Bass thoughts

One of my Christmas presents was a copy of the Anniversary Edition of Jaco by Bill Milkowski. This revised and expanded biography of the great but troubled electric bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius is well worth reading, even if you have read the previously published version of this book. Pastorius was, of course, far more than just a great bass player. He possessed a formidable musical mind which produced many superb compositions and arrangements, as well as inventing an entire new vocabulary for his chosen instrument which irrevocably changed the way the electric bass is played.

I don't intend to repeat the Pastorius story here - if you want to know more about his life then read the book - but I did find myself having a bit of a 'Jacofest' on the CD player and thinking about some of the bassists that rushed through the door that he opened. My late friend John McCartney was one of them and I will be writing about him in the near future, but for the moment I have an abiding memory of the expressions of astonishment, disbelief and then delight that chased across his face when we saw Jaco perform with Weather Report at Hammersmith Odeon (as it was then) in 1980. Incidentally, I rate this gig as probably the best I have ever attended, and I've attended quite a few. I've not been able to locate any clips of that concert (although I've discovered that a bootleg recording of it does exist) but here is a Clip from German TV c. 1978 which does give flavour of the band in full flight.




And here is Jaco's Word of Mouth Big Band live in Japan in 1982, playing the Pastorius composition 'Three Views of a Secret'. This features the great Toots Theilmans on harmonica.



Here is another of my favourite bass players of all time - Nico Assumpção. The Brazilian 6 string bass maestro is seen here in Salvador in 1992, playing with Larry Coryell and an all star line up. Alas, Nico died of throat cancer in 2001.




Ney Conceição is another great Brazilian 6 string electric bass player. Here he is with João Bosco's band performing a Bosco composition - Incompatibilidade de Gênios.



Ney, fellow Bosco band members, guitarist Nelson Faria and drummer Kiko Freitas also perform as Nosso Trio. Here they are playing the classic Roberto Menescal composition 'O Barquinho' (My Little Boat).



Anthony Jackson is credited with inventing the 6 string bass and he's another of my favourites Here he is playing with Michel Camilo: piano and Horacio Hernandez: drums.I'm afraid I can't 'name that tune', but I'd be grateful if anybody else can...



Finally, here's a clip of Abraham Laboriel with Lee Ritenour in Japan. I don't know when this was recorded, what the tune was or who the other musicians are (although I'd guess at Patrice Rushen on keyboards) but it's a fun solo and incredibly 'high energy' Given that he's been cutting these capers for many years (I saw him play in London in about 1980 and he was leaping about a bit then) you'd think he'd be a bit slimmer!




These are by no means the only great electric bass players around: they just happen to be some of my favourites - and if regular readers of this blog are surprised by the absence of Richard Bona from this posting, it's only because I've covered him exhaustively elsewhere ( a quick search within the blog will reveal at least three mentions (including a concert review) and a number of clips). In the meantime I hope you enjoy this selection.

A Happy New Year to all my readers...

There! I've always wanted to write that! I suppose some sort of retrospective thingy is in order so - here goes:-

This is my first year of blogging (I started back in May) and I have been enjoying it immensely. Whether or not you lot out there in cyberland have is another thing entirely but it's all the fault of my old mate Leigh Heggarty (for more details of the attribution of blame, see "The time has come", the Walrus said...), whose excellent blog documents the everyday life of a jobbing Rock guitarist in great - and frequently amusing - detail.

I have made a new 'cyberpal' through the blog, courtesy of my Emily Remler memoir - See Emily Play - which put me in touch with the author of the All Things Emily website. We have been corresponding regularly and have been exchanging music and political opinions, both of us expressing joy (along with most of the Western World) at Obama's election. And talking of politics I am now the proud possesor of a 7 metre telescopic flagpole to go with my red flag (see A bit of flag waving). I do urge you to pass this idea on and to participate yourself. In a recent interview, Adrian Edmondson made the observation that, when Margaret Thatcher finally dies there will be a very large queue of people waiting to dance on her grave. It occured to me that they would probably get their feet fairly muddy because there will also be an awful lot of people pissing on it...

I have also got back in contact with an old pal, Paul Marsden, who was a fellow traveller on my early forays into discovering music. Whilst I was writing about some of these exploits ( see Folk me sideways Part Two for photographic proof of them) I checked for online evidence of his existence. Lo and behold - there was his website and contact was duly made. We have been exchanging emails and phone calls on a grand scale ever since (and as there had been a thirty year hiatus in our relationship there has been a lot to talk about).

I've been to some excellent gigs, bought a lot of CD's and DVD's, read a lot of good books, joined the wonderful world of blogging and - apart from becoming the proud possesor of hearing aids (see Mutt and Jeff) and high blood pressure - have, by and large had a jolly good year. I trust that yours has been at least as good as mine (but without the deafness and the blood pressure!) and that this coming year will be even better. That's it...see you in the new year!

Davy Graham 1940 - 2008

I was greatly saddened to learn of the death of Davy Graham on the 15th December. He was a musician that made a huge impact on the folk music scene of the 1960's and then seemed to slowly faded from sight over the next decade, although his musical influence continued to spread outwards like ripples in a pond. I've written elsewhere in this blog about discovering his music for the first time (see The twang's not the thang) but in recent years his albums have been reissued and I for one have bought a few of them and rediscovered his music all over again,

With another forty or so years worth of listening and playing experience under my belt I realised that Graham wasn't just an innovative guitar player: he was an extraordinary musician who just happened to play the guitar. I'm fairly certain that he would have made great music on whatever instrument he had focused on. We may well have been denied a virtuoso trombonist or harpist or kazoo player, come to that - the instrument wasn't the point. It was the ideas that were so stunning. That he did focus on the guitar was fortunate because there was a very receptive audience for acoustic guitar music out there just waiting to be wowed. Personally, I find that the more I listen to those records, the more wowed I become. Davy Graham seemed to have the same attitude as another of my heroes, the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, characterised by a refusal to think in terms of musical pigeon holes but rather to see music as a whole - as a river flowing past that could be dipped into at any point.

Here's a nineteen year old Davy, caught on film in 1959 playing 'Cry Me A River'

And here's some footage from the BBC's 'Folk Britannia' documentary series -

and here's a track from the EP that originally introduced me to his music.



For further information, here are some links -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davey_Graham
http://www.daveygraham.moonfruit.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/17/folk-blues-music
http://www.cosmicsurfer.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Davygraham.html

Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs is one of those programmes that irritates me more often than it delights me, but sometimes, delight me it does, and that’s why I continue to listen to it. Often the interviewees are thoroughly unmusical, sometimes they are extremely boring and occasionally they are self important prats. More often than not though, it’s a case of ’vaguely interesting person chooses vaguely uninteresting music’ - there’s an awful lot of Bob Dylan and Puccini…But once in a while someone chooses something that I love – which always gets my attention, and once in a while somebody chooses something that I’ve never heard before but end up loving.

I first identified one of the Bach cello suites when Tom Courtenay chose it about forty years ago. I say identified because I’d heard the piece before and had been entranced by it. There is a scene in Jazz On A Summer’s Day (see Folk me sideways for more about this film) when the camera cuts back and forth between shots of the America’s Cup races taking place off of Newport, Rhode Island, and Fred Katz, cellist with the Chico Hamilton Quintet, practising in his room. At the time I assumed that Katz was improvising (albeit brilliantly), but the music stuck in my mind and stayed with me until Tom chose it and the light dawned. I subsequently bought the Pablo Casals recording of the complete Bach Cello Suites and it has remained a favourite ever since. Much to my surprise I found this clip of Casals playing part of Suite No 1 around 1953


Quite a few years later I was listening to the adventurer and writer Tim Severin’s choice. He had, amongst other things, emulated one of the Celtic saint’s legendary crossing of the Atlantic ocean in a leather boat, and had written a book about it. One of Severin’s selections was a jig called Water Under The Keel, which was from an orchestral suite for Uillean pipes and orchestra by the composer Shaun Davey. This immediately grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and gave me a damn good shaking and I was forced to go out and by the record of The Brendan Voyage – which was the title both of the suite and of the book that inspired it The piper on this was Liam O'Flynn, who was one of the founder members of the Irish group Planxty, one of the most innovative and influential musical units that Ireland had ever seen. The 'embedding feature for this YouTube clip of an extract from the piece has been disabled but you can see it by clicking here.

In 2004 my attention was grabbed again when the ‘death row’ lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith chose the forty part motet Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis as one of his eight records. Again I marvelled at a sound, and couldn’t wait to buy a recording so as to hear that glorious noise on my Quad speakers instead of on the bathroom radio. (I tend to take a late shower on a Sunday.) Here is a clip of the work, performed by The Tallis Scholars.


I’m sure that I’m not alone in occasionally fantasising about being on the programme, and I’ve often started to compile my own eight records. I say ‘started’ because no matter how I try, I can never finish the list because there are so many great pieces of music that I just couldn’t do without. In fact if I’m ever invited on to the programme I shan’t take any music with me at all. I’ll choose a gun as my luxury and shoot myself as soon as I land, because the prospect of living for years with only eight records is just too awful to contemplate…

Richard Bona Band at the Barbican, November 26th 2008

Left to right: Adam Stoler, Etienne Stadwijk, Ernesto Simpson, Richard Bona,
Robert Quintero, Taylor Haskins

I travelled up to London at the weekend with mixed feelings. On the one hand I was on my way to see a concert that I was greatly looking forward to. On the other hand, the last gig I had attended at the Barbican (Maria Rita) was ruined by appalling sound mixing. I need not have worried. The sound mix was spot-on for the whole show.

The evening's music was kicked off by the excellent Danilo Perez Trio. Under other circumstances I would have enjoyed their set considerably more, but it really did not fit the mood of the evening. Never-the-less, the musicianship was of a very high order and the other members of the trio - Ben Street (bass) and Adam Cruz (drums) - integrated perfectly with Perez's playing, complimenting every twist and turn within the music. Despite some light-hearted attempts at audience interaction by Perez, the trio never really took charge of the proceedings. However, I would not hesitate to go and see them perform in their own right. Here's a clip of them performing 'Alone Together' at Arturo Sandoval's club last year.

The problem was that most people were anticipating more of a party atmosphere - which was exactly what they got when Bona and his band took to the stage!

There was an immediate sense of - what I can only describe as - security as the band commenced to play. The audience knew that it was in safe hands for the rest of the evening, and the groove was so immediate and insistent that you could practically feel the Barbican resonating in sympathy. This was not achieved by volume but by the sheer infectious precision of the musicians. The programme notes included a quote from a Guardian review which sums it up beautifully -"...music that makes you smile, moves your feet and touches your heart in ways that more celebrated music personalities can only dream about."

Bona is a virtuoso electric bass player who has - as did the late Jaco Pastorius (the man that inspired him to take up the bass in the first place) - the ability to play exactly the note you want to hear at exactly the moment that you want to hear it, only you don't know that that's what you want to hear until you've heard it! He also has a beautiful voice and writes most of his own material which he sings in (I think) his native Douala language (he is from Cameroon). The songs utilise an eclectic selection of grooves, moving freely between Latin, jazz-funk and African beats. Bona's bass and voice were complemented by a superb band whose unbeleivable tightness kept a big grin plastered more or less permanently on my face. They were :- Adam Stoler - guitar; Taylor Haskins - trumpet; Etienne Stadwijk - keyboards; Roberto Quintero - percussion and Ernesto Simpson - drums. It is difficult choose a favourite moment from the evening but if pushed I would nominate the band's version of Jaco's 'Liberty City' (see the previous posting for a YouTube clip of an earlier line-up's performance of this tune) and the moment when the band left the stage and Bona transformed himself into a choir with the aid of 'sample and hold' technology. At the end of the evening the performers were thanked with a standing ovation which brought them back for an encore,provoking yet another standing ovation, but this time a -no doubt exhausted - band stayed in the dressing room. This, for me, was undoubtedly 'gig of the year'.

Here are another couple of clips. First, here's the 2006 line-up perforing one of Richard's songs at the Stockholm jazz festival -

and finally here's Richard performing another of his compositions -'Dina Lam' with Bobby McFerrin'



Roll on the new album!

Odds, sods and apologies

Dear loyal readers (all three of you), please accept my humble apologies for a somewhat lengthy break since the last posting. I plead pressure of work and the headaches, along with a singularly annoying Flash! Bang! Wallop! that was in fact my computer deciding to celebrate Guy Fawks Night in its own inimitable fashion ( for the benefit of my overseas reader - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night )

There are, you will be depressed to find out, several postings in preparation at the moment, including a piece about Desert Island Discs as an occasional source of musical inspiration, and an interview with the greatly underrated British jazz guitarist, John Coverdale (He's so underrated that you'll have to scroll through this directory to find him). These will be proceeded by a review of the Richard Bona concert that takes place at The Barbican this coming Sunday and to which I am greatly looking forward (to boldly split an infinitive or two).

The Bona concert gives me the excuse to include another YouTube clip just to whet your appetites if you're not already familiar with his playing. Here's his band with a nod from Bona to one of his big influences as they play the Jaco Pastorius composition -'Liberty City'



And I really should mention the excellent Randy Newman concert aired on BBC4 last week. He gave a great performance of what ought to have been 'greatest hits' if there was any justice in this world, accompanied superbly by the BBC Concert Orchestra, who were clearly enjoying every minute of it. He also played a couple of songs from his new album, 'Harps and Angels', which are (and is, if you follow me) as good as ever. Here, however is an old favourite that is as pertinent as it was when he wrote it in 1972 or thereabouts - 'Political Science', performed by him back in 2004.


Finally, here's another look at the problems expressed above - 'A Few Words in Defence of Our Country' which is on the latest album.

That's it for now. Enjoy! I'm off to see Richard Bona...

Further tales of Berkhamsted...

This was not what I had intended to be posting next but life often throws stuff at you that you weren't expecting...

During the course of writing my last posting (See Emily play) I made contact with Al Merritt (the drummer on the gig that I had described there) and sent him a link to the page. I soon received a reply from him which said (amongst other things)-

"...I read some of your blog this evening and I need to take you to task concerning the night at Berkhamstead Town Hall. You are quite wrong in your interpretation of the sequence that lead to Monty playing the bass. The unnamed bass player and I had played quite a few times with Monty and if anything he was impressed with this unmentioned player. Can I ask you not to go any further with that particular reminiscence until I have had a chance to talk to others who attended the concert. I will deal with this subject as quickly as possible and come back to you with further comments.
Cheers
Al

I replied as follows-

"re the blog:

I may well be wrong in my interpretation of events but I have carried that as an extremely strong memory for a long time. That's certainly the way things seemed to happen - so much so that I did not put in the usual caveats of - "it looked as if..." or "it seemed like...". However, I know from personal experience that truth can be a subjective thing that is often a matter of perceptions, so I welcome your version of events - you were, after all, a lot closer to the action than I was - and will happily post it on the blog. That, after all, is why the 'comment' box is a part of my blog. It is to allow people a place to state their own opinions, or, where necessary, correct me. Incidentally, if I'm not mistaken, the bass player was Alan Simmons,for whom I had considerable respect. I personally could not see what Monty was apparently complaining about and left Alan's name out of the recollection for that reason..."

A week went by and then Al sent me this -

"Here's the answer from 'the horse's mouth' via Mike Hennessey.

Hope that now clears up the matter.

Attached was this email from Mike Hennessey -

Dear Al:
I just had a call from Monty who says that (Votarol)'s blog is rubbish. What I did, says Monty, was just a gag. Alan Simmons is a very fine bass player and there is no way in which I would do what (Voltarol) says. If I had seriously thought that Alan wasn't measuring up, then the last thing I would do would be to deal with the matter onstage. But the fact is, Alan's playing was fine and what I did was just a joke.
And he sends his best regards to you, Alan and Brian.
Cheers!

Mike

This was my reply -


Dear Mike Hennessey,

Al Merritt has just forwarded your email to me and I have noted its contents and will of course post it on my blog. There was, I assure you, never any malicious intention in telling that story. I reported what I thought I had seen in all good faith, and I was not the only person in the audience to walk away from that evening with the same impression. In fact, hearing from 'the horse's mouth' that it was a gag makes me feel like a bit of a horse's arse, but a rather relieved one because I had thought less of Monty because of it. Please offer him my unreserved apologies and explain that his acting was as convincing as his piano playing! I genuinely believed that I had seen an altercation.

Regards,

(Voltarol)

...and that was that, I thought. I'll eat my humble pie and move on. But never underestimate a nice bloke. By return I received the following -

Dear (Voltarol):
Many thanks for your message. I appreciate your response and I am quite sure that there was no malicious intent on your part. It is easy to understand how such an incident could be misinterpreted.
I will pass on your apology to Monty.
With best regards,

Mike

All this left me with rather mixed feelings. Should I have reported what I thought I saw without checking with someone first? Well - yes and no. If I had had any doubts about what I had seen then - no. But I didn't have any doubts at all so - if you are trying to be an honest reporter then you have to call it as you see it. And yet I had totally misinterpreted what I had seen. It just makes one wonder how many other 'truths' are out there that could be nothing more than a joke taken at face value. I'll just wipe the remains of the egg off my face whilst saying once again "Sorry, Monty".

Just as a reminder of what a fine musician he is, here are a couple of clips. First, here he is duetting with fellow pianist Billy Taylor on 'Joy Spring'


and here he breathes new life into Bob Marley's 'No Woman, No Cry' -



For further information about Monty Alexander, here's his website