I'm having a brain freeze: A free jazz legend -- plays piano. Not sure if he's still alive. I saw him at the Western Front in Cambridge 15-20 years ago. Name????

Albert Ayler. Matthew Shipp.

A free jazz legend -- plays piano. Not sure if he's still alive. I saw him at the Western Front in Cambridge 15-20 years ago. Name????

Piano? You probably mean that guy with the dreads who likes to hammer the block chords with his forearms, right? Cecil Taylor.

Ayler was more known for horn and died in 1970. My mystery man was a piano guy and was still alive in the mid-80s.

Cecil Taylor!!!!!1!

Thank you, David! I shall give your wife a big kiss for you when I see her Monday.

I shall give your wife a big kiss for you when I see her Monday.

Everybody's getting spanked kissed but me.

Reasons tonight's Hold Steady show rocked:

1. Craig Finn invited the whole audience to come out for a drink with the band afterwards. Said please, even, and repeated the address of the bar at the end of the show. I hope no one takes him up on the five-dollar haircut offer, though.

2. The sheer joy radiating from the band. The sheer joy radiating from the crowd for the band. Two sold-out nights headlining in a hometown venue where in April they were the opening band -- that must feel damn good.

3. The resultant insane musicianship. Finn looked and sang like he was going to explode. The guitar solos were jaw-dropping even for a non-guitar-solo-fan like me. And even the quieter numbers like "Certain Songs," they threw their hearts into, and you could tell. One of the people I went with was like, "The last time I saw them, they were so great. And this time they were, somehow, even better!"

All the chatter I heard in the bar beforehand was about editors and word counts -- my friend Maura said she wanted to print up Rock Critic Bingo cards for these sorts of gigs. This was also the first show I've been to where an mp3 blog got a shoutout from the stage (among the dedicatees of the last song was "the people teaching the indie kids to dance again. Have you seen how indie kids dance? It's not pretty.") But don't let the scenesters scare you off -- the band themselves come off as totally unaffected, and you know, the thing about rock critics is sometimes they know good music when they hear it.

(Theholdsteady.com has mp3s if you haven't heard them -- imagine a smaller version of the E Street Band, made up of English majors. Also, Sasha Frere-Jones's review of the current album, here. .)

Cecil Taylor.

Crud, that's what I meant to say. Brain spasm of my own.

Crud, that's what I meant to say.

No credit for you! t /soup nazi

That's okay. I had to look it up on All Music. I did the styles search for Free Jazz and - of course - he was listed in the blurb as a major artist in the genre. When I read the Voice regularly it seemed like there was something about Cecil about twice a month, so he's kind of slipped from my brain as my Voice reading has gotten irregular.

I was actually listening to Ayler last night, which I guess is why my brain thought "Cecil Taylor" but my fingers typed "Albert Ayler." I've only listened to Taylor himself a wee bit in my life, but his name always seems to come up as a vast influence on free jazz-noise skronk guys.