Fusion 45

It is the 25th 35th anniversary of the Summer of 1973. I was 10-years old during that particular summer.

I have a 10-year old of my own today. He’s sometimes sweet, often petulant, always inquisitive. In short, he’s a lot like his father.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer over the past several months, how much the music will always be a soundtrack to that time.

I was going to write a week long series of posts about my summer as a 10-year old, riding our banana-seated bikes around the lake where we camped (predecessors to the mountain bikers of today), catching crayfish in the creek, fishing for blue gills in the lake, burning piles of wood in the fireplace (because we could), singeing marshmallows and eyebrows over the campfire and listening to the jukebox in the campground rec room. Especially the jukebox in the rec room, where we dropped quarters on the pool table and the pinball machine in a freshly built space that smelled forever like concrete and sawdust.

But, I’m off on a business trip tomorrow (a few hours after school starts) and, like the summer of 1973, the opportunity for a long list of reminisces has largely passed.

I did get as far as making a CD of these songs for car listening. Grandmom immediately identified them as “songs from the lake” and my kids immediately wanted to hear Smoke On The Water several hundred times (which they promptly renamed Barbeque On The River).

In a way, I managed to pull my summer and his summer as 10-year olds together. Briefly, which is always the way life is…

And say goodbye to summer…one more time.

The Carpenters - Yesterday Once More

Not written by Paul Williams, but should’ve been.

Seals And Crofts - Diamond Girl

Great piano part.

McCartney And Wings - Live And Let Die

Maureen McGovern - The Morning After

Shelly Winters. Need I say more?

Mac Davis Clint Holmes - Playground In My Mind
Jim Croce - Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
Helen Reddy - Delta Dawn

Dr. John - Right Place, Wrong Time

Spent the entire summer of 1983 learning these lyrics.

Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water
BW Stevenson - My Maria

Like Croce, we wonder what would have been if he’d stuck around.

Paul Simon - Loves Me Like A Rock

Bette Midler - Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

Stories - Brother Louie

CDB - Uneasy Rider

Doobie Brothers - Long Train Runnin’

Paul Simon - Kodachrome

I had yet to have my first schoolboy crush (Stephanie Turk, 7th grade math class) but I got it.

Indeed…

Ask anyone who’s played the drums for more than 20 minutes to name his Top 5 players and, without exception, you should hear the name Steve Gadd.

What makes Gadd one of the greatest is not his pyrotechnics, though he was certainly capable of making some noise.

What set him apart was his sound, his style and his inventiveness. He could (and did) make a couple cardboard boxes sound like a $3000 set of Pearls. He could slip a four-on-the-floor shuffle beat into his pocket and make it swing like Dizzy Gillespie. And, he had such an imagination that he created some of the most well known drum tracks in the history of pop music.

50 Ways To Leave York Lover (from Paul Simon’s album, “Still Crazy After All These Years, Columbia, 1975)
Even people who have no clue about Steve Gadd know this famous rhythm, based on a drum corps street-beat Gadd learned in the 1960’s.

Woody And Dutch On A Slow Train To Peking (from Rickie Lee Jones’ album, Pirates, Warner Brothers, 1981)
Tucked into the middle of this disc (at the end of side one of the vinyl version) is one of the swinging-est tunes Rickie ever recorded. The track fades in with Gadd playing brushes on cardboard boxes and goes full mojo for the next 5 minutes. Pure joy.

Danny’s All-Star Joint (from Rickie Lee Jones’ album, Rickie Lee Jones, Warner Brothers, 1979)
Whereas Gadd pushes “Woody and Dutch” forward to its climax, he does exactly the opposite on this cut: he lays back into the groove and lets the music drive itself. Never has a straight shuffle beat been executed with such artistry.

Workin’ At The Car Wash Blues (from Jim Croce’s album I Got A Name, ABC, 1973)
As “50 Ways” is to the word “iconic,” this track is to the words “under appreciated”. Once again using a modified street beat, with a delightful 16th-note roll on the fourth beat of the bar, Gadd underscores the song’s theme of tiresome work and light-hearted fantasy with a terrific “march-off-to-work” groove.

Late In The Evening (from Paul Simon’s album One Trick Pony, Warner Brothers, 1980)
The secret sauce behind this groove is Gadd’s “two-sticks-in-each-hand-held-at-the-’wrong-end’” technique, which gives the song its Latin street band sound. Listen to the drum break at the end of the song: it’s all Gadd on drums and a pair of cymbals, a groove that’s been co-opted by everyone from Ritchie Haywood to Dennis Chambers to James Bradley, Jr. (Gadd’s replacement in the Mangione band).

Aja (from Steely Dan’s album, Aja, ABC, 1977)
Considered by many to be Steely Dan’s crowning achievement, Becker and Fagen openly admit it’s the studio musicians who made this album work. On this track, it’s Wayne Shorter’s sax solo and Gadd’s incorporation of rock, jazz and Latin into one 7-minute song. Legend states that Gadd came into the studio, read the chart and played the song in one take, requiring the rest of the band to re-cut their performances. True or not, listen closely, especially the last 8 bars which is virtually all of Gadd’s signatures combined into one stretch of 30 seconds.

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Recorded live at The Buddha Barn, Tuesday, July, 24, 2007 - Shout-out to Chris The Satellite Guy…

• Bobby McFerrin - Good Lovin’ (Simple Pleasures, EMI, 1988)
• Flatt and Scruggs - My Little Girl In Tennessee (The Original Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Mercury, 1968)
• Santana - Persuasion (Santana, Columbia, 1969)
• The Fifth Dimension - Wedding Bell Blues (Fifth Dimension Live, Soul City, 1971)
• Elvin Bishop - Struttin’ My Stuff (Struttin’ My Stuff, Capricorn, 1975)
• The Doobie Brothers - Livin’ On The Fault Line (Livin’ On The Fault Line, WB, 1977)
• The O’Jays - Usta Be My Girl (Power of Love, TSOP, 1978)
• Roy Buchanan - Okay (A Street Called Straight, Atlantic, 1976)
• Stonewall Jackson - Smoke Along The Track (Dynamic Stonewall Jackson, Columbia, 1959)
• The Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers (Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stone, 1971)
• Buffy Sainte-Marie -Hey Little Bird (Fire and Fleet and Candlelight, Vanguard, 1967)
• Jim Croce - One Less Set of Footsteps (Life and Times, ABC, 1973)
• Nick Lowe - One’s Too Many (Nick the Nife, Columbia, 1982)
• Joan Armatrading - Me Myself I (Me Myself I, A and M, 1980)
• Joe Cocker - Talking Back To The Night (Sheffield Steel, Island, 1982)
• Yvonne Elliman - Walk Right In (Rising Sun, RSO, 1975)
• Fun Boy Three - Our Lips Are Sealed (Waiting, Chrysalis, 1983)
• Elvis Costello and The Attractions - I Hope You’re Happy Now (Blood and Chocolate, Columbia, 1986)
• Blondie - I Know But I Don’t Know (Parallel Lines, Chrysalis, 1978)

Return of the LLLL.I.S.P.

Recorded live at The Buddha Barn on July, 16, 2007

• Jimmie Rodgers - Oh-Oh I’m Falling In Love Again (Single, 1958)
• Linda Ronstadt - I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Hand Sown…Home Grown, Capitol, 1969)
• The Broken Homes - Seeds I’ve Sown (Straight Line Through Time, MCA, 1988)
• The Clash - Train In Vain (London Calling, Epic, 1979)
• Nick Lowe - Tanque-Rae (Abominable Showman, Columbia, 1983)
• Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper - Wash Dishes No More (Bo Day Shus, Enigma, 1987)
• English Beat - Mirror In The Bathroom (What Is…, IRS, 1983)
• Archie Bell and The Drells - Just Can’t Stop Dancin’ (I Can’t Stop Dancin’, Atlantic, 1968)
• The Guess Who - Proper Stranger (American Woman, RCA, 1970)
• Wilson Pickett - Mustang Sally (Wicked Pickett, Atlantic, 1966)
• Roxy Music - Oh Yeah (Flesh + Blood, Virgin, 1980)
• Marty Robbins - Saddle Tramp (Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, Columbia, 1959)
• Graham Parker - Stupefaction (The Up Escalator, Arista, 1980)
• R.E.M. - Disturbance At The Heron House (Document, IRS, 1987)
• Flatt and Scruggs - Life of Trouble (Folk Songs of Our Land, Columbia, 1962)
• The Fifth Dimension - Ticket to Ride (Magic Garden, Soul City, 1967)
• The Police - Miss Gradenko (Synchronicity, A and M, 1983)
• Jim Croce - Careful Man (Life and Times, ABC, 1973)

Remembering Fagan’s