8bit drummer reality check through the skull

8BIT DRUMMER REALITY CHECK THROUGH THE SKULL HOW TO
8BIT DRUMMER REALITY CHECK THROUGH THE SKULL FULL

Graham, Jack, and Ginger would often jam as a trio with tremendous results, even if the bassist and drummer would end many gigs with vicious physical attacks that would seem to seal their fate as arch-enemies. A year later he would become a member of the all-important Graham Bond Organisation, which also featured bassist Jack Bruce and guitarist John McLaughlin. In 1962, recommended by the then-departing Charlie Watts, Ginger took a left turn into the R&B scene and joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated.

During this period he met veteran English drummer Phil Seaman, who introduced Ginger to African rhythms, as well as the dangerous pleasures of narcotics and alcohol. Ginger jammed with many bands in London’s nascent 1960s jazz scene, other musicians recognizing his skill but nonetheless finding his explosive, unpredictable demeanor less than pleasant. At one point he even played Irish music with a 16-piece big band, covering Irish jigs and Gaelic music with the same intensity he brought to his trad jazz gigs. In later years, Ginger would seem to apply Roach’s dry tuning and airy time feel to his work with Cream.Įven though Baker was an uncontrollable, unconventional presence in most bands, beneath his gruff exterior lay a drum innovator biding his time while looking for the perfect break.

8BIT DRUMMER REALITY CHECK THROUGH THE SKULL HOW TO

Making his own set from Perspex (acrylic), Ginger taught himself how to play and, surprisingly enough, at the age of 16 landed a job with Bob Wallis’s Storyville Jazz Band, which offered the budding musician his first year on the road.Īn avid listener, Ginger was inspired by all the trad jazz greats of the day, including Baby Dodds (particularly his Talking & Drum Solos 78s), Zutty Singleton, Big Sid Catlett, Louis Bellson, Art Blakey (Baker would battle the famed bop drummer at the 1972 Olympics, captured on The Album ), and, most important, Max Roach. Inspired by the high-handed rudiments and flashy execution of the Corp’s drummer, Ginger soon began rattling his parent’s brains by banging pots and pans with knives and forks. The trumpet was his first instrument, which he played in the local Air Training Corp band. BIOGRAPHYīorn Peter Edward Baker in Lewisham, London, on August 19, 1939, young Ginger, as he was called, soon became interested in cycling and the arts. Baker was the drum innovator who created the modern drum solo, in Toad, and though his reputation was soon overshadowed by the all-powerful John Bonham, the pantheon of contemporary drummers from metal, fusion, and rock owe their very existence to Baker’s trailblazing work with Cream.

His 16th-note tom fills in any number of Cream classics (such as Badge, White Room, and Those Were the Days) are as memorable as any Eric Clapton guitar solo, and his mastery of rhythms as diverse as African polyrhythms and blues shuffles was without parallel. Baker blew hot winds of jazz improvisation through ’60s blues-rock as no drummer in the history of music before him, but he also composed perfect pop drum parts replete with signature drum fills and beats.

8BIT DRUMMER REALITY CHECK THROUGH THE SKULL FULL

Full of character, style, and wit, his work on such classic Cream singles as White Room, Strange Brew, Badge, and Sunshine of Your Love is the stuff of rock legend, and deservedly so.

Ginger Baker had a reputation as a wild-eyed, drug-taking, drink-imbibing madman, but his drumming expressed the soul of a true English poet. He looked like a disheveled character from a Dickens novel, wrote poetry that was profane, pornographic, or both, and his limber jazz-rock drumming (featuring rock’s very first extended drum solo) was the springboard for the world’s first heavy-metal power trio, Cream.

8bit drummer reality check through the skull