Grateful Dead Culture is Alive and Well

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Scott K Fish

For Grateful Dead’s Final Shows, Long, Strange Trip Ends in Sea of Mail
Band’s Fans Go Retro to Snag Tickets; Psychedelic Envelopes
By MIKE AYERS and JARRARD COLE
Feb. 13, 2015 7:32 p.m. ET

BN-GY531_GRATEF_FR_20150213121755STINSON BEACH, Calif.—Time has always been elastic for Grateful Dead fans in thrall to tunes that last more than 45 minutes and shows that go on for hours.

So when the group announced it would mark its 50th anniversary in the summer of 2015 with three final performances, Deadheads took the old-school route, flooding the band’s ticket service here with handcrafted requests rather than clicking online.

Since the shows were announced a month ago more than 60,000 envelopes—many painstakingly adorned with the Dead’s typical psychedelic skulls and skeletons—have poured into a post office box in this picturesque Marin County spot…. Jim Harvey, Stinson Beach postmaster, said of the vivid No. 10 envelopes…. “It indicated that the Grateful Dead culture is alive and well.”

For some Deadheads, requesting tickets by mail was a trip down memory lane. For others, like Josh Brady, a 33-year old.., it was a new experience. “[I]t’s fun to do the old-school mail order.”

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Terri Lyne Carrington: The Spiritual Journey of Being Creative

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Scott K Fish

For Terri Lyne Carrington, drumming is a spiritual act
by Alexander Varty on February 11th, 2015 at 12:13 PM

…Terri Lyne Carrington cites Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Jack DeJohnette as her primary mentors. Like DeJohnette, she’s honed her technique on the drums to…where her playing is more about manipulating energy than keeping a beat. And…she takes an inclusive attitude toward the thorny question of just what, exactly, constitutes jazz.

…Hancock and Shorter…also seem to have passed down some spiritual wisdom.

“You have to look at why you do what you do,” she explains…. “And if you look at that honestly, in most cases somehow you work back to some kind of spiritual journey that you’re having within the art of being creative. That’s kind of how I look at it: it’s about purpose, your sense of purpose in life. And music is really healing; it affects people on levels that they don’t even realize. So it’s about healing and inspiring people, and that’s spiritual as well. It’s all connected.

“It’s also about the spiritual process of just being in the present,” she adds….

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Lillian Barney: 70 Years ‘Humming and Drumming’

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: What a gift. Ms. Barney is a living link to 70-years of drumset history. I wonder if anyone in Canton, OH has recorded her stories for future generations of musicians.

Canton drummer still jamming for 70 years
Feb, 6 2015 00:00:00
by Todd Moe, in Canton, NY

Feb 06, 2015 — Now in her mid-90’s, Lillian Barney remembers keeping the beat for dance parties during the Big Band era, the Big Bopper and beyond. She was one of only a few women musicians in New York’s North Country dance bands that started in the 1930s.

Barney grew up on a farm near Rensselaer Falls, the only girl in a family of seven. Her grandfather and the radio were her teachers. She inherited his sense of rhythm and spent many nights listening to big band and country music on the radio. Barney was a member of several local groups, including the Hammond Kitchen Band in the 40s — a time when Saturday night social dancing was something not to be missed.

…Barney still has a set of drums near her room at Maplewood Campus, a retirement home in Canton.

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‘Birdman’ Composer Sanchez: One of the Hardest Things You Can Do

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Scott K Fish

‘Birdman’ Composer Antonio Sanchez on the Difficulties of Playing the Drum-Score Live
by Chris Willman
2/12/2015 5:47pm PST

2014-12-29-snchez2-thumbJazz percussionist Antonio Sánchez has never had the chance to do a two-hour drum solo in concert before. But that’s effectively what he’ll be doing Thursday at L.A.’s Theatre at the Ace, where Birdman will have a special screening stripped of his one-man percussion score so that he can recreate it on stage for roughly 1,600 viewers….

“Unfortunately, they kind of sprung this on me just last week, right before I went to London for the BAFTAs,” [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] Sánchez [said]. “I’ve been practicing for the last two days, so hopefully it will be at least decent. It’s not easy….”

And if you’re thinking it might be tough to recreate something…composed spontaneously rather than with a great deal of premeditation, you’d be right. But [Sanchez] already did it once before, when [Director Alejandro González] Iñárritu had him re-record the score because they agreed the sound of the first drum set they used was too clean-sounding.

“To recreate something that was improved using your stream of consciousness is one of the hardest things you can do as a musician,” [Sanchez] said.

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Densmore: Kreiger Wrote ‘Light My Fire,’ Not Morrison

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Scott K Fish

Part 4: Doors Drummer John Densmore Talks About Preserving Band’s Legacy
By Jim Clash Contributor

densmore-434x578John Densmore: ….I had hoped…we would pay the rent for 10 years, and my hair is grey now. And that’s another thing about money. We all have nice houses and cars. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t have been so hard-nosed about Jim [Morrison]’s legacy, what he had wanted. When Buick came to us to use Light My Fire in its commercial [in 1968 – “Come on Buick, light my fire”], we were all salivating. We were young and the money was big. Jim didn’t really write that song – Robby [Kreiger] did – but he still went nuts.

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