I was playing last night with one of my free jazz projects at a gig in Van where they do kind of a noise scene / post-punk version of improv. After the first piece dude in the crowd yells, "Play some Bob Ostertag!" And in between tunes, he's yelling, "Bob Ostertag!" "Bob Ostertag's more of a man than you!" and so on. I tried to play along by playing a lot of Mark Dresser-ish harmonics and yelling "Burn it!" at random ...
I hadn't actually thought about Ostertag's music in years, but have really liked what I've heard. He did one electronic assemblage / improv project, "Say No More," with Dresser, Phil Minton, and Gerry Hemingway in the 90s which blew my mind when I heard it - might have been my introduction to Dresser now that I think about it. "Voice of America," with Fred Frith, is one of the legendary avant records of the 80s too. After a little googling I discovered that much of his music is downloadable as creative commons mp3 from his site:
www.bobostertag.com. A really interesting figure if you're into the confluence of art and politics as some of us are.
