I grew up in Basel passing my teens as a notorious troublemaker…
My father was a hunter and influential Sha – a psycho-chromatic enthomologist – of the Shametterling tribe (he smoked Shametterlings as a ritual against hollow spirits)…
Quickly retrieving into my own reality, I found the genuine brother- and sisterhood of musicians to be my real family and root.
When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, my mother (the best I ever had) took me to a concert of Errol Garner which was to be a seminal experience. Sometime in primary school, I was lucky to have had a teacher that sensed my parent’s concern I’d “drift off common grounds” (…) and at my mother’s quest suggested for me to join a choir of which I became one of three soloists.
Glad to have had that “extra-exposure”, it kept me from being more odd than just a handful to everybody…
My brother Philippe put me on to jazz, of which I remember a track called “Comin’ Home” by Herbie Mann (written by Ben Tucker). So I enrolled the conservatory for (classical) flute.
I remember an ‘Ultravox’, some kind of dictaphone with recording folios (instead of tape) with which I recorded bubbling mushed-potatoes, screetching doors and more to let that play while tickling a note on the the old ladies’ grand.
At the same time, I kept on listening to all kinds of s o u n d as remote as firebrigade-songs, student-obsceneties, musak and/or many other “styles”. I adored the mexican arranger Esquivel – the founding father of the bachelor pop music revival of it’s “root” (J.J. Perry and his “Popcorn”) and – most notably – the french sound wiz – André Pop.
In the early 60-ies, I received for christmas my first LP, the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and sometime in my early teens I borrowed a Farfisa organ to play with friends and “set up a band”.
Always in quest of new music and sounds, I was into boogie-woogie a while and checking out the local record store, I discovered a strange record sleve 
checked the tracks and read one “Opern-Boogie” by Georg Kreisler, who was to leave an indelebil mark on my future path. (35 years later, I picked up the topic of this macaberetist who was such a fantastic (and underrated!) wordsmith, that I was never to write any words myself, but rather focussed on instrumental music, although I cherish a vivid interest in the songform and its poetry. Hence Bob Dylan’s 1964 release (“Bringing it all back home”) was another seminal bang onto my perception: I discovered Folkmusic and it’s “derivative”, the topical songs, worksongs, consciousness songs etc.
When I was 15, I discovered the blues with a Blue Horizon record of one Eddie Boyd (25. November 1914 – 13. Juli 1994),
blues singer and pianist from Mississippi. Boyd came to England in the early days of the British blues explosion and been backed by Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall and many other bands from that ‘British bluesinvasion’. Eventually Eddie played in Basel and I invited him to come stay at my parents’…
He stayed for 3 months!… showed me riffs, licks & tricks and suggested I’d tour with him (playing flute)… so I acompanied Eddie as far as East-Berlin!
I was also listening to Steve Winwood (e.g. Spencer Davis Group) and bands like “Them”, “The Kinks” and others. I vividly remember genuine revelations with the discovery of “Pet Sounds” (Brian Wilson), although I never liked the Beach Boys’ superficial commercial ditties too tough.
Anyway, I worked a whole summer long to buy my first stereo system, a real thing with separate amp and big speakers in order to fully soak in all sound and “lock” myself 100 % in, discovering the subtleties of the headphones. So much as to modify one of those first portable battery-fed mono (Philips)-cassetteplayers…
…sew it into my jacket and freak out on the ski-slopes with probably the first “walkman” by then. In spring ‘68, the “Monsterconcert” in Zürich with John Mayall’s Bluesbrakers, Jimi Hendrix, the excentric shows of Eric Burdon and “The Move” smashing monitors, blowing fume-bombs and what not, “Traffic” and others all playing at one evening left an indelebil mark.
I’d listen interminably to all kinds of music and ‘eat’ books (Hesse, Camus, Po, Dostojewski, Bierce, Jung…). Besides listening to as many records I could, I continued playing flute with our little band of friends. I also started to record gigs with a friends’ stereo tape recorder (a Uher 4400)…
In 1969, I went to London and then the Orkney islands and then back again through Scotland. When in London, I’d visit some clubs, checked out the carnaby street and portobello road business (that was about to fade already), smoked plenty shoeshine-creme and awakened my apetite to return to this fascinating city a year later with a chum (the one that owned the Uher 4400). We’d check out the Ronnie Scott’s and the Marquee. I remember some fantastic music, a concert with Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, Graham Bond, Keith Tippett’s Centipede, Nucleus, Gary Burton and many others.
In 1976, I joined forces with the late jazzdrummer Denis Progin to open the jazzclub “Jazzland”. Instead of setting up flippers and condom-machines in a spareroom, I put up a little record store. In the evenings, I’d ingeneer and record the concerts. Since we weren’t allowed to sell alcohol (making the only real money) if no band was playing, we’d set up the club-stage as rehearsing platform for my various bands (“Arthur”, “Clever Bastards” and others). The lose constellations of the ‘bands’ enabled the club to always have live music (and sell boose).
MDA was unfortunately only short-lived as a live unit (here with Dizzi, Mick Hobbs, Laurent “Bu” Bürki, me and the late Pascal Cuche (R.I.P.).
Bucking up with him and finding a mutual liking, Rico was to become yet another seminal encounter as much as Eddie Boyd was 20 years earlier. I told Rico that he’d be welcome in Switzerland… and after 2 months, we went back to Switzerland, finishing a.m. reggae band’s recording (now fronted by Rico), and recorded a couple of naïve little riddims and scetches about the experiences and fascination of Jamaica and its firefly, the Peeni Waali.
and let me film a little “for fun”-solo on Shab Tab, which then became the 
Here (in the atelier with Linus and Andri)…
I need the space NOW! (To hang a bigger picture)…
