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I was escorted to a side room and the customs officers proceeded to ask me why I had come. When leaving Chicago I assumed I had all my documents for entering Japan, but when I got to customs I was informed my paper work was not in order and as a result I wouldn’t be able to enter the country.
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Kondo-san was part of the production for the Save Mount Fuji Festival that we were invited to. Many may be familiar with the recording The Trance Of Seven Colors featuring Pharoah Sanders that was produced by Bill. I had been working with Bill for a number of years, and one day I got a call to go to Japan and be a part of a group with the great gimbri player from Morocco, Maalem Gania. The well-known bassist and producer Bill Laswell was one of them. Kondo-San had associates in just about every genre of music. I will relate a few stories which to me speak to a small degree of being-ness. So many things I could say about him, many stories I could tell. From the first gathering of Die Like A Dog I knew we were all bonded together and that Kondo-san and I would have a good and long friendship. Kondo-san, what an amazing and funny man. We participated in a small festival in Wuppertal, Germany, sponsored by our good friend Uli Armbruster. In 1989 Peter called together William Parker, Toshinori Kondo and myself to form a group that he called Die Like A Dog. That first concert with Peter in Chicago turned out pretty good, by the way. Thus the pre-journey began to meeting Kondo-san and also the great bassist and multi-instrumentalist William Parker. So Peter contacted the promoter of the concert he was to do in Chicago and asked him if there was a drummer there that he could play with because of the border situation with the other two musicians. He had been travelling in Canada at the time with two other European musicians, but they had some problems crossing over into the US. In 1987 I met the great German saxophonist Peter Brötzman in Chicago.