Gene, with sons Kim and Simon.Fantastic!We’ve all been here, right?What has come to be known more recently as ‘crate digging’.
Oh no! I just posted about cataloguing my CD collection on FB. I thought I’d illustrate that post with an image by Gene Deitch, whose character The Cat was an avid record collecting jazz buff.
Deitch did some amusingly prophetic cartoons.Haha… love this!
In finding an apt image, I discovered that Gene passed, aged 95, in 2020. I have a nice book, Cat On A Hot Thin Groove, about his illustrations for Record Changer magazine.
I bought this book about him years ago.
He also created characters like Nudnik, as well as animating such famous cartoons as Tom and Jerry and Popeye, and doing all sorts of other artistic/illustrative work. I’ve peppered this post with a few images by him I either love for their visual artistry, or their comic wit, or, frequently, both.
I got the image at the top of this post from an excellent obit’ from the NY Times, which you can read in full here.
Deitch in his Prague home/studio, in later life.I pinched this for an Xmas card one year.Bold abstraction meets jazzy figuration.His Record Changer covers alone would be a great legacy.
I’ve not watched Munro (1960) – see below – yet, but as soon as time allows, I’ll be doing so (tomorrow, perhaps?*) * aka later today!
I find Deitch’s art, by which I’m mainly referring to his Record Changer and jazz related cartoons, design and illustration work, really inspiring. His mainstream animation stuff I’m much less familiar with or aware of.
But, rather madly, I’ve discovered that Deitch was also involved with one of the earliest screen adaptations of Tolkien’s writings. I love Tolkien, and I was really quite surprised to find yet another point of connection here with Gene Deitch!
As with Munro, I’ve yet to watch this Hobbit based animation. I glanced at a minute or so of it, whilst drafting this post. It seems quite a loose adaptation! But I look forward to watching it in full.
It’s on my Xmas/birthday wish list (here, if anyone’s interested*). I think I discovered it during a brief stint when, in my mid to late teens, I worked briefly at the Cambridge Central Library, in what was then (pre Grand Arcade) Lion Yard
Around that time I was using the library’s music collection – CDs were starting to replace vinyl (I even had a back room job at the library, helping facilitate this change-over) – to edumacate myself further, particularly re jazz.
Thanks to their esoteric selection I discovered this and numerous other great recordings, such as as Alice and John Coltrane’s Infinity.
Another fabulous recording.
The only reason this is four and a half and not five stars is the poor audio quality. I’m amazed that all this time later, nobody’s done a decent remaster. This is top drawer music, totally meriting a good sympathetic sonic clean-up!
* Password protected, to keep it private! I can email the password to anyone wanting to see it…
I do love Zappa: iconoclast, relentless hard worker, experimenter, ribald irreverent wit, obsessive archivalist. I also love the breadth and depth, dependent upon that last facet of his work, of his recorded legacy.
But sometimes, and this might be a case in point, what’s happening with his bequest to history starts to seem like nothing so much as barrel scraping for financial gain.
Let’s take the video above, which gives a taster of this recent multi-disc set, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Waka/Wazoo mini electric big band era/experiment.
It basically sounds like the rhythm section backing track, sans horns, or big band brass overdubs. I actually really like hearing the music like this. But at the same time, if lots of the tracks here are simply rhythm section run throughs or alt takes, without the ‘topping’, it’s hardly a celebration of the big band idea!
I’ve read quite a few reviews of this set that express dissatisfaction or disappointment due to the original album tracks – which most buying this set (me included, should I buy it) will already own – only being on the fifth disc, which is Blu-Ray. Many, once again myself included, won’t have a Blu-Ray player, potentially making this crucial portion of the set redundant.
The group on tour…
Here’s a complete rundown of the contents of the discs:
CD1 - Paramount Studios Recording Session Alternates and Outtakes
1. Your Mouth (Take 1) 2. Big Swifty (Alternate Take) 3. Minimal Art (Eat That Question – Version 1, Take 2) 4. Blessed Relief (Outtake Version) 5. Think It Over (The Grand Wazoo) (Outtake Version) 6. For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers) (Outtake Version) 7. Waka/Jawaka (Outtake Version)
CD2 - Paramount Studios Recording Session Alternates and Outtakes, continued
1. Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus (Alternate Take) 2. Eat That Question (Version 2, Alternate Take) 3. Big Swifty (Alternate Mix) 4. For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers) (Alternate Mix) 5. It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal (Alternate Mix) 6. Waka/Jawaka (Alternate Mix) 7. Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus (Alternate Mix) 8. Eat That Question (Alternate Mix)
CD3 - George Duke Demos – The Master Versions
1. For Love (I Come Your Friend) 2. Psychosomatic Dung 3. Uncle Remus (Instrumental) 4. Love
George Duke Session Outtakes
5. For Love (I Come Your Friend) (Basic Track, Take 1) 6. Psychosomatic Dung (Basic Track, Take 2) 7. Love (Basic Track, Take 1)
The Grand Wazoo – Live
8. Approximate (Live – FZ Record Plant Mix) 10-Piece/Petite Wazoo – Live / Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA 9. Winterland ’72 Opening And Band Introductions 10. Little Dots
CD4 - 10-Piece/Petite Wazoo – Live, continued (Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco)
Thanks to the Pharelly Bros’ movie Me, Myself & Irene I discovered Orpheus. What a fantastic group!
The above video is the whole of their 1968 debut album. And the video directly below is Can’t Find The Time Tell You, the song that started me on an Orpheus jag! But this is the Orpheus original, and not the (very good, and very ‘smooth’) Hootie & The Blowfish cover, as used in the Farelly Bros’ movie, Me, Myself & Irene.
Utterly gorgeous!
Despite the very recent passing of head honcho, Bruce Arnold, they have had (and may still?) a second life, as Orpheus Reborn. I also discovered this website, where there are tons of archival Orpheus recordings. Fab!
I’m currently really digging this album.
These cats are really something special! As I listen to each of their albums, I come to appreciate that they had a rich treasury of great tunes. And if proof – beyond the obvious charms of the music itself – were needed, in the latter part of their early history they had the great Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie on drums!*
The video below doesn’t really do justice to the track. But it’s nice to see the group, even if they’re clearly miming! This is the non-Purdie lineup, with Harry Sandler on drums.
* Purdie is the drummer on both their debut and – according to Orpheus’ own website – their final album, both of which are self titled. So, that’s the the 1978 record, Orpheus, and the 1971 disc, also Orpheus! And more recently he rejoined the group for some reunion concerts.
Loving all this vintage Herbie that’s coming up on YouTube. This time Bremen, Germany, ‘74, with Mike Clarke rockin’ (or should that be ‘jazz-funkin’?) that ‘70s ‘tache & psychedelic print shirt!
With the recent passing of Dino Danelli, and the icy frosted fingers of winter gripping us in their cold embrace, Death is in the air!
That made me think of the amazing talent of Michael Hedges. The above-linked YouTube video is a 1998 docu-bio, featuring interview footage, and music from a 1996 concert.
Right between this concert performance, and the release of the Artist Profile doc’ dedicated to him, Hedges died in an auto accident. It was 1997, and Hedges was only 43. What a loss to the world of art and music! Thank goodness for his recorded legacy.
I nearly called him ‘the incomparable’, but was then going to follow that up be saying ‘like a collision between Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and, er… Well, anyway, comparisons, or at least influences, can be heard. But his remains a now widely imitated style, that is, at its core, his unique extension of guitar-based music.
Hearing his soulful rendition of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower, channelled through Hendrix’s reading, and played in a Joni-esque wide and deep tuning, is really something. And then there’s all his original instrumental stuff.
I’m out doing some Amazon deliveries for a few hours later today, to top up my meagre teaching earnings. I shall be digging Aerial Boundaries and Breakfast In The Field. Even the album titles (and cover art, etc) are fab. And then there’s the music!
This is an interesting video. It’s great to hear a fantastic drummer telling it, from his perspective, like it is.
It reminds me of a video in which George Harrison says he could be quite a good guitarist if he could be bothered to practice!
Although I am a drum teacher, more broadly speaking – as a musician/artist – I wouldn’t necessarily advice that anyone to do as I do, or, for that matter, as Ian Paice does.
Unlike Paice, I haven’t had a stellar career recording and performing with one of the worlds’ most successful rock bands.
What I do have in common with him, however, is noticing that when I have periods of frequent live musical activity – rehearsals, recordings, and especially gigs – my playing develops quite naturally/organically.
A much younger Paice.
But then again, unlike Paice, I’m someone who does actually positively revel in practice. Indeed, over time I’ve evolved away from the ‘just jamming’ model (what I call ‘free play’ in my teaching), as favoured by Ian, towards focussed technique-based work.
I think ideally one ought to have a see-sawing motion of balance between such free play and technical development. Both ought to inform and improve each other.
Interestingly, one of Paicey’s favourite hobbyhorse points concerns the single-stroke roll. And that in turn reminds me of a video in which Grayson Nekrutman seeks to emulate Buddy Rich’s lightning speed singles (amongst other things!)
Ian Paice believes, and I can totally see and understand why, that everything else in drumming flows from this single simple yet limitlessly challenging technique or rudiment.
Anyway, let’s treasure, celebrate and learn from Ian whilst we still have him around. What a legend!
Damn, another one off to the great Jam Sesh in The Sky!
Those outfits!
Dino Danelli is referred to, in a quote on his wiki page, as ‘one of the great unappreciated rock drummers in history.’
He’s someone I’ve been meaning to check out for years. I have a fair bit by The Rascals in my mp3 collection. But I haven’t listened to it a great deal.
I was always a bit surprised that they were lauded by the funky soul brigade. I recall reading about them in Wax Poetics, and thinking they looked a bit off that mag’s usual musical map.
Dino did the cover art for this ‘72 release.
I think that’s quite possibly largely due to their last release, 1972’s The Island Of Real. Although they had streaks of blue-eyed soul running through a fair bit of their music.
The first album I got by them was the unusual Freedom Suite. Alleged by some (allmusic.com for example) to be ‘the beginning of the end’ for the band, I’m sure I read somewhere that some of the group’s contributions to this disc were replaced by session players?
Riding the hippy wave!
One of their biggest hits – a number one in the US for 5 weeks in ‘68 – was People Got To Be Free, the groups’ comment on the murders of Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy.
To finish this post, here’s Boom, Danelli’s drum solo feature from the Freedom Suite album:
I have been digging the fantastic drumming of Takashi Sasaki for a while now. He was, strictly speaking, Casiopea’s second drummer. Their first drummer, Tohru ‘Rika’ Suzuki, didn’t record with the group (at least not on an officially released album). Hence Sasaki is commonly thought of and referred to as their first, as he’s the first to be heard in the chronology of their official recorded discography.
His style is light, tight, intricate and highly musical. His chops are extraordinary. With a mastery of dynamics – the range between his ghosted notes, standard hits, and accents, make his playing very hard to accurately emulate – and a penchant for a style Weather Report infamously described as ‘soloing all the time without ever soloing’.
Looks like an album cover or sleeve montage?
He can and does get busy at times, but he always grooves like a mother! Some of his fills are truly ballistic. And, occasionally, they’re almost impossible to decipher. This is particularly true of a few fills (and possibly even grooves?) on the super tasty Midnight Rendezvous.
Even using Moises to isolate the drums, and ASD to slow them down, there’s a fill at around the 3.00 mark that is doing my noggin in. I initially thought perhaps it was in fives, or something like that. But repeated listening leaves me stumped. I need to have it running as a slowed-down and visual (wave-form) loop, methinks. I’ve not tried that as yet.
My score for this is a work still in progress.
It’s taken me a good few hours to get down the first two pages of what will, I think, be a four page score. And even the fifty or so per-cent I’ve done so far will, undoubtedly, be subject to some revision.
I’ve got as far as the end of the (very tasty) guitar solo. Next up is the keys solo, under which Sasaki does some very light and intricate stuff. I’ve blocked in some of this latter section. But I’ve yet to get in there and tweak it.
Sketched out, and still needing fine tuning…
All the cats in this band are just utterly phenomenal. They play in that deliriously groovy sweet-spot, where instrumental prowess and sheer good taste, when it comes to musical choices, collide.
Once I’ve finished the transcription, I intend to learn to play the whole piece as best I can. I’d like to do a YouTube video cover of it, and share it online.
It’s funny for me, as a primarily self-taught drummer, who’s only learned to read drum music ‘on the job’. Stuff that ‘classically trained’ musos might find obvious and easy can sometimes fox me. Transcribing stuff is proving a great way to teach myself written music. Albeit I’m still dealing in timing only, and not pitch/harmony, etc.
A master at work. What became of him?
Here’s a specific example of how I’m learning on the job: there are some quick ‘crushed bounce’ style left hand-doubles – sometimes such stuff is played as a buzz; but oft-times you can clearly hear these as a double – and I initially thought, ok, just turn a single 1/16th into two 1/32nd’s.
But that just sounded so wrong! So instead I turned the ‘&-a’-notes from two 1/16ths (or more [in]accurately one 1/16th and two 1/32nd notes) to a group of three 1/16 note triples. The resultant ‘4-e-&-trip-let’ subdivision sounds and feels sooo much better. And that’s how he plays it. Learning on the job!
* Those tom angles!? They look awful… like a school-kid’s drum set up. Still, the sounds he gets, the feel he achieves, that’s the proof o’th’ puddin’. Just goes to show there’s no single right way. Each to their own!
