‘Tell it like it is, it ain’t nothin’ but The Biz, a little more, Gabor!’
I’ve been really diggin’ Gabor Szabo recently. And it was when I was reading Doug Payne’s excellent online biography of the Hungarian guitarist that I noticed something startling. Amongst the personnel credits for 1977’s Faces, was Marlon McLain, of Pleasure.
I love Pleasure! And I love Gabor! So I looked again, a bit harder, and, lo and behold, also credited: bassist Nathaniel Phillips, drummer Bruce Carter, and Wayne Henderson, of Crusaders fame. ‘Twas Henderson who was acting as avuncular to Pleasure, discovering, signing and producing them. So in essence we have a Pleasure rhythm section (guitar, bass, drums) + Szabo! All produced – and with horns arranged by – Wayne Henderson. What’s not to love!?
I can see how some of the ‘moldy [sic] figs’ – those self appointed champions of jazz ‘purity’ (surely a massively mistaken and oxymoronic idea?) – might react against such a combo’. Not me! Two artists I love combining forces? Bring it on!
And, unsurprisingly, for me at any rate, I do indeed love the result. And this despite the inherent danger of disappointment when one’s much loved stars align; will it work? I mean, they are quite different; Szabo the oddball jazzer, and Pleasure the funky soulful groove merchants. I guess it dosa have to be conceded this isn’t my favourite Szabo, nor the best of Pleasure.
Anyway, to the music. It has a delicious mid to late ‘70s vibe, with echoes of everything from CTI to Steely Dan in the mix. And obviously a Crusaders/Pleasure vibe. Szabo is, of course, Szabo, as always! But for the most part his sound sits, comfortably enough, atop the rather silky smooth even quite lush musical Henderson/Pleasure style settings.
I must admit I am a less less enthused with the smattering of female vocals, which are most evident at the outset. They’re not awful, by a long shot. But I can see the moldy figs visibly rotting in reaction! The album opens with The Biz, in which the ladies croon ‘It’s a whiz, do The Biz… a little more, Gabor’! Kinda corny, I guess? But actually, the music’s great. And, in essence, the words are saying something I can totally get behind.
Track six, Alicia (I have a niece named Alicia, so that’s a nice resonance for me!), is incredibly Dan-esque in places, sounding very Deacon Blues-ish at times*. This is also one of two tracks that are repeated in slightly different form as ‘bonus tracks’ on some editions of this album.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, the most beautiful track on this album, Estate, is the most Szabo and the least Pleasure, very literally; it’s either a solo piece, or just two guitars. Perhaps Szabo duetting with his frequent collaborator James Stewart?
Not the best album in Szabo’s catalogue, nor Henderson’s or Pleasure’s, but a solid meeting of some very talented musicians, that’s still well worth having.
* As a massive fan of steam-powered dildos, I find this to be no bad thing.
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare? No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows: No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass: No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night: No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance: No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began? A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
I was made aware of both poet and poem by a guest public gardener, and their garden, on BBC TV’s terrific Gardener’s World.
I’m trying out a tiny little MP3 player, as part of my ongoing participation in the Amazon Vine product review program. It’s an X16, and at present I’m struggling to learn how best to import music such that I can browse it easily.
I had one before, and couldn’t get the thing to work at all! So they – the supplier/manufacturer – sent me another. Both are now working. But at present I can only dump MP3s on the SD card, meaning they’re not grouped by album, or artist, or anything.
Amongst other stuff – largely Jap’ jazz-fusion – I’ve been really digging Gabor Szabo recently. Perhaps especially his Magical Connection album, of 1970. I’ve known and loved a lot of his stuff for many years. But some recent re-releases have re-kindled the flame.
Searching for more stuff by him, I stumbled upon this concert (see the YouTube vid’, above). And, with wonderfully serendipitous synchronicity, he kicks off this performance with that very same John Sebastian number.
What a totally groovy album cover!
One real downer, however, is that all the music I’m currently loving, turns out to be pricey. And I’m stone cold broke! The Szabo albums I’m after are all circa £15 a pop (not inc shipping), and the Casiopea albums (and other Jap J-Fusion stuff) are more like £30 each. Aaargh!!!
I’m currently agonising over the temptation to shell out £30+for the two Ebalunga Szabo reissues, Dreams and Bacchanal…
At the time of writing this part of this post I’m returning to this concert footage for a second time (and it certainly won’t be the last!), and I’m even more blown away than first time around.
Searching around the internet for the credits, it was Doug Payne to the rescue! I also found out that someone put the audio out on CD (limited edition). I’d love to have that! But for now, here’s track listing, and personnel:
Magical Connection (John Sebastian) My Foolish Heart (V. Young/N. Washington) Fly Me To The Moon (Bart Howard) As Eso Ed En (The Rain & Me) (T. Somló/A. Adamis), w. Kati Kovács, voc. Sombrero Sam (Charles Lloyd) Django (John Lewis) Thirteen (Szabo) My Love (Paul & Linda McCartney), w. Kati Kovács, voc. Reinhardt (Wolfgang Melz)
Guitar - Gabor Szabo Electric piano - János Másik Acoustic/electric bass - Aladár Pege Drums/percussion - Imre Köszegi Congas/percussion - István Dely
The material Szabo chooses is perfect, and the musicians he picked – and he was free to choose whomever he pleased! – are astonishingly good. Bassist Aladár Pege, a new name to me (but apparently Hungary’s premier bassist at the time), is pretty astonishing!
The only slight dip for me comes with Kovács’ vocals on the McCartney’s number, My Love, which are just a bit too ABBA for my tastes. But the music, probably more how the band interpret it than the original piece, is still great.
Intriguingly Szabo plays two numbers, Django and Reinhardt, respectively, in the set, kind of tipping his tile to the great Gypsy jazz pioneer.
I feel obliged to include a link to Doug Payne’s excellent and informative entry on this stuff, so here it is. This includes a translation of the interview Szabo gives (which is in Hungarian, naturally!), which is an interesting read.
I normally tend to find out about such things as this forthcoming release on Far Out long after the event. So it’s nice to be ahead of things, for once!
Rather strangely it was my search for Casiopea on CD at a reasonable price in the UK that lead me to the discovery. That quest is ongoing (and as yet unsuccessful!), but it took me, around the houses, via Minnie Riperton – and her astonishing ‘whistle register’ singing – to Honest Jon’s Records’ website, where I first learned of this latest archival Joyce release.
As I’m typing this I’m just starting to listen to the stuff that’s already our online. There’s an epic eleven minute version of her famous Feminina track, and – what I’m listening to right now – a piece called Descompassadamente.
I’d describe this latternumber as pastoral prog samba; it’s in 7/8, and seems to be a cyclic groove, with Buster William’s rich double bass very prominent in the mix, and layers of acoustic guitar, percussion and Joyce’s (and other) harmonised vocals. Lovely!
Now I’m on to the epic Feminina. This song, so joyful, and familiar to fans like myself, starts off sounding just like the versions I know, with Joyce’s dextrously nimble guitar work. But once again the lush low register timbre of Buster Williams’ upright bass adds a new dimension to proceedings.
These two teasers are mastered by Al Schmidt. And they sound great, albeit it I’m currently listening over my iPhone! But I read on the bandcamp link above that the remainder of the album has been ‘restored’ from a cassette mix Joyce had. Sounds a bit ominous! Audio cleaning and restoration software these days is amazing. Let’s hope it does the remainder of the material justice!
Hardcore devotee of such music as I am, I’ve simply got to have this! So I’ll be putting in my pre-order as soon as I can. as I’m typing this Feminina is passing the 7:30 mark, and electric keys and what sounds like vibes have entered the otherwise cyclic vamp mix.
If you love groove music, as I most certainly do, and the terrific artistry of Joyce, and that delightful hinterland where ‘70s jazz and Brazilian music converge, this is definitely one to check out.
Robin Williams’ character, Adrian Cronauer, was indeed a DJ in Viet Nam. He’s portrayed here as an eccentric extrovert comedian, who upsets some of the stiff-necked ‘brass’.
It’s a kind of odd film, inasmuch as most American films about Viet Nam dive right in to the very obvious struggle with issues around American guilt. In comparison, this starts out seeming more like a feel-good movie. The rugged individualist sticking it to the man. As American as apple pie, and, er… napalm!?
Cronauer in DJ mode.
It’s not until an hour into the film that the ugliness of war momentarily intrudes. And quite soon after that, the movie gets back to romance. Even if it’s a stilted or unrequited one.
Rather bizarrely, whilst the cast keep the film interesting enough, it’s not until three quarters of the way through the film that it notches up a gear or two, with the sequence where Cronauer is made to realise what he has come to mean to the troops. He then plays Satchmo’s ‘Wonderful World’ whilst the movie shows some of the horrors of the war!
The core radio team cast.
So now we’re back into more familiar territory. The ugly and dirty complexity of war. Williams still manages to get both emotional nuance and laughs out of it. Impressive. And it’s impossible not to think on Williams’ fate. Life, eh!? And death? It’s in this film, and it’s in Robin Williams’ long celluloid shadow.
Unsurprisingly the movie and the reality of Cronauer‘s stint on air in The ‘Nam are galaxies apart. That’s Hollywood for ya’! And maybe this points to a fundamental issue with the American psyche? Is it any wonder they continually blunder into appalling geopolitical messes, when they live on a diet of dreams?
It’s 4.42am whenI start typing this. Just awakened from crazy kaleidoscopic maelstrom of dreams! Votz it all abite, Ulfric!?
Some of the dream stuff is simple and clear: wanting family – parents specifically – to come to one’s aid in difficult times. But the ‘nuclear family’ as it once was went up in a toxic mushroom cloud decades ago. And the radioactive fallout is still blighting life!
Anyway, now that conscious modes have shifted, it’s a quick trip doon the wooden hill, and across the plane of Liv Ingroom, to pee, and to wonder where Chester, our cat is. Hope he’s ok?
After weeks of drought and many days of crazy heatwave, the weather app – and various intrusive newsfeeds – are warning of heavy rain, thunder, and poss’ flash floods. With the ground baked solid, rain water might just run off… crazy times!
Note the baked dry ‘grass’ (!?) path.
I wonder if, re the precipitation, would it be wise, and a potential contraceptive precaution, or solution, to take a fork to the garden?
Teresa wants us to get Chester a neck tag. And it might be wise (if that horse hasn’t already bolted?). Has he also got fleas? Found a solitary flea yesterday, in the home.
Crazy dreams earlier! Fading fast. Got the fans back on. Need them on almost constantly! It’s still soo goddamn hot, close and muggy!
This weird, weird part of the night biz’, puts me in mind to read the recently acquired Why We Sleep (or, sometimes more to the point, why we don’t sleep!). Must read!
Must start reading this!
Teresa’s back to work today. And she’s going to have to travel by bus, as she can’t afford the train indeed, despite me being stony broke, I’ve had to loan her money for travel (a normal monthly occurrence!). That means more time on pubic transport.
We really ought to nationalise so much of our infrastructure; transport, utilities. Capitalism just ain’t working! Except for the billionaires.
Teresa’s doing like I did… off for a middle of the night pee! She just got back into bed, and… Boom!!! Her alarm just went! It’s now 5.10 am. That’s a bit bloody early!!!
This song came to mind after an exchange of messages with my good lady wife, Teresa. I realise I’m incredibly lucky to be in a long-lasting, strong, loving relationship. Love really is a beautiful thing!
Ok, so last night, thinking that my daily listening to The Rainbow Goblins – sometimes multiple times – might be starting to wear thin, or lose it’s charm – I discovered (thanks to YouTube’s algorithm-bots) Takanaka’s unbelievably wonderful live 1981 Budokan performance of the entire album.
Prior to discovering Takanaka and his sublime music I would never have imagined watching a Japanese guy in a yellow plastic outfit, with rainbow hair and a rainbow axe, and a band dressed dressed in giant paper/maché goblin heads, would or could make me so happy. Who knew?
So now it’s time to knuckle down to some extra-curricular work – I’m stony broke, and a teacher in my summer hols (normally I’d be able to coast through the summer. Not this year!) – earn me some doh-re-mi, and (once the wolf is safely chased from the door!) start exploring his wider catalogue.
I know I want Seychelles (1976), his self titled ‘77 recording, and An Insatiable High (1977). Whilst I’m on the topic of the latter album, I wonder, did Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck cop his sporty look from Takanaka? Or is that just an example of what art historian Norman Rosenthal once called ‘morphological resonance’?*
Takanaka’s T-shirt and the road markings chime!Morphological resonance, homage, plagiarism?
Vulfpeck have an incredibly strong aesthetic, from their own font, to the little neo-classical and yet hyper-modern logo/jingle combo that starts their videos, to the sounds and visuals. And yet despite this, Takanaka’s sporty look – or rather the starkly sublime design brilliance of Insatiable High’s cover imagery – manages to be effortlessly and very Japanesely, ‘supelior’! Banzai!!!
* Trust an art critic to coin such a wordy phrase. Why use ‘they just so happen to look the same’, or ‘coincidence’, when you can invent your own snappy polysyllabic term!?
The first part of today’s post is essentially a version of my old Goodreads and Amazon UK review of Stick Control, only I can update that and expand upon it here.
And because this is my own blog, I can also give more nuanced star ratings. In this instance I give Stick Control the rare and coveted six-stars, which, on my normal 0-5 ratings system, means off the chart brilliant.
The author, looking very, er… well… um…
Anyway, for starters, here’s the augmented Amazon review:
Jazz legend Joe Morello studied with George Lawrence Stone. That alone is recommendation enough! Morello was Stone’s star pupil. And thanks to Morello’s precocious work on Stick Control, we also have Stone’s follow-up, the snappily titled Accents and Rebounds.
I’ve been dipping into this for over two decades now. Although, to my everlasting shame, I’ve not completed it yet.* I use it in my drum teaching all the time. And I tell all my students it’s THE foundation book, ie essential.
A great tool for developing better reading, and – of course – stick control. Starting with such simple building block as singles, doubles, and groupings of three or four, per hand, the numbered exercises take you though a huge variety of combinations, leading with both right and left.
Joe Morello at the practice pad.
Stone says play everything 20 times. And play with a metronome at various different speeds. This is terrific conditioning practice on a pad, and fun to transfer to the snare. Of course one can then take it to the kit, and orchestrate it there in endless ways. All of this makes this book a lifetime investment. In a way, you can never truly ‘finish’ Stick Control!
Used regularly, and with the appropriate doses of discipline, this book can impart strength, stamina, speed, control of dynamics, and much much more. Definitely one of the most essential non-gear (ie not the instrument itself!) bits of kit in the drummer’s training arsenal.
* UPDATE: Since first posting this review, I am, now (summer of ‘22) making a concerted effort – not for the first time, mind you – to complete a continuous run through of the entire book. At the time of updating this, I’m about one third through the whole volume, getting heavily into the flam section!
A much younger G L Stone (from PASIC).
Some further thoughts…
So, that’s my Goodreads and Amazon UK review take on Stone’s classic work. In the latest update to that review I allude to what I’m calling elsewhere my Stick Control Summer Challenge. That’s going pretty well. One week into my summer hols, and I’m already just over a third of the way through the book.
This seems like a good time and place to add a few further thoughts on taking a deeper dive into this aged but illustrious tome.
For starters, having gotten further into the book than formerly – I did occasionally dip into later sections, but I’d only ever systematically done the first five or six pages previously!) – I’m encountering stuff I’ve not tried before. Some of it easy, some very challenging (for me at any rate!).
But there are also more fundamental issues, such as stick motion, and the exact ways to interpret certain notation. This is where a teacher from the Stone-Morello lineage would be very handy. I intend to explore this online, as I’m sure YouTube will provide some answers.
Morello looking very cool as an ambassador for Ludwig.
I won’t get into massive detail here, as this is an area for more exact exploration later/elsewhere. But taking just one aspect of the core subject, ie ‘stick control’, I’ve been practicing the material in this book sat at a practice pad, and using strokes that range from fairly full to ghost or grace note level.
And sometimes I’m leaning more towards French or German grip, but mostly I’m using American grip, somewhere in the middle. Stick height, grip, rebound, all these aspects start to come into focus more as you dive deeper into the book.
Another thing I’m finding myself fascinated by is, again, like much of what comes from studying this work, nuanced and multifaceted, and that’s how these exercises can become like meditative grooves. If one is playing 20 reps of a two bar exercise and then up to 24 or so different sticking variations of essentially the same (or very similar) rhythms, it gets quite hypnotic!
And one starts to hear the music or the groove in even these quite potentially dry exercises. And it’s fascinating how regularly locking in to a metronome pulse for 20-30 minute chunks throughout the day starts to build better time.
And if you set the metronome volume just right, there’ll be moments where you think it’s stoped, so you stop… only to hear the metronome still going. At those moments you’re achieving nigh on perfect time, as you’re covering the metronome so exactly you’re effectively masking it!
A classic shot of Morello in action!*
* The Guardian, rather cruelly, perhaps, used this shot of Joe for his obituary!
That opens the door on an aspect of this kind of study that I’m definitely falling in love with; the routine of regular practice is, it seems, like we’re told physical exercise is, or should be, both pleasurable and perhaps even somewhat addictive.
Now to lean into the ‘nuance’ aspect a little. I’m finding that the exact position of my hands and fingers on the sticks is coming more sharply into focus: if I find the right spot – esp’ noticeable the higher/harder and louder the strokes are – I can locate a zone where I can minimise the ‘shock waves’ that sometimes reverberate along the stick.
This must be the ‘fulcrum’, I guess? And it’s slightly higher up the sticks than I usually hold them. At least on the Vic Firth 2Bs I’m currently favouring for pad work. this actually coincides with another train of thought I’ve been having about modifying (or better yet making my own) sticks. But I’ll save that for another post.
Anyway, the ‘practice what you preach’ aspect of studying Stick Control over this summer is proving to be both pleasurable and beneficial. And the associated YouTube surfing has lad me to discover yet another meister-drummer, so I’m adding some of his stuff to my practice work-outs, such as this doozy:
