Ballard and Rainey: Jazz is an Open-Source Code

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Scott K Fish

Irish Times
Never mind the whiplash, here’s some proper jazz drumming lessons
Don’t believe everything you see at the movies: for great jazz sticksmen Jeff Ballard and Tom Rainey, being mentored was a joy – although Ray Charles was no picnic
Cormac Larkin – Mon, Mar 9, 2015

ballard

Jeff Ballard (Photo credit CultureRadar.com)

Jeff Ballard is best known as one-third of the…Brad Mehldau Trio, and he has also spent extended periods in the drum chair for legends such as Ray Charles and Chick Corea.

Like so many American musicians, his first experience of jazz education was…his own high-school band.

“It was actually a very nurturing environment,” says Ballard. “The director was an old trumpet player from Chicago. He was a very hip guy and he would instil a community feeling in the band. They’d bring in very heavy old-school guys to teach us, and for me the message from the older musicians was that nobody owns this stuff. It’s greater than you, and it deserves to be passed on.”

Tom Rainey (Photo credit jeanloupbertheau.com)

Tom Rainey (Photo credit jeanloupbertheau.com)

Tom Rainey is one of the most creative and innovative drummers on New York’s fertile downtown scene, and a regular with influential band leaders such as saxophonist Tim Berne and pianist Fred Hersch.

The central character in Rainey’s education was…Keith Copeland, who died last month at 68. [Mr. Copeland] was a giant of the drum set.

“It felt like I was hanging out with a friend, basically, like an older brother kind of figure who happened to be an incredibly swinging and beautiful drummer, and also had a real talent for imparting information.”

For both drummers, jazz is an open-source code that they are glad to be able to share.

But check out Ballard and Rainey…. [Y]ou’ll discover…being a jazz drummer is more about communication than being shouted at.

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Young Drummer/DJ Says Earplugs Helpful

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Scott K Fish

WSJ.com – YOUR HEALTH
Is Your Music Too Loud? Experts Say It May Be If It Is Louder Than a Microwave’s Beep
To lessen hearing-loss risk, some experts say listen to loud music with earbuds for less than an hour a day
By SUMATHI REDDY – Updated March 9, 2015 5:37 p.m. ET

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RJ Jaczko

Experts say listening to music at high volumes using earbuds or headphones for more than an hour—and in some cases, as little as a few minutes—could put you at risk for noise-related hearing loss.

Dr. [Brian] Fligor – [a Boston audiologist and chief audiology officer at Lantos Technology, Inc., an audiology device company, who has published numerous studies on personal listening devices] – recommends over-the-counter earplugs for people who regularly attend loud concerts and sporting events. He recommends custom-fitted earplugs or custom in-ear monitors for patients in the music industry.

RJ Jaczko, a 15-year-old.., is one of Dr. Fligor’s patients. A drummer, DJ and concertgoer, RJ hasn’t experienced hearing loss, but began seeing an audiologist because his father, Rob Jaczko, a recording engineer and record producer, and chairman of the music production and engineering department at Berklee College of Music, began suffering from tinnitus, or ringing ears.

Now, RJ says he wears earplugs to concerts, and whenever he drums or DJs. “They’re very helpful,” he says.

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Revisiting My Life in Music: First Meeting with MD Founder Ron Spagnardi

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Scott K Fish
47 Harrison St, Nutley, NJ from Google Maps, March 2015 – almost 30-years after my visit.

I first met Modern Drummer founder/publisher Ron Spagnardi probably in the summer of 1978. MD‘s office was the basement of the Spagnardi home at 47 Harrison Street, Nutley, NJ. MD was still a quarterly publication. Nothing fancy about the basement. I remember it as an unfinished basement with desks, tables, and lighting sufficient to produce and ship a magazine. MD Features Editor Karen Larcombe was there. So were Ron’s father, Leo Spagnardi handling shipping and receiving, and Carol Padner and Jean Mazza were responsible for MD‘s circulation.

I don’t remember exactly why I was visiting. It was probably my interest in meeting Ron and seeing the MD operation. My first two feature interviews, Mel Lewis and Carmine Appice, were published in the April 1978 MD. Carmine was the cover story. So Ron and I had corresponded and worked successfully together. Our visit was likely the result of a simple conversation: “I’d love to come out and see the operation.” “Sure. Come on out.” For me it was just over a 100 mile round trip.

The April 1978 Modern Drummer with my first two feature interviews and cover story.

Ron was working on the layout for the October 1978 Steve Gadd cover story on my first visit. We both loved Gadd’s drumming, and talked about how Steve looked very unhealthy in the Aran Wald story photos. We were worried about him! Gadd was very thin with large, dark bags under his eyes. He was in a recording studio playing a five-piece single-headed Ludwig drumset, Evans heads on the toms, a very worn, white-coated head on the snare. Two paper towels taped left/right on snare top head for dampening.

One of Aran Wald’s Steve Gadd photos from the October 1978 Modern Drummer.

Ron didn’t know if Gadd’s drumset was his own, the recording studio’s, a rental – no clue. We were both surprised Steve was playing single-head rack toms. It was so exciting to have that “behind the scenes” look at Steve Gadd photos few people had seen. This was many years before the internet. Photos of any popular drummer were limited to album covers, magazine photos and ads, drum and cymbal catalogs, and maybe music store posters. Ron seemed a bit apprehensive about what I might be thinking of MD‘s office/basement. Perhaps like “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” in the Wizard of Oz. But, I thought it was all great and exciting.

Ron always had a very mild-manner and even disposition. Our meeting was friendly and brief. And when it was over I drove back to my home on Long Island, NY.

In 1980, when I was hired as MD Managing Editor, the magazine had grown to six issues yearly, and about to expand to nine issues per year. MD offices were occupying one floor of a modern office building in Clifton, NJ.

The October 1978 Modern Drummer Ron Spagnardi was working on when we first met.

–end–

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New CD Set Combines Six 1961 Coltrane Quartet with Dolphy Shows

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Scott K Fish

[SKF NOTE: I have yet to do a complete inventory, but I know I have several cuts from at least some of these shows on various Coltrane albums. Every cut I’ve heard has first-class, experimental, straight-ahead musicianship. And Elvin Jones plays great throughout.

Acrobat says of this release on their web site: “This is to some extent a sequel to our 2014 release of “All Of You: The Last Tour 1960” by The Miles Davis Quintet featuring John Coltrane, as it presents ‘live’ recordings from Coltrane’s European tour the following year.”]

Jazz
John Coltrane: So Many Things – The European Tour 1961 CD review
John Fordham – Thursday 5 February 2015 14.15 EST

5067385There’s been plenty of bootlegged material over the years from this celebrated 1961 tour by John Coltrane with saxophonist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy…. Now Acrobat has remastered tapes from six shows in Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm and pulled them into a useful four-disc set….

Coltrane had not long formed his “classic” quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, and in 1961 had also forged a brief but creative association with Dolphy. Their fearless stretching of the postbop envelope remains enthralling (at times even shocking) in its intensity, and the set pinpoints how the same pieces (including Blue Train, Impressions, My Favourite Things and Naima) change from night to night.

Acoustics are inevitably uneven, but students of Coltrane’s gamechanging work at a conceptual turning point won’t mind that.

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Anatomy of Clem Burke’s Drums on Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Scott K Fish

[SKF NOTE: Thank you to the Wall Street Journal for giving writers a chance to publish accounts of well-known songs. It is fantastic to have these musical insights for posterity.]

Wall Street Journal
ANATOMY OF A SONG
How Blondie Created ‘Heart of Glass’
Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein talk about ‘Heart of Glass’
By MARC MYERS – March 3, 2015 11:57 a.m. ET

[Michael Chapman, an inventive producer who had success recording other downtown artists, including Suzi Quatro and Sweet]: We went into New York’s Record Plant in June 1978, but the sound I wanted turned out to be a Pandora’s box of nightmares. The first step was to get the tempo right. I had this Roland drum machine that I wanted to use in sync with Clem Burke ’s drums. You hear the machine on the opening. To provide Clem with a track guide, I recorded the vocal in falsetto. After we had the kick drum pounding, I changed the arrangement so it would skip a beat along the way, to give it a dance feel. I had to get the Roland to skip the beat at the same time.

Then we recorded the rest of the drum parts individually—the high-hat, the snare and the tom-tom. The eight tracks of drums took a week, and synchronizing them with the drum machine was the toughest part. We only had a 24-track recorder, and we couldn’t cut and paste like you can today. What I was asking Clem to do was close to enslavement, and he was ready to kill me. I also brought in two EMT 250s, the first digital reverb machine. I discovered the EMT in Montreux, Switzerland, a year earlier. They gave the snare drum—and later, the vocal—more dimension and an electronic vibe.

Once we had the drum tracks, I turned to the bass. Next came Jimmy Destri on the keyboard. When we had the rhythm-section track, I turned to recording Debbie [Harry]’s vocal on top.

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