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!
Great near 40 minutes of Herbie and co on Danish TV, from 1976.
Personnel Herbie - Keys Bennie Maupin - Sax, etc ‘Wah Wah’ Watson - Guitar Paul Jackson - Bass James Levi - Drums
What terrific music. Such a great combination of funky groove, and jazz, with the perfect balance of instrumental prowess and structure, creating instrumental sounds that absorb and uplift. Truly music that is both high art and tasty home-cooking.
Setlist (taken from the YouTube post)
Herbie Hancock and his band perform cuts from the albums “Man-Child” and “Secrets”:
1. Hang Up Your Hang Ups (from Man-Child, 1975) 2. Gentle Thoughts (from Secrets, 1976) 3. Spider (from Secrets, 1976)
When I was running my own jazz funk group, I had all three of these tunes on my setlist wish-list. We did occasionally play some of the usual suspects: Watermelon Man, Canteloupe Island, Chameleon. And one or two less frequently covered numbers, such as Wiggle Waggle, and that one Dee-Lite sampled (I forget the title!).
Others that I really wanted to do include Actual Proof and Tell Me A Bedtime Story. Oh, Herbie! What a talent. And surrounding himself with folk like Paul Jackson, Bennie Maupin, Bill Summers, and a parade of drummers and guitarists that include the likes of Harvey Mason, Mike Clark, and of course Watson and Levi.
Wah Wah Watson’s Gentle Thoughts epitomises an era for me. I may have ‘golden age syndrome’* when it comes to stuff like this? And who knows, perhaps actually now is the golden age? Inasmuch as I can enjoy this Danish TV show that, at the time, I had no idea about.
Ah, the sheer bliss, of watching and hearing the joyous melodic grooving of Gentle Thoughts, in an expanded live version. These righteous dudes both recreate the magic of the album version, and transcend it, with the live improv’ aspects of the performance.
So, I’d like to thank Herbie and co for the music, Tim Berners-Lee for the internet, and YouTube and ‘Phazers’ for hosting/posting this. Thanks for making an everyday Saturdsy magical.
* I get this phrase from Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris.
This post arises out of my despair at being mugged every month by Virgin Media.
My loathing for Toryism grows and grows. Cursed with the Thatcherite style ‘choice’ of a shower of money-grabbing swindlers, aka broadband service providers, and currently being fleeced by Virgin Media, I can only marvel at how Boris, with his execrable ‘bus of lies’, had the bare-butt-faced-cheeks – the goddamn effrontery – to swindle, nay, to rape our nation so effectively.
Un-fucking-believable! Bohnson, you neo-fascist shitbag.
According to Bozo, Corbyn’s pledge to give all in the UK free internet was a ‘crazed communist’ plot. Instead of publicly owned assets that serve us all, we have shitty privately owned corporations intent on robbing us blind, the ongoing nightmare of Brexit, recession and rampant inflation. And still the billionaire press barons prop up the rotten Tory establishment, merrily scapegoating the weak and poor at the bottom of the collective heap, whilst they and their fat cat ilk wallow in the cream at the top.
A neo-liberalist wet-dream. AKA a nightmare.
Evil? Unquestionably. Beyond fucking disgusting? Indubitably. And these evil fuckers are currently embarked on a process of gutting the UK of any rights to protest. The real reason for Brexit. At a time when many scientists are saying humanity is teetering on the brink of self-annihilation, it’s business as usual for the robber barons.
Smiles and suits belie pure evil; a cabal of self serving right-wing hooligans.*
* I know there’s been a changing of the guard since these cyphers were photo-collaged together. But you can take pretty much any set of Tories, and the putrid essence of evil remains unchanged.
For the meat and potatoes, try this, in which some of the reasons for my anger are elucidated. For many years I’ve allowed my own personal issues and petty problems to contribute to almost total political apathy. But these self-serving bastards and their rapine policies are driving me back towards activism.
Abysmal (unelected) architects of the UK’s self-destruction.
So now we have Rishi Sunak, a product of The City, whose tax-dodging wife epitomises exactly what’s so rotten about Toryism. Another unelected (by the people of the UK) neo-liberal capitalist stooge. So he’s going to fix the appalling mess years of Tory misrule have brought about!?
Rishi to the rescue…
Pull the other one. Oh, wait… there is no other leg to pull. All the limbs of the rotten cadaver of British politics have already been torn off. The corpse of British Democracy has been sent to the Tower, hung, drawn and quartered.
The UK needs to see Toryism killed off. Banished. Fired into a black hole. Exorcised. Otherwise we are, er… royally fucked.
Well, whilst working on the shed roof, I watched the Morocco vs Spain game. It wasn’t the most exciting. For 90 minutes, then 30 more, the teams seemed pretty evenly matched.
I was rooting for Morocco. They played better.*
But when it went to the dreaded penalty shoot out? Then things got very interesting.
Morocco just beat Spain on penalties. And I have to say, they deserved the win. As I said above, it was not the greatest match I’ve ever seen. But Morocco dug in their heels, kept Spain under the cosh, and had the better opportunities.
This guy was a hero.
And when it came to the penalties, they were just better. They took them better, and their goalkeeper saved them better.
Achraf Hakimi’s penalty, and the celebration afterwards, were fabulous.
You could actually see it all in the player’s eyes. The Moroccans clearly wanted it, and believed they could do it. The Spanish, by contrast, were weak; you could see the doubt and fear in their faces. Astonishing!
* Oh, and I liked their kit better! I know this is silly, but sometimes I go with aesthetics.
On a separate but related note. I’m really digging this current England team. Just saw Grealish talking about facing France. The guy is as solid as his Giant Redwood tree-trunk legs. And he’s right. We have an excellent team.
With Sterling gone home, it’s interesting that the England team still have loads of firepower. France have Mbappe (ok, they also have Dembele, Griesman, etc.). But we have Kane, Saka, Foden, Henderson, Bellingham, and Pickford in goal (oh, and Grealish, lest we forget!).
That’s the spirit!
It’s unusual for me to say this, but I have faith in our team.
I used to actively dislike football. Or at least I tried to, for a spell. What I really disliked (and still do) are: yobbism, the tribalism of some supporters, and the grotesque capitalism that has colonised and dominates the sport.
Anyway, mini-rant over, back to the footy. And tonight it was, mercifully, enjoyable. Well, at least it was if you’re rooting for England. And (I’ll forego my rant about patriotism and jingoism!) And I was/am rooting for England.
Bellingham and Henderson celebrate goal #1.
I won’t pretend I know much about the beautiful game. But I do know that I like Gareth Southgate’s managerial style, and the crop of players he has at his disposal. One of the ITV pundits – Gary Neville? – put it well, saying Southgate was ‘compassionate’, and that his team believed in him as a leader.
I also liked the sound of the cultivation of a team spirit by watching matches together, as opposed to players disappearing into solipsistic isolation in social media and gaming consoles, etc.
Kane hoofs in goal #2.
But to the match: Senegal started strongly, getting the first two best chances. But then England gradually warmed up. And in the last ten minutes of the first half, first Henderson and then Kane (finally!) scored superbly emphatic goals.
I have to admit my attention wandered in the second half. But then I’m not the worlds most ardent footy fan. And I often tend to be doing other stuff whilst watching matches. But when Saka scored goal number three – another real peach – it brought my attention back with a bang.
Saka enjoys the glory of goal #3.
I rarely bother with the pre or post match punditry. And tonight was, in that respect, business as usual, for me; hopped into a piping hot bath, and then off to bed! But it’s nice to have been able to enjoy watching England compete internationally and acquit themselves so admirably.
Wow! This is a pretty amazing animated film. The quality of animation is terrific. Especially for its (pre CGI) era. Whilst the visual aesthetic is not immediately to my own tastes, it’s so singular and powerful it kind of sucks one in. Well, me at least, at any rate.
I discovered the existence of this movie thanks to the inclusion of some music from it on the vinyl compilation Mindbending Nuggets, which a friend had bought. This latter is a great collection of slightly obscure music, with a good selection of odd and unusual but groovily funky tracks (released in ‘97).
The basic premise of the film (itself based on a book*) is that humans, called Oms, are kept as pets by Draags, big blue red-eyed and web-eared humanoid characters. These Draags spend most their time meditating and being a bit weird.
They live on a planet, Ygam, whose look reminds one of both surrealism generally, and in particular the paintings of scientist (and surrealist painter) Desmond Morris. All organic blobbiness, but with an appropriately ‘sauvage’ spikiness.
Tiva plays with Terr.
Apparently the movie was marketed as a stoner experience, best watched in an altered state. And I can see that that might well be a good way to see it. Although personally those days are, for the most part, very much behind me now.
The music, by Alain Goraguer is terrific. It’s often compared to Atom Heart Mother era Floyd. Although, to my mind/ears, it’s far more complex, focussed and funky than the Brit-proggers.
Funky keys, wah-guitar, and lush strings and vocals create the perfect aural companion to the visuals. It’s one of those rare instances where the music stands in its own right, and is as strong as the film it accompanies.
Mmm… sexy jazz!
Above, a bit more of Goraguer’s work. I’ll prob do a post on him at some point. But for this one, let’s get back to the animated film. Which is, frankly, visually stunning.
* Based on this book:
All told, there’s something a bit odd, and slightly limp or disappointing, in the ideas or the narrative. The visual imagination and invention is terrific, but the conceptual side occasionally feels a little lame.
There’s a definite hangover of both WWII and the hippy era. The ‘de-Om’ing’, or culling of humans, clearly resembles the Nazi ‘final solution’. Most obviously so when gas releasing pellets – Zyklon B springs to mind – are used to kill Oms en masse. But in the end, and rather quickly, it’s determined that peaceful co-existence is the only way forward. And, rather abruptly (and dissatisfyingly), boom, the film ends.
It almost feels like they just ran out of either budget or ideas! Maybe not? Who knows. Either way, it’s a bit of a damp squib way to end.
Nevertheless, the sheer visual richness, and the soundtrack, make this essential viewing, in my opinion.
Just finished reading this. It’s a short and fairly easy read, albeit the prose veers between normal and ‘cut up’. Luckily there’s enough standard English to make it readable.
I’m fascinated by Burroughs. I think he’s prob’ a bit nuts, and possibly a bit of a huckster/charlatan. But he has a great command of language, and an amazingly vivid if somewhat twisted imagination.
In essence, a great deal of Burroughs writing – at least what I’ve read – is autobiographical. But rather than straightforward documentary narrative, Burroughs serves up a postmodern bouillabaisse of fevered drug-addled eroto-fantasy, interwoven with crumbling memories.
Burroughs wandering life as a trust-fund dilettante, globe-trotting in search of, essentially/frankly, thrills, and being both gay and – by dint of the latter, to some extent – Bohemian, lead him to live in all the places that crop up here: St Louis, Mexico City, London, North Africa, New York, etc.
Burroughs’ unusual outsider life – involving crime, drugs, and a sexuality that meant living not like but as an outlaw – all conspired to fuel a pretty weird fantasy world. And so The Wild Boys (and other writings) veers towards being his kind of heir to the Marquis de Sade’s vision of ultimate freedom in a melange of sex and violence.
Depending on the reader’s tastes, it can make for quite compelling and entertaining (or off-putting) reading. What it’s real merits may be, I’m very uncertain. In some ways I enjoyed this book. In others, I was disappointed.* As with much of Burroughs’ work, it’s like the somewhat choreographed dredgings of a disordered and fairly warped mind.
In some of his writings all of this is filtered through very standard prose, in others – particularly when he employs his cut up style – it’s practically unreadable. Here it’s a mixture, thankfully erring on the side of comprehensible. But the visions it describes are, well… read it. See what you think!
The book signs off ‘William S. Burroughs, London, 1969’. This was an interesting time in his life, about which you can learn more here.
Pop group Duran Duran’s hit song is named after the novel (more on this below). And I’ve read that cult gay film maker Fred Halsted was in discussions with Burroughs about making a pornographic movie of The Wild Boys. But that never came to pass, alas.
* The titular Wild Boys don’t really come to the fore till very near the end of the book. Making many of the ‘plot’ synopses of this work I’ve seen seem way too glib/conventional.
Notes
I made the following notes as I read the book. I forgot to do so for two chapters, so those are in [brackets]!
CHAPTER / Remarks / score Tio Maté Smiles - Cinematic surrealist Mexico City sleaze… **1/2 The Chief Smiles - Moroccan death sleaze … *** Old Sarge Smiles - St Louis nun-sleaze, with a sprinkling of racism… **1/2 Bury the Bread - Audrey moons, Old Sarge rants; a psychedelic melange… *** Penny Arcade Peep Show #1 - Funfair surreal gay sex dreams ***1/2 Le Gran Luxe - Big swanky party surreal gay sex dreams ***1/2 [Penny Arcade PS #2 - I forget!] [Miracle Rose - … er? Something to do with anii… & ‘rectal mucous’!?] Silver Smile - Frankie & Johnny gay sex dreams **** Frisco Kid - Klondike gay sex dream ***1/2 Penny Arcade PS #3 - Cinematic cut & paste Dead Child - Golf course gay sex dreams morph into shaman jungle dream *** Call Me Joe - Defection from the straight army to the Wild Boys **1/2 Mother & I - Perverts vs Police State: ‘Our aim is total chaos’. Wild Boys eroto-horror… *** Wild Boys - The title finally addressed… more of the same [gay sex dreams]… **1/2 Penny Arcade PS #4 - Tree-house-boat gay sex dream ***1/2 Penny Arcade PS #5 - Assassin gardener **1/2 Wild Boys Smile - Arrival, more of the same [gay sex dreams]… The End ***
FOOTNOTE:
The Duran Duran song, The Wild Boys, is of little or no interest to me, particularly musically, in itself. But it is a little intriguing inasmuch as it was supposed to be the theme song to another mooted attempt at making the book into a film. The ‘songfacts’ website says:
‘Duran Duran recorded the song because Russell Mulcahy, who directed their videos, bought the movie rights to the book and planned to make it into a film. The band wrote the song for the movie, which was never made. At the time, this was the most expensive video ever made.’
