Tony Williams and the Tractor

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Scott K Fish
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SKF NOTE: Getting ready to go out last night I set my MP3 player to Herbie Hancock and Santana – Live Under the Sky 1981. Some of the tracks are the VSOP Quartet with Hancock (keyboards), Ron Carter (bass), Wynton Marsalis (trumpet), and Tony Williams (drums). The tracks with Carlos Santana (guitar) also add percussionists Armando Peraza, Raul Rekow, and Orestes Vilato.

I start the music playing and hop in the shower. Shower finished, I’m toweling off just as the VSOP Quartet is burning through the tune, Sorcerer. The tempo? Way upstairs. I’m listening, thinking again of how the rhythm section sounds of Hancock, Carter, Williams evolved from their start in the early ’60s with Miles Davis. The trio played tighter by 1981, their musical conversations non-stop, rolling on and on.

In the midst of the lickety-split, straight ahead, Sorcerer, something new grabs my attention. It sounds like Tony Williams has added rapid fire eighth notes between his floor tom and bass drum? Or was he experimenting at this concert with a double bass drum pedal?

I expect Tony to move on to something else, but he doesn’t. His precision, his stamina, his ability to maintain that eighth note pattern without slowing the tempo, or even missing a note–he’s like a machine!

Wait a second. Could it be? I step from the shower, moving closer to my MP3 player resting on the window sill. The window is open a bit and as I move, Tony’s eighth note drumming sound moves.

I take another step, pause, listen — and start laughing. Tony’s rapid fire notes are, in fact, my neighbor’s Kioti KL2610 tractor engine idling outside – in sync, precise as a click track, with the VSOP Quartet.

What are the odds?

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Carmine Appice, Peter Criss Remember Gene Krupa at Criss Farewell

Posted on June 19, 2017 by Scott K Fish

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Newsday, October 17, 1973

SKF NOTE: Carmine Appice said through his Twitter account (June 17), “I went to Peter Criss’s. Last gig ever tonight…. He had a big band [and] even played Sing, Sing, Sing, a Gene Krupa song. His idol and mine.”

Carmine’s first album, with Vanilla Fudge, was in 1967. Almost a decade later, in 1974, Peter Criss made his debut on Kiss’s first album. Both drummers still citing, in 2017, their idol, Gene Krupa, who really hit the public eye with Benny Goodman’s Orchestra in 1938.

Drumming’s heritage and tradition continues hanging on. Sometimes I wonder how best to keep that heritage and tradition alive for the future.

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Doug Clifford: Music Quality Has Gone Down with Technology

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Scott K Fish

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http://www.mrt.com
Creedence drummer Doug Clifford ponders the then and now
By Rich Lopez jrlopez@mrt.com Published 8:26 pm, Saturday, June 17, 2017

The music industry

“Rock ‘n’ roll was pretty new when I started back in 1953. Radio was certainly different and my dad hated it,” he said…. “Decades later, the industry has changed tremendously — both good and bad. I think quality has gone down with technology. And I just think it’s a lot harder to make it in this business now.”

Popular music

“I was captivated by Etta James and Bo Diddley. I really liked and was influenced by music from New Orleans and Memphis,” he said. “Now I think Bruno Mars is the whole package. I think Ed Sheeran is terrific. He reminds me of a young Van Morrison.”

CCR’s hit songs

My favorite song was always ‘Born on the Bayou’ but I love them all in different ways,” he said.

“I am surprised some didn’t make it like ‘It Came Out of the Sky.’ ‘Effigy’ was also a very powerful, political song but it never became the single I thought it would have.”

Full story

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UPDATE: Revising My MD Published Posts

Posted on June 17, 2017 by Scott K Fish

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Photo by Tony Cruz

SKF NOTE: Yesterday, Friday, June 16, I received an email request from Modern Drummer Publications VP Kevin Kearns, followed by a phone conversation. It was the first time  we had communicated since the fall of 1983 when I was stepping down as MD managing editor and Kevin was MD‘s advertising director.

Kevin was calling to say I had to remove all of the MD published articles posted on this blog. By the end of our conversation, I was okayed to keep the first page of each MD article posted here, with a link to MD‘s Archive Page where these early MD issues are now available for purchase.

Most of these interviews were unavailable when I started this blog, unless you owned the back issues or were willing to buy them from eBay. I’m glad that’s no longer the case.

I wanted visitors to my Life Beyond the Cymbals blog to know of this change ahead of time. Let me emphasize: what is in question here are the scanned pages here from MD magazines. That’s it.

In the grand scheme of things this revision enables me to focus more on my original mission for this blog.

Onward and upward.

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A Conversation with Charlie Watts (1981)

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Scott K Fish
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SKF NOTE: This interview with Charlie Watts took place in Charlie’s New York City hotel room on November 12, 1981. The Rolling Stones were on tour in America. Tina Turner was their opening act. The basic back story to this interview is posted here.

Since finding and reading the actual August/September 1982 Modern Drummer just yesterday, I am reminded that MD‘s Charlie Watts cover story is two parts: Robyn Flans‘s profile of Charlie, and the conversation Max Weinberg and I had with Charlie. I am including here the Fish/Weinberg/Watts conversation. MD‘s 1982 intro gives a better background story than I remembered. Here it is:

The following articles on Charlie Watts are the result of over two year’s worth of effort on the part of MD. There were numerous phone calls to record companies and management offices, where the answer was always the same: “Charlie Watts does not do interviews.”

Last fall, while the Rolling Stones were on tour in America, Charlie met up with his friend (and MD Advisory Board member) Jim Keltner, who persuaded Charlie to talk to us. (Thanks, Jim.) [Charlie] agreed to speak with MD’s Robyn Flans in L.A., but it was only after Robyn followed him to San Francisco that [Charlie] finally sat down in front of a tape recorder.

A month later, MD Managing Editor Scott K. Fish set up a meeting with Charlie and E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg. Again, Charlie agreed to let a tape roll. So here then is Charlie Watts who, although he actually spoke to us twice, began each session by saying, “I don’t do interviews. But we can talk if you want to….”

[SKF NOTE: 6/17/17 – Charlie Watts’s full interview is now available on MD‘s Archive Page.]

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