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#billbruford #kingcrimson #yes #tamadrums #billbruford'searthworks
When Robert Fripp convened an early rehearsal for this King Crimson sextet at my house in the mid-1990s, my percussive colleague Pat Mastelotto and I had never met. I asked him what instrument he was going to be playing. He explained he was also playing tubs - we were to be a two-drummer outfit. That’s a curve ball, right there, but we got right down to it. We were from very different backgrounds and experiences, and brought different skills and enthusiasms to the table. Pat was from a solid L.A.-rock background. Loud and consistent, he hit ‘em hard and in a way that discouraged surprises. Me: the closet jazzer, seduced by progressive rock, lighter in style, with a taste for the unlikely, the unpredictable and the odd-meter.
We spent a lot of time in the back of the bus, wood-shedding fun things to do with two drum kits, like metrical wheels-within-wheels (B’Boom; Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream), or displacing the rhythm so I play the same thing as Pat but a note or two later (Dinosaur, Vrooom), or playing two meters simultaneously (Thrak). The only thing was we didn’t want to do was sound like two guys trying to play the same thing, but not quite making it.
What was Marine 475? It was an insurance syndicate at Lloyds of London, the world's specialist insurance and reinsurance market. Unfortunately, King Crimson’s management firm had invested their artists’ royalties in Marine 475 without the artists’ knowledge or consent, just months before this high-risk business went belly-up. The downward spiral of the ponderous riff that constitutes the last couple of minutes of this video effectively conveys that sinking feeling as a man watches his hard-earned cash go down the tubes.
I remember, absurdly, having trouble finding something to play here; by which I guess I meant, finding something of value to contribute. Or did I mean, more honestly, something that might attract the attention of my fellow musicians, and confirm me in my position as an influencer, a player? Coda: Marine 475 was too straight - backbeat in 4/4 - how can I make this work for me? Couldn’t think of a thing, but the answer was right in front of me. You exist to play the music; the music doesn’t exist for your benefit, dummy. I’ve known this fact, intellectually, for years, but my ego did its best to obscure it. It can be a collaborative musician’s constant battle: keeping his or her ego out of the way sufficiently to play the right thing for the song. All I had to do was play what was in front of me. It worked out just fine.
Part of the attraction of moving towards jazz and improvised music in my later career was to lessen the perceived obligation (that my position as an ex-rock star had lumbered me with) to ‘entertain’ the paying customer with something other than music performance. If s/he’s paying north of 100 bucks for a ticket in a 10,000-seat room, this person not unreasonably wants something that looks like a show: lights, smoke, cameras, action, bells, whistles.
At the other end of the spectrum, small club entertainment is to be found in proximity. The small gestures of the performers, their obvious commitment to and enthusiasm for the music, written all over their clearly-visible faces, the beads of sweat, the way they handle their instruments - these things don’t have to be provided by trucks and take days to set up; they have a powerful entertainment value all of their own. They don’t have to be summoned or ‘acted’ by the performer; a good performance just carries them within. The music is offered, accepted, or rejected as is. Clean and tidy, that.
#earthworks #drumsolos #improvisation #jazzdrummer #drummer #billbrufordsearthworks
14 сен 2023
