Bands and Musicians that Taught Me How to Hear and Undulate My Spine
This page will continously be added to as I ponder the music in my life.
Avant Squares was part of a group of bands that shared a practice space in an old industrial building on 8th Avenue and 38th Street that came to be known as The Music Building. It was infamous, and wild times were had by all. Supposedly Madonna got her act together there. We shared the space with Mofungo, V Effect, The Scene is Now, Information, and we all paid close attention to what each other was doing, and it was really an incredibly fertile and creative interaction, culminating in a genius amount of fun.
My drum teacher, the fabulous Montego Joe, gave me some white powder (not the kind you'd snort or shoot) to toss over my shoulder when I left that building. He didn't like the vibes there at all. I loved it. Just going up the elevator to the 7th floor one traversed several styles of music. At that time, early 1980's, I had a big white van and used to drive bands to gigs. Chassler drove Sonic Youth and Swans on one of their early tours down South.
Before New York, and after Memphis, I lived in Chicago. That's where I first heard Montego, on the old Blue Note record Art Blakey and the Afro-drum Ensemble . . . a spine revving, ecstatic record, for me at the time, that really turned me onto the drums, though Al Jackson had set my pulse in high school. Next encountered Montego on Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion. Montego played with a lot of the greats in his day, and was still teaching at his studio on 18th Street in Manhattan when I left New York in 2005. He was at least 80 years old at the time. A beautiful, beautiful soul. But when I google him, he's always listed as a sideman. No site of his own. A shame.
I grew up in Arkansas, 35 miles from Memphis, and was in high school during the Stax/Volt days: Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, his daughter Carla Thomas, The Mar-Kays, The Bar-Kays, Booker T and the MG's, Mitty Collier. And then there were the horns. The Memphis Horns. There was blues all around me too since I grew up around the Mississippi River Delta country, but it was the R&B that really got my attention. I could've cared less about Elvis, except that he came through town when I was younger in his pink caddillac and dated a friend's aunt once.
Otis Redding's voice and rhythms fired my young blood, and his drummer, Al Jackson, set my pulse (bop un chic un boom boom bop un chic un bop bop). My pulse is definitely set to a back-beat.
Al Jackson knew how to make love to his drums. He always held back till the right moment. "He had such a delayed backbeat that when he came down on a beat it felt like it wasn't going to get there," said Duck Dunn (bass for Booker T and the MGs). "And when it got there, it just … ooh!"
That pretty much describes what Stax/Volt music did for me: It just ... ooh. It always got there. (Even though Gertrude Stein said, "There's no there there." This is an otherwhere. She didn't know about the backbeat.) (I make ze joke.)
Otis really taught me the meaning of putting rhythm in words, though I didn't know he was teaching me at the time. Can't Turn You Loose and Hucklebuck. I dare you to listen to that cut without feeling Kundalini snake up your spine. Listen especially to the little drum/vocal riff. Slays me. Even today, the Hucklebuck and qigong keep me in fine shape, and I'm convinced there's as much qi in Al Jackson's drumming as there is in my fabulous qigong teacher, Robert Peng.
Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone, James Brown (Live at the Appollo 1962 "Butane James) and Ray Charles (Ray Charles in Person) Ray: "Everytime I hear myself going off key I just try an put a little more soul into it". Laura Nyro. Motown (You Really Got a Hold On Me). Dylan, Baez, Kingston Trio. And then along came Curtis Mayfield and Superfly. And then there was New Orleans. Loved the Neville Brothers, Meters (definitely check out the home page music on this site, uh, if you've ever been down to New Orleans). Yeah, but the one that I really hung my ears on was Irma Thomas. Irma was a very potent force in my young ears. I would hear some things in passing, like the Dead, and I'd really like them, but nothing grabbed me like the R&B Funky stuff. My spine, neck and shoulders are tuned to that sound. People in the back by the trees, people on the corner by the bus stop, people dancing in the fountain, people climbing over the fence, people rolling over clouds, people blowing out to the stars . . . those deliciously buttery organs, that bass/drum core of the earth's heartbeat, those soul music of the spheres saxes . . . we were all tuned in from the base of our spines through the air space above our skulls. Uh-huh!
Tell the Truth. An amazing song, Tell the Truth. I've been addicted to that song for years. It just ... ooh! Here's two versions by Ray Charles and Otis Redding. Margie Hendricks (the other great Hendricks) howls us into the song, then Ray raptures us up at the end. Then comes Otis, all percussion, his voice is a talking drum, and how he tangos around the beat, twisting the rhythm logic way before rap, all the while Al Jackson's carving out our pulse on the snare. I just want to crawl into his pocket forever. It's a womb, the way he deals that backbeat. And on both cuts, the horns are angels blowing us to God. It's like there is no Heaven and Hell. There is only Heaven and Heaven. Sublime. And that's the truth.
In the early 80s, I was in a band called No Shame with Barbara Ess and later, with Sue Hanel (who rocked The Swans). I was living with a member of the Microscopic Septet (Take the Z Train), and they'd arranged for No Shame to open for them in a Washington D.C. club. No Shame had very frenetic rehearsals, me pounding drums and cymbols hooked up to amps with contact mics, Ess going nuts on the bass, and Sue moving into outer space on the guitar. Ess and I like to have a little structure under the improv. Sue didn't want to deal with having to think about structure, tho she unenthusiastically said ok. So we get up on stage. I'm playing electrified metal and cymbals and timbalis (standing up). Ess is off to the side of me, Sue is in back. We're all pretty high and the sound is loud. All of a sudden, in the middle of the set -- which was one long musical seizure -- I realize I'm on stage alone. Sue had fogotten the structure, gotten frustrated, and just walked off the stage. Ess was freaked about that, so she left. My shit was so loud, I didn't notice they'd gone.
I was also in a band called Cargo Cult, an all-girl group called The Busters, a formation of Cargo Cult became The Negative Radicals, another called The G-Spots, and my fave name of all, an all-girl band called Rosemary's Chicken. Sadly, there's no trace of all this music. Too bad.
And in closing, hanging out with the Microscopic Septet really got me thinking about music in ways I never had before. Phillip Johnston and Dave Sewelson inspired me more then they will ever know, even for poetic cadences. That band has re-formed again (as of 2009), so look for their CDs. An amazing group.