Mnemonist Orchestra

By John Herdt

In 1979 I played guitar on the first album by the Mnemonist Orchestra, titled Mnemonist Orchestra with the catalog number of Dys 01 on Dys Records. I don’t know the the exact date of the live recording session for the album. Producer and lead visionary William Sharp said in a later interview that the Mnemonist Orchestra came together in March 1979. It was released in 1979, but was likely recorded in the fall or winter of 1978 which gave William and Mark time to edit and arrange the album for a release in Spring 1979.

I became friends with William while I lived in Corbett Hall from 1974-1976 at Colorado State University. He was always into music that was near the outside of the norm and was later responsible for bringing avant-garde artists like Henry Kaiser to Fort Collins. William used to hear me practicing my guitar in my dorm room and thought my playing was at least a little bit interesting. I had switched from school band sax to electric guitar the day I started college. I was into rock by Tommy Bolin, Montrose and UFO with Michael Schenker. I played sax in school band and watched for players that had focus on their notes that put a rock burr up the back of your neck.

When my final school year started in 1978 I was living with Dave Marsh and Steve Chaffey (bass and drums in our space rock band the Head Arrangers) in a house on Elm Street. We used to throw lots of parties at that house. We would have friends over and rock out for a couple of sets. I wasn’t seeing William as often as I had a few years earlier, but he asked us if we wanted to play on an experimental project at the CSU radio station. We were big adventurers so we told him that it sounded exciting to us.

When we got to the radio station they had a number of other people involved in the session too, including Hugh Ragin, a world-class trumpet player and teacher in the CSU music program. Hugh had gained acclaim playing with people like free-jazz saxophone player Ornette Coleman. There were some other brass players from the CSU faculty, as well as percussionists and such.

The large band was split into two rooms where one half of the players couldn’t see or hear the other half. We were told that the plan was for everyone to play whatever they wanted, whether it went with what anyone else was playing or not, but with dynamics controlled by conductor and co-engineer Bruce McGregor. We understood that emotional dynamics were our brief. Crazy rage, stunned confusion, a moment of calm, loud, quiet.

I was the only guitarist on the live session. I sat very close to Hugh Ragin and the rest of the brass. Hugh was into it, we kind of bonded and had a lot of eye contact. I played my 1973 Fender Stratocaster into a Peavey Classic 50 combo amp.

Some Attributes of a Living System

I was asked also to play on the follow up album entitled Some Attributes of a Living System released in 1980 (DYS 02, Dys Records). The album was released as being by “Mnemonists” rather than “Mnemonist Orchestra,” but I don’t remember knowing that was going to happen at the time of the recording sessions. Some Attributes of a Living System was recorded and produced in an entirely different manner from Mnemonist Orchestra. Mark Derbyshire had some high end recording gear in his basement studio in Fort Collins, part of which was in his BOMB SHELTER (small concrete nuclear war survival room popular during the cold war). When we recorded it wasn’t as a large live band, but rather in small groups that would fit into the bomb shelter, except for one funk groove that I played with bassist Mark Shulz and drummer Ken Lark which we did in the larger open studio area. Once again I was matched with Hugh Ragin and we and a few other guys fit into the bomb shelter. I remember one exciting moment where the door of the bomb shelter was open and Hugh was standing out between two huge six foot tall flat monitor speakers and I unloaded a really burning solo and Hugh was bent over grinning with his eyes closed, really digging it. Jazz guys were digging rock guitarists who could play with them back then and man was it a gas to play with our great horns.