family of percussion w. archie shepp?

[Guest akanalog]

The Family of Percussion (Peter Giger,Trilok Gurtu,Doug Hammond and Tom Nicholas)are joined by Archie Shepp on this hard to find 1980 release from Nagara in Germany.

i am listening to it now. pretty cool. good-natured. not too aggressive.

but it made me think of mike W.

[mikeweil]

Yessir, of course I know and have that one. I was there when the Family of Percussion was born - they rehearsed after hours during a week-long workshop in Bavaria that I attended - Tom Nicholas and Trilok Gurtu where my teachers.

Shortly after that record was released I worked as a roadie for them on a two weeks tour through Germany (without Shepp), where they played that song "Here Comes The Family" every night, and we all sang along.

The Family was a nice band, but somewhat inconsistent - I witnessed nights where they lost themselves in endless jams and others where they all really listened to each other and played for each other - then it was terrific. They were all heavy players. Their experiments with guests (especially the horn players) were a mixed bag. Peter Giger complained that Alan Sikdmore (who, along with Wolfgang Dauner, guested on "Sunday Palaver", the previous LP) simply couldn't adapt his bebop style to a more rhythmic way of playing. That Shepp vocal was a spontaneous thing happening at the recording session where Shepp overdubbed his part. The groove of that piece was much better live, I assure you. I wish there was a live recording - well there is one, with an expanded version of the band playing pieces written especially for that concert.

There is a Peter Giger solo LP titled "Family of Percussion" where he overdubbed all parts that is great. He had the Idea for a percussion band for quite some time before it clicked with this quartet - I saw the previous lineup live in Frankfurt.

That group was a pioneer band for percussion music in Europe - I learned a lot from them.

Edited October 17, 2006 by mikeweil

[Guest akanalog]

giger did some cool krautrock-ish stuff earlier on.

so did raniner bruninghaus.

but some of giger's krautrock stuff had a psychedelic ethnic thing going on.

weird-i don't think of alan skidmore as being a "bebopper". he could be pretty out from what i have heard.

he could also play drums decently! so i am surprised he couldn't play sax rhythmically.

but skidmore actually plays drums on the SOS ogun release.

[mikeweil]

Nagara was Giger's own label, he ran it with his sound engineer, but they went broke when the studio burnt down - they had no insurance. There was about a dozen records:

1010 Peter Giger - Family of Percussion

1011 Giger/Lenz/Marron - Beyond

1012 Riot - Green and Blue

1013 (a 45 rpm single by ?)

1014 Peter Giger - Illegitimate Music

1015 Giger/Lenz/Marron - Where the hammer hangs

1016 Family of Percussion - Message to the Enemies of Time

1017 Riot - Black Hill

1018 Family of Percussion & Guests - Sunday Palaver

1019 Papa Oyeah MacKenzie & Peter Giger - Africa Meets Europe

1020 Eddy Marron - Por Marco

1021 Family of Percussion & Archie Shepp - Here Comes the Family

1022 Peter Giger Percussion Orchestra - For Drummers Only: Live at Cologne

[mikeweil]

Skidmore just wailed on top with no regard to the different rhythms of the pieces - he had a time when he played like that.

[mikeweil]

giger did some cool krautrock-ish stuff earlier on.

...

but some of giger's krautrock stuff had a psychedelic ethnic thing going on.

These are the Giger/Lenz/Marron LPs on the list I posted. I found them pretty weird back then and didn't buy them.

[Guest akanalog]

oh funny i was also thinking of giger's band "drum theater".

http://diregarden.com/god093.html

that album has some decently large jazz names on it-gerd dudek, isla eckinger, alex bally. very trippy.

that joel vandroogenbroeck guy did some good stuff with brainticket.

eddy marron was pretty cool. i know him from giger's kraut group dzyan and the sort of kraut group vita nova who sung in latin!

weirs how it is all connected.

i have never seen anything from giger's label in the LP stores.

[mikeweil]

IIRC they pressed only 1000 copies of each album and sold most of them at their gigs, although they were being distributed by Bellaphon, who had the largest jazz catalog in Germany back then.

I think the single was by Dzyan.