Bands you keep trying to like but can't get into

yeah I like their quirky pop Tales of Brave Ulysses/I Feel Free type shit

Clapton was such a purist he quit the Yardbirds because they finally wrote a good song

I honest will give the Yardbirds comp another go; it’s been a while.

(xp) Jack Bruce songs. Though Clapton did write "Badge".

Actually I'm wrong, Clapton wrote "Tales of Brave Ulysses"!

yeah I thought that was Bruce as well and just looked it up!

He sang it, which is where the confusion arose.

i was surprised that their lyricist pete brown wasn't involved with that one--written by martin sharp, who designed the album covers

Sounded pretentious enough to be Pete Brown, true.

"'Wrapping Paper' is the biggest heap of shit I've ever heard in my entire life" - Ginger Baker

famously agreeable ginger baker

In this case, I actually do agree with him!

I eventually changed my mind about Meshuggah fwiw, I like them now

I kind of hate Cream and Ginger Baker especially fwiw. I think he's the shittiest "good" drummer, thuddy and lacking in soul.

I feel like the Yardbirds were handicapped at every turn by Keith Relf...just not a lot of presence, not an interesting voice or a great singer

I can't really get into any of the white straight blues bands of that era either -- they birthed good people but just weren't very interesting themselves.

I kind of hate Cream and Ginger Baker especially fwiw. I think he's the shittiest "good" drummer, thuddy and lacking in soul.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, May 21, 2019 2:41 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He's infinitely better than, say, Charlie Watts.

"better" lol

ginger baker would ruin every stones song

yeah that opinion (xp) is rong enough to bring back the RONG thread

I kind of hate Cream and Ginger Baker especially fwiw. I think he's the shittiest "good" drummer, thuddy and lacking in soul.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, May 21, 2019 10:41 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like Cream, for the most part, but Baker is the most colossally overrated musician who ever lived. Everything he's given credit for -- heaviness; "wildness", however defined; being "able" to "play" both "jazz" and "rock" -- was done far more definitively by drummers before, during, and very soon after his emergence.

His "jazz" playing sounds like A Drummer Trying To Play Jazz, and would barely go over in a high school Jazz Band competition. His playing in Cream moves things along decently, and the long improvised sections are shockingly not terrible to my ears...until Bruce and Clapton drop out. There is no more tedious or pointless span of time than a Ginger Baker drum solo.

I disagree, just listen to the recordings - Charlie Watts struggles with staying in time and can't do a drum fill to save his life. Ginger Baker may be an immense dick, but he doesn't have a problem with either.

(x-post)

d'ILM for Murder (Hadrian VIII) at 9:42 21 May 19

I feel like the Yardbirds were handicapped at every turn by Keith Relf...just not a lot of presence, not an interesting voice or a great singer

yeah, Relf is just so mediocre, sometimes wonder if they'd had Steve Marriott instead

I mean, there's a zillion drummers I'd rate higher than Ginger Baker, but Watts isn't one of them.

in a world where instead of music there is just drummer magazine

"Toad"'s a banger before EC & JB drop out, it's true.

I guess I'll be Cap'n Save-A-Relf here and say ARMAGEDDON.

'I'm Free' is a decent Stones song until Watts ruins it.

I'm with the anti-Ginger Baker contingent, sadly. I used to like a few things he played on - the collaboration with Fela, the trio with Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden, the "No Material" group with Peter Brötzmann and Sonny Sharrock - but have changed my mind after revisiting his work just in the last few months; "thuddy and lacking in soul" and "A Drummer Trying To Play Jazz" pretty much nail him.

I can't really get into any of the white straight blues bands of that era either -- they birthed good people but just weren't very interesting themselves.

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac can be pretty magical. Sometimes he sounds like the only white blues player of his era that "gets it."

I like Ginger Baker's Africa stuff. Anyone ever see this Cream clip where it seems/sounds like clean-tone Clapton was forbidden any fuzz or whatever?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX1lH0VQRaA

I guess I'll be Cap'n Save-A-Relf here and say ARMAGEDDON

Best Led Zep rip-off band of the 70s! I'd rather listen to Relf than Plant any day.

Watts didn't struggle to stay in time, he played behind the beat

Baker with Fela is probably his best work, but I still prefer Fela with just Tony Allen

Watts didn't struggle to stay in time, he played behind the beat

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, May 21, 2019 11:49 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Exactly. And sometimes he sped up ("Honky Tonk Women"), sometimes he slowed down ("Get Off My Cloud") -- but there was no "struggle." The tempo breathed with the music.

it's best not to engage with turrican on this topic, there's like 100 posts in the rank the sticky fingers songs thread of this exact argument

I mean, dig Ollie Brown here. He speeds up, he slows down, and the music is so much more exciting for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4S9ke31JDA

Watts didn't struggle to stay in time, he played behind the beat

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, May 21, 2019 3:49 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) BookmarkFlag Post Permalink

He both played behind the beat and struggled to stay in time.

Watts' playing is so lumpen, it feels like he's playing with drumsticks that weigh the same as a pair of hammers but have the response of a light flick, and every time he goes in for a fill, it feels like he does the first hit and then suddenly it's like "uh, what do I do next?" and then he wings it in the most shonky way.

your posting is lumpen

I thought ILX was down with the proletariat.

this thread is making me hongro

I've no idea why, since I like rhythm, and this is a discussion about who is or who isn't good at it.

So many jazz drummers keep slating Charlie Watts

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f5/d6/1e/f5d61e27f9304ecd07a89a2fbbc749df--charlie-watts-the-rolling-stones.jpg

i don't understand the fuss he's just bad at rhythm dude. he is empirically not good at rhythm why don't people understand that

I love the Ginger Baker/Fela record and like the album he did with Masters of Reality.

He's a colossal dick, ofc.

thought it was funny when he did this and just picked 13 albums he played on

https://thequietus.com/articles/10797-ginger-baker-baker-s-dozen-favourite-albums

hey, it is called "Baker's Dozen"

lol. I mean only *half* of them are albums he played on, but still

Also funny that he disses Mitch Mitchell, who is a much more fluid player with a much better sense of jazz (but didn't have the ego to think he was an actual legit jazz drummer)

Meanwhile, here's Baker thudding it up with Haden and Frisell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql6iGLZL14w

Classic or thud.

1969 Life magazine feature on Elvin Jones:

https://tinyurl.com/y54wk93x

Curious to know what the patriarch of the new percussionists would think of his adoring progeny, I paid Jones a visit next day in his cheerful little flat on Manhattan's West Side. Sipping beer out of a jelly jar clinking with ice cubes, he listened with closed eyes and bent, perspiring forehead while I spun discs by the Who and Blind Faith and Santana. The Afro-Cuban rockers he dug, but mostly as musical wallpaper. Keith Moon's drumming during the "Underture" of Tommy produced appreciative comments: "See there, where the tempo started to die, how he picked it up! The man is a drummer. Everything they play, he contains it."

Only Ginger Baker, of the now defunct Blind Faith, got the strong put-down. Raising his head after an ominously silent hearing of "Do What You Like," with its enormously long drum solo, Jones growled: "Nothing happenin'. Cat's got delusions of grandeur with no grounds. They should make him an astronaut and lose his ass!"

Ha, was wondering when it would get to that quote.