Note: Having finished the following piece of writing, I’m going to file it under rants. I set out to make an impartial analysis, but got so annoyed with the music, I think that category will best suit it.
I gotten taken to task on Reddit by some fans of Ginger Baker for my assessment of a couple of his recordings— someone asked what he’s doing with his soloing here, and I said he’s flailing, and basically, there’s nothing to figure out. That was taken negatively, which it partly was. The music is fairly offensive to me. But, I don’t want to be unfair to anyone’s favorite drummer, so let’s give it a listen and I’ll give some more detailed comments:
First— this is uncontroversial— this setting is completely jive, some 60s pop musicians doing some jazz/blues, blues/jazz, jazz/blues/jazz…blues/jazz/blues/jazz, whatever they call it. We’re really leaning on the blues scale itself to carry us through here, and the jivey rhythm. It does have John McLoughlin on it.
Ginger Baker, Bam-bam, is doing what he does, projecting his ego through that bass drum. What he’s playing is more or less real stuff, like a talented high schooler. This is a face we all go through. He just needed about five years of actually working for somebody to work it out better, and to be forced to learn a musical touch, and to exercise some taste. Which did not happen, he just had a lot of people telling what a smashing drummer he was, which in his narcissism, suited him just fine, and he never got any better. That’s my assessment. Everything I’ve ever heard he always sounds like this, almost-real, but obnoxious. Something off.
All the same stuff I wrote about him ten years ago. But this wasn’t even supposed to be about my critical judgment of the music, or of Baker; it was about figuring out what he’s playing when he’s soloing. The drum solo section starts at 3:15. The first break ends up being 9 bars long. There is then 8 bars of the stop time thing, with drum breaks, and then a 7 bar break. That’s not part of the arrangment, they’re just vibing it and watching each other. Fine. It’s more or less in time, but squooshy, they’re floating, there’s no real center.
When I say he was flailing it’s not even criticism, it’s just what he is doing, flailing some stuff in. It is done, it can be done well, or not-well, but trying to resolve it to any kind of precise what-it-is is going to be misleading. We could try to pin down the ideas, in this case I feel it’s a waste of time.
I was also given this, the same group playing Doxy. I think this is Mr. Bond playing saxophone:
I detect in the saxophone this ego thing I always notice with this ilk of British musician— this group of guys. A sense of being superior to the music. Everyone involved probably thinks he’s killing it, when he’s actually playing offensively badly. Here’s Jon Hiseman, the other drummer on the record, talking about Mr. Bond selling him on joining the group, calling it “the greatest organization on Earth.”
As the leader of the greatest organization on Earth, one becomes greater than things like time and intonation, we can just grab our horn and spew. And you are correct, this does sound like any given bad jam session on the planet, where players’ egos are bigger than their abilities. Baker sounds OK for the bulk of it, his cymbal beat sounds OK. I don’t care for his little neurotic eruptions— which I think are actually the real Ginger. The soloing is… he’s trying to be Elvin Jones. You can’t necessarily figure out what Elvin is doing to the letter, either, but it’s worth it to listen to and try to get it. In this case, it is not worth it, there’s no deeper truth to get.
Everything happening here can be done well. Things can be rough, and still good. Horn players can play out of tune— in fact I’m going to give the famously out of tune Jackie McLean a fresh listen and see if there’s anything in there remotely this offensively bad. But it’s not just that there are technical flaws, it’s the way they’re doing them. It’s all surface, it’s like watching Patrick Swayze do Tai Chi, except with a basic contempt for it.
Doing that, but thinking “I am greater than Tai Chi.”
With stuff like this— a lot of people really don’t know what they’re hearing. This is exactly what Elvin Jones sounds like to them. The same folks who watch that butchery that is Zachariah, and not know anything is wrong, thinking it’s just Elvin playing an awesome drum solo, and it isn’t.
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There is a baffling array of musicians who are lionised deapite being just crap or pedestrian. Baker is one of them and I wouldn’t rate him as pedestrian. But woe betide anyone who questions the madness of the herd.
Joe: I mean he has his place– there’s another post coming up where I’ll talk about it a little bit– my own meager opinion, anyway. A certain generation I think are irrationally over-into him…
Xaque: Just that he’s any kind of actual jazz drummer is good, the African thing is good– never bothered to listen to it because I’d rather just listen to Tony Allen play that. Playing with Cream he had a sound, that bam bam thing, that in the end hasn’t been as influential is Bonham, Ringo, Keith Moon. But mostly I just don’t want to listen to him play. They used a little bit of Toad in the soundtrack for Goodfellas, and I think it works great there.
About 50% of my ire here is directed at that Bond guy, to me that stuff is just offensively bad.
And thank you for the Patreon support, Joe, you’re very kind!
I think that’s among those players specifically, I don’t want to blame all of Britain for a few dudes’ shortcomings– but it’s a little like a beatnik wailing on his bongos, or people using African art to represent savagery, there’s a little bit of colonial residue there. Those things are high art, and somebody’s reducing them to… whatever those guys are doing with it.
Not sure which players you’re thinking of there– the first people I think of are like Tony Oxley, Dave Holland, John McLoughlin, Courtney Pine, Kenny Wheeler I guess… I mean comparing Ginger Baker and Tony Oxley, my God… that’s like Igor Stravinsky and the Cookie Monster.
Yes, good observation about residual colonial attitude. Even folks, like Giles Peterson, who promote ‘World Music’ as high art, can sometimes come across like that too, as if they, like Christopher Columbus, discovered it. That’s also something I seem to remember Ginger acting like about African drumming.
No doubt there are great musicians in England, but like the debate about British actors playing historical American roles, can sometimes come off as lacking in the context of Blues and Jazz, even if technically really good and creative. America, from what I remember, is much more spread out, so although there are main hubs for film and music, there’s also lots happening inbetween an independently. England, on the other hand, is very Londoncentric, so that can influence things, such as access to arts funding, and like with the colonial thing, there’s also an old boys elitist thing that’s obsessed with where you studied, grades etc basically more tied up with status symbols.