Fire – Mark Simmonds and The Freeboppers
Australian tenor saxophonist and composer Mark Simmonds passed away this year in September, aged 65. His obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald begins by capturing what it was like to hear him live:
You'd look around the room and the see the other faces, blanched and wide-eyed, as though subjected to extreme G-forces. The sound of the saxophone, so overwhelming it seemed to hit you with the force of a shockwave, combined with the torrential emotions being conveyed to make a perfect musical storm.
This was a typical concert by Mark Simmonds, perhaps the most potent musician Australia has produced on any instrument in any idiom or era, and one of the world's key tenor saxophonists of the past 45 years.
Simmonds played many main stream soul-funk, pop and rock bands, including Dynamic Hepnotics, Jump Back Jack, Ol' 55, Bentley's Boogie Band, and Renee Geyer Band (and at least half a dozen more).
More importantly for us though, he was prominent in the Sydney jazz scene in the 70s, 80s and 90s, leading his own groups, mostly under the name of The Freeboppers. Unfortunately The Freeboppers one and only published album Fire which won the 1995 ARIA award for Best Jazz Album, isn’t on Spotify.
Thank God for the ABC, who recorded this live session as part of the Jazztrack programme. Strangely enough, while this track Fire shares the same name as the ARIA winning album, the song is not present on that album.
I’ve been unable to discover when this track was recorded or who was in the lineup at the time, as over the years, many of Australia's finest players passed through the band.
I think this recording of Fire captures exactly what one reviewer wrote of a 1987 Freeboppers concert
Mark Simmond's Freeboppers devastated the Basement with an unbroken hour-and-a-half orgy of rhythm and fire.
– Bozzie 🎷 🇦🇺
