Drummage 1960s 2 of 2

What I love about blogs if the conflict between the liminal and definitive.  Drunk, I am, and yet, here is part 2 of 2.  While I extolled the virtues of "playing for the song" in my first post, I must admit that, as a drummer, I love the florid as much as the reserved. So while the first post demonstrated the virtues of the latter here is the decadence of the former...

Santana "Soul Sacrifice" Michael Shrieve

It's really freaky to think the entirety of pop music discourse fits within the lifespan of people who are still alive.  If the Beatles are the beginning and Burial is the end, well, Ringo and Paul can listen to Burial. Youknowhatimean?

Anyways, I still believe in the 60s and here is what makes me believe. Santana is criminally underrated. The Rolling Stones are literally pedophiles. So much for "the revolution". Michael Shrieve feels ecstasy before it is even synthesized (ok not really true)! Drugs can only help a person achieve a state of mind that music should be able to do naturally (ok not really true but it would be nice)...

Jimi Hendrix Experience "Hey Joe" Mitch Mitchell

Excuse my perversion, but if Jimi's solos are orgasmic, who warmed him up? In this track, the answer is obvious. The guitar solo would be nothing without the tension to-be-released, provided by the rest of the band generally, and Mitch's frenetic fills specifically...

John Coltrane Quartet "Afro Blue" Elvin Jones

There's four ways of playing music: try hard because you know no better, let go because you know no better, try hard because you know what is at stake, and let go because you know what is at stake. Elvin Jones ascends to the temple and demands beauty from his personal vision of God. Don't believe me? Listen as he hits harder than most in two time signatures simultaneously in anticipation of Coltrane's solo. The impatient anger of moral desire!

Pete La Roca "Sin Street" Pete "La Roca" Sims

Seriously unsung jazz player, Pete chose to drive a cab instead of play fusion in the 1970s, and no matter how many jazzfunk records I discover and come to love through my digging as a house DJ, I can't help but agree with Pete's decision. Sims was one of the first, if not the first, jazz drummer to introduce totally free playing in his solos. While his earliest innovations, in terms of temporal narrative, were created while he was sideman to Joe Henderson on a handful of Blue Note sessions in the early 1960s, my favorite work of his is on his second solo album, Turkish Women at the Bath, the title of which references an Ingres painting. Pre-scientology excellence from Chick Corea and top-of-his-game playing from Sun Ra sideman (and MASSIVE Coltrane influence) John Gilmore still impress after many years but Sims' free playing towards the end of this track inspires greatly. Sadly, the only clip available is cut off...

Grachan Moncur III "Evolution" Tony Williams

Elvin Jones is the only man ever to have lived that might be capable of walking up to Tony Williams and telling him he still has a lot to learn while being correct. Williams was still a teenager when he joined Miles Davis' band and not much older when he added his unique piece to the puzzle of Moncur's challenging yet evocative composition. There are a lot of songs I could pick to best exemplify Williams' drumming, and yet his comfort with the weird, not just his absolute mastery of the mainstream jazz idiom, is what makes Williams' drumming something perennial long after jazz has gone (stupidly) out of fashion...

Bonus...

killing it "normal"...