Sunday, November 17, 2024

The Mothership Connection, and Other Stories


For my money there's only two kinds of music- good and bad. The record companies needed to categorize music so they'd know which bin to put it in, so we got all the genres and sub-genres and it got ridiculous. Emo begat Screamo, Punk spawned New Wave and there's fifty shades of Metal. 

 I love examples of almost every kind of music, from Jazz to Classical to R&B to Rock, with a huge love of Progressive, later shortened to "Prog," but if I had to pick only one style to listen to and/or play drums to for the rest of my life, it'd be Funk. 

 There's so much feeling in Funk. It encompasses elements of Rock and Jazz, but it's its own thing. It has a "groove" as deep as the ocean. The coolest thing about it to me is the sense of "implied swing." You can be playing a straight beat, as in "Boom boom bap, boom boom bap," but it has a dotted-eighth or Shuffle feel to it, as in "Ba-dop Ba-dop Ba-dop." It's not played, only felt.

 How it works is a mystery. As far as drumming is concerned, you're playing a straight beat but you're thinking Shuffle or Swing. It's a mind thing. They've actually done studies where the drummer will be playing one thing but thinking of another, and even though the other thing is not being played, the audience can hear it or feel it. It's extraordinary. 

 I have to mention one night when I was playing with an acoustic band called Noble Freeland. It was anything but Funk, but I'd try to inject some of that feel whenever possible. 

 We were playing at a local watering hole and it was packed. Some nights we'd outdo ourselves and take it to a different level, and for my money that was by far the most intense we ever played in all the years I played with them. 

 My good buddy Sam, a drummer-brother from another mother, was there. The whole room was dancing and the energy level was off the charts. I was playing a little stand-up rig with a small snare drum and tiny bongos and cymbals. 

 Something happened that night that I still can't explain. There was a different kind of energy in the room that I've never experienced before or since. I was standing on my tip toes and I felt like I was going to levitate, and maybe pass right through the ceiling and up into the sky. And no, it wasn't due to some substance...it was the Muse.

 At one point I did this fill on the snare drum alone. If I'd been playing a regular drum kit I'd have played the fill on the toms but I didn't have any. I was thinking about toms though. I happened to look at Sam when I did the fill, and his eyes bugged out. 

 I was talking to him on the break and he was still bug-eyed. He said: "Man, when you played that crazy fill, I heard toms!" I told him that I was thinking about toms. That was wild and it flipped us both out. That's music for you...sometimes there's something extra going on, and it can't be explained. In my book the Muse is funky.

 Sly and the Family Stone share pride-of-place in my Funk collection, and the tune Thank You (Fa Lettin' Me Be Mice Elf Agin) is ground zero for Funk, but it doesn't get any funkier that the band Parliament/Funkadelic, or P-Funk. If listening to P-Funk doesn't make you want to dance, you'd better check your pulse, because you may be on the way to meet your maker.

 There's not enough space here to say everything I could say about P-Funk, but aside from Sly and a couple others, they put Funk on the map. I got to see them live once and it was life-changing. They made Funk accessible to white people. Great music has no color, or expiration date. 



I'm reminded of one of the coolest things I've ever learned in life. Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson on the TV show The Jeffersons, was a huge fan of Progressive music, and his favorite band was Gentle Giant. Any time I'm listening to them, if you happened to ask who my favorite band is, it'd be they. 

It warmed my heart to learn that. As you can see, his resemblance to GG's mascot is uncanny. I bet Mr. J was a P-Funk fan too, but the fact that Gentle Giant was his favorite band just floors me.

When I listen to modern "Black" music it makes me want to hurl. The vast majority of it, primarily Rap and Hip-Hop, is mostly sampled, Autotuned bullshit, with canned, ticky-tack drum beats. It's mostly just someone pushing buttons and calling it music. Then there's someone basically talking in rhymes on top of it. 

There's no way to judge the quality of the "singer" because they don't actually sing. Anyone could rap. Your grandmother could rap. As long as there's Autotune it's all good. You don't even have to stay in key. Autotune does it for you. If you ask me, that's the Devil in music. 

The record companies, mostly white folks, took the black people's musical heritage and shoved it straight up their asses. There's a scene in the movie The Blues Brothers where they're having a huge street party. There's a funky band playing and everyone's dancing, including little kids. Every time I see it I get tears in my eyes, because nobody listens to that kind of music nowadays. It's criminal.

I have a young black friend named Kent. He's a truly gifted musician. He plays trombone and sax but his main ax is the baritone horn, and he has one of the most beautiful horn tones I've ever heard in my life, and I've heard a lot of horns.

He used to be my neighbor and he'd come over to hang out. We bonded over music. It was interesting for an old white dude and a young black dude to be friends but we're friends to this day.

One night he came over and I asked him to play my drum kit. He'd never picked up a pair of sticks in his life but after playing around for about 15 minutes he could play the drums better than I could after six months. It was unreal. He knows where his gift comes from. The first time I heard him play, we both agreed that his talent is a gift from God.

When I met him he was listening mostly to R&B, but it's the modern stuff. I vastly prefer it to Rap and Hip-Hop and at least there's actual singing, and good singing at that, but most of it has canned drums and samples. It's just what they're playing on the radio so it's what people listen to.

Over the last three years or so I've gradually gotten him to appreciate old-school R&B, Funk and even "Cracker Rock," aka "White" music. I pointed out the difference between canned bullshit that was constructed track-by-track, with samples and fake drums, as opposed to music created by musicians playing together in real time, and reacting to each other. Music is supposed to be a conversation.

Now he gets it and he's listening to the good stuff. He played in the marching band in high school and still goes to competitions. I  hipped him to the legendary band Chicago, because for decades marching bands have covered their songs, due to the fact that they have a prominent horn section. Their music lends itself perfectly to marching bands. Now he loves them and I'm proud of myself. Right now I'm breathing on my fingernails and buffing them on my shirt.

I've tried to teach Kent a little about music history, and where it all comes from. There are famous old bands he's never heard of, but he's basically heard those bands through modern bands, because they listened to those old bands. He was able to see the progression from older to modern. That warms my heart too. Kent is a great kid. 

This morning I watched a doc about P-Funk. It made me want to shake booty. Then something crazy happened. They were interviewing one of the backup singers, and at the exact time I was thinking something, she said it out loud perfectly along with me, word for word. She said: "There will never be another band like P-Funk." I hear you, sister. 

So that's my story on implied Swing, non-existent yet existent tom-toms and the power of music. Stay funky, and shake that thang! 


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