Ginger Baker on Max Roach

[JSngry]

Everybody takes different paths, so looking back will be different for everybody...I transitioned from Beatles to Hendrix to Zappa to late Trane/Ayler/Shepp/etc all in the space of about a year. By 1971, I was gone all the way off into jazz. So the whole Euro/Prog Rock thing is soemthng that really had no relevance for me at the time, and appreciation has only been in retrospect, and even then, in parts. Did take a little detour into the Cantebury/Krautrock thing for a quick minute there in 1976-77, but also was opening up to Punk/Beach Boys (and deepening into AACM/BAG) at the same time. That was an interesting time...lots of records got bought...

Point just being, there will be some things that I will never really "get", and I'm ok with that. Don't need everything, just need to not be irrational and go hatin' on it when all it is is nothing more than a lack of personal resonance. Still working on the consistentization of that, but it's coming along!

One thing I have noticed, thoguh, is that peoples who came to rock/etc in the 70s seem to have a different sense of groove than those who did before. Different sense of backbeat & its placements and nuances, even in the proggy stuff where backbeat is not really the point...it still comes through that ok, this is a different place. Suppose that's as it should be, but still, there's a certain "thing" to even the most abstracted some things that isn't there in others, and me, that thing is what I either feel or don't, and my personal affection proceeds accordingly.

Oh well, big world, room for all!

[JSngry]

Have to disagree on Keith Moon. Saw him a couple of times back in the day, and the guy was electric. Yeah, they did a lot of crazy shit onstage (and off), can't talk about his technique or even if he had any, but Keith created tremendous energy, tremendous vitality. Pure rock and roll. Probably where I got my taste for high-energy music.

One other guy I would mention, Mitch Mitchell, probably not a great drummer by most standards, but again, watching him with Hendrix was so tasty! That was the right place and time for him and the results were sterling.

As for Ginger Baker, I've always felt he gave a certain monumental quality to rock, drumming that added power and depth to the music. Something monolithic about his sound. It was like tribal tom-toms, and back then we were all tribal.

Yeah, I always dug Keith Moon,especially early on..seemed like a parallel concept to Elvin's, just kick that shit along and KEEP kickin' it. Sloppy, yeah, hell Elvin got sloppy too. But never WRONG, dig?

Used to work (in the early 2000s) in a successful-enough local R&B/Pop cover band with a drummer, a really good drummer, who played the gig like a cover band, and was getting really drug with it. So I told the guy, hey, tonight, play it like Keith Moon, see what happens. Well, he was a child of the late-70s/early 80s and didn't really know Keith Moon or The Who from too much before Who's Next and the radio hits from Tommy. So I gave him a copy of The Who Sell Out and told him here's your Ketih Moon lesson right here, go home with this and come back with it tomorrow. So he came back the next night with a big grin on his face, and sure enough, all night long he was just kicking that shit along and KEPT kickin't it, cymbals all splashy and shit, fills every two bars, shit like that, still playing the grooves of each tune, but Keith Mooning the fuck out of them. It was freakin' GREAT, only the singers didn't dig it because they were like, hey, I'M the spotlight here, why you so ANGRY about it. But you know how singers in most cover bands are. Fuck 'em. Take the money and keep the gig, but fuck 'em.

Never really heard Mitch Mitchell away from Hendrix, but did enjoy him there, very much. Maybe a case of him being raised up by Hendrix rather than a meeting of equals, but Mitch Mitchell seemed to always swing with Hendrix. Not like Buddy Miles, but lots of different swings, ya' know?

Hell, even Baker swung with Cream. He was just cloddy about it!

[romualdo]

All good points above

Now we gotta get some people here listening to Jaki Leibezeit on drums and Holger Czukay on bass with Can from 68-72.

Doesn't swing but no one EVER rocked a groove like Can. Add in Irwin Schmidt's magical sounds on analogue electric whatever keyboards and Michael Karoli's guitar - and even without Malcolm or Damo...

And this band's magic is on the studio records - Monster Movie, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days, Soundtracks and of course the greatest of them all, the epic recording Tago Mago.

Not clunky or cloddy there, Jim!!

Mother Sky, baby

Oh Yeah!! - "Mother Sky" to the max

Can were my fav "rock" band throughout the early 70's (just ahead of King Crimson)

Loved Jaki's drumming - always thought he was more of a jazz drummer (played with Schoof & GUO in the 60's) - maybe that's why I liked the band so much

[Steve Reynolds]

Funny thing is the last few years I love listening to Keith Moon from the late 60's

[mjzee]

UA was a weird label in the early-70's. All of their stuff was cut out. I bought Can's Ege Bamyasi Okraschoten for no more than $1.99. Didn't much like it/figure out what the point was/penetrate the language barrier. From an adult perspective, it was my first reference to okra. I guess they really liked okra?

[Steve Reynolds]

UA was a weird label in the early-70's. All of their stuff was cut out. I bought Can's Ege Bamyasi Okraschoten for no more than $1.99. Didn't much like it/figure out what the point was/penetrate the language barrier. From an adult perspective, it was my first reference to okra. I guess they really liked okra?

Think about Miles electric stuff and listen to the brilliant opener "Pinch"

Can was way ahead of it's time. I'm not sure I would have "got" it any earlier than when I first heard Can in around 1990 or so when I stumbled upon Cannabilism.

I got sucked in by hearing Mushroom, Mother Sky and Yoo Doo Right.

Then I bought Tago Mago and it was all over. The opening orginal first LP which are the first 3 tracks including Mushroom then the amazing side long Hallelewuh. That 18 minute track is pure genius with the ultimate Can groove.

Unstoppable

[clifford_thornton]

Jaki Liebezeit is another story - he was a jazz drummer in Cologne in the '60s and worked in Manfred Schoof's quintet (until Sven-Åke Johansson took over) among other groups. He could really cook and was very inventive. And if anyone wants to sell me some mint Can LPs, get in touch...

Guru Guru's rhythm section (Uli Trepte, bass and Mani Neumeier, drums) were part of pianist Irène Schweizer's trio in the mid-60s as well, before Krautrock took over, though at least at the outset Guru Guru were more of a "free rock" band, so the connection seems more logical.

Christian Burchard, while less of a powerhouse than the above players, also worked with Mal Waldron, Charlie Mariano and other modern jazz greats, both in Embryo and in other contexts.

[mjzee]

I'll always have a fondness for Mr. Baker for "Pressed Rat And Warthog" - a lovely piece of nonsense from my childhood.

[AllenLowe]

Mitch Mitchell was the rock drummer of that era for me. Ginger Baker couldn't touch him.

and I really do think Mitchell was a great drummer; I think he suffered from being a little white guy. People could not separate the image from the ingenious way in which he set up that band rhythmically.

Edited July 22, 2014 by AllenLowe

[mikeweil]

Musically speaking, I would agree about Mitchell, but Baker had some strange kind of charisma that Mitchell had absolutely no idea about.

And Baker was more or less an equal partner of three great individuals in a group (Cream), while Redding and Mitchell were perceived as Hendrix sidemen. What became of Mitchell after Hendrix, btw?

[AllenLowe]

dead now. But I still think he was, basically, the Elvin Jones of rock drumming. I actually find Cream to be a very rhythmically stilted band; Clapton especially, very stiff. Baker was dynamic, definitely, but I still think the whole Hendrix thing was completely transcendant in a very different rhythm way.

[JSngry]

Yeah, Mitch was cool. And yes, Hendrix was transcendent. Going from him to Ayler & Trane (when the opportunity arose) was, like, ok, this is a set-up, right, TOO easy.

(and yes, I know, not that simple once the wade goes into a full swim and finally an immersion, but still...no resistance or hesitancy at the beginning...wish I had heard Sonny Sharrock right away then too, but it took Herbie Mann to get that to me!).