by the spirits of Ayler, Monk, Taylor, Sun Ra, Mingus et al - Howl! - I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by post-Punk disillusionment and Rip Rig & Panic's trick was to offer redemption for lost souls low on idealism by saying balls to all that, lets build our own world...one which reflects that one outside...filled with madness and yes, even joy...