Ginger Baker's Beef
By MARC MYERS October 8, 2013
Ginger Baker was out of cigarettes. Reclining in a thick teens looking for hell-raising rock role models. Just don't ask brown leather easy chair in his living room, the drummer if he was stoned. reached for a cellphone and called his fourth and current wife, bellowing for another pack. Dressed in blue-and- "Oh for god's sake, I've never played rock," Mr. Baker turquoise socks, jeans with the belt undone, and a white snapped. "Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist ribbed T-shirt, Mr. Baker sharply rebuffed a visitor's playing improvised music. We never played the same thing suggestion that he skip the smokes, saying he could do as two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for he pleased. When the cigarettes arrived, Mr. Baker resumed years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn't come chain smoking while answering questions about his health, from drugs, either—it was from me. It was jazz." his jazz roots and his legacy as the father of modern rock drumming. Unlike musicians who turn to jazz when their rock careers slow, Mr. Baker actually came up through London's jazz scene in the 1950s. He was first exposed to jazz drumming at age 14 after hearing "Quintet of the Year"—an all-star bebop album recorded live in 1953 at Toronto's Massey Hall. "I couldn't believe all the things Max Roach was doing on the drums—I was blown away." Years of beating his hands on school desks followed before Mr. Baker first sat behind a drum set at a party in 1956. "Friends forced me to go and play, and I was quite good. That's when I realized I was a drummer and would always be a drummer."
Mr. Baker's fist paid gig was with the Storyville Jazzmen in 1957—a band that played New Orleans-style jazz. "Trad jazz was virtually all that was happening in England at the time. Les Wood, the clarinetist, gave me a load of records by drummer Baby Dodds. They were quite a revelation. What I "I'm in pain 24 hours a day—I have degenerative arthritis of got is you play by listening to other musicians." the spine, and the painkillers only let me cope," said the 74- year-old Mr. Baker with a scowl as he watched English Mr. Baker toured Europe with several jazz ensembles, soccer on a muted flat-screen television. The night before, including one that backed gospel-R&B singer Sister Rosetta he had been in London performing with his band, Jazz Tharpe. As Mr. Baker moved among London's modern jazz Confusion—a quartet that starts a U.S. tour in New Hope, groups in 1959 and 1960, he met Phil Seamen—one of Pa., on Tuesday. "I love playing our music, but I hate the England's most innovative jazz drummers. "Phil told stories traveling. It's more difficult for me now." with his sticks and turned me on to recordings of African drummers. I got the African time straight away and Phil was One enters Mr. Baker's personal space with caution. He is impressed." But Seamen also introduced Mr. Baker to notoriously curt—behavior aggravated by his joint pain and heroin, which would become an on-and-off addiction for the declining hearing after years performing in front of powerful next 21 years. speakers. Interview questions were met with a thundering "Whut?" while answers began with expletives, grunts or In 1961 and '62, Mr. Baker continued playing jazz—including combative retorts. Riled in the 2012 documentary "Beware of gigs with the Bert Courtley Sextet, where he first met Mr. Mr. Baker," Mr. Baker whacked the film's director on the Bruce. As the English economy improved in the early 1960s nose with his cane. and a more youthful London emerged, many younger jazz players gravitated to big-beat blues and R&B bands, which Mr. Baker has always been impulsive. In 1966 he envisioned offered more work and better pay. Cream—rock's first supergroup, with guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce. During the trio's two-year run, Mr. One of those bands was Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. Baker's expressive polyrhythmic playing elevated the drums "Charlie Watts was the drummer and a big fan of mine. He to equal standing with the electric guitar and bass. In concert gave up the drum chair for me in '62. Charlie told me he back then, Mr. Baker's flame-red hair, wide eyes and didn't want to be a musician, that there wasn't any security in possessed expressions during lengthy, freewheeling solos it. Can you imagine? A short time later, Mick [Jagger] and made him an antihero for a generation of pencil-beating Brian [Jones] said they were forming a band and needed a After Cream, Mr. Baker joined Blind Faith with Mr. Clapton, drummer. I recommended Charlie." bassist Ric Grech and keyboard player Steve Winwood. When the group folded in 1969, Mr. Baker formed a jazz-rock In 1964, Korner's alto saxophonist and organist Graham fusion band and then moved to Nigeria in 1970, where he Bond left to form an R&B band—taking Messrs. Baker and founded the first of several world-music ensembles. Mr. Bruce with him and adding John McLaughlin. The Graham Baker also performed with jazz drummers Art Blakey and Bond Organization's "Oh Baby" in 1965 features one of Mr. Elvin Jones. "They were drum battles that turned into duets. Baker's earliest recorded drum solos. "The band was a They became my friends and accepted me as playing at the whole new bag—funky and commercial," Mr. Baker said. "I same level as them." was able to try different things." Last year, after living in South Africa, Mr. Baker returned to When the Bond band began to disintegrate in 1966 as live in England with his wife and her teenage daughter. What members squabbled, Mr. Baker said he decided to form his does Mr. Baker think of Cream fans and critics who consider own band with Mr. Clapton. Mr. Bruce was their choice for him a rock drummer? "I don't give a damn what people bassist. For the next two years, Cream revolutionized rock think—I move forward," he said. "When people put with long, improvised solos and psychedelic imagery. drummers like John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon "Crowds got larger, and Jack kept adding more Marshall in the same bag as me, it's really insulting. I have a gift, and amps. The louder sound damaged my hearing. By '68, I none of them is even on the same street as me. The fact that couldn't take it any more. The last year of Cream was very I can still play is a miracle, isn't it?" painful." Mr. Myers writes daily about music at JazzWax.com.
REVIEW: Ginger Baker at Bucks County Playhouse shows that, even diminished, he's Cream of drummers
John J. Moser , October 9, 2013 Photos by Brian Hineline/Special to The Morning Call
Midway through his concert Tuesday at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, legendary rock drummer Ginger Baker made what may be a first in music: An acknowledgment that the skills that made Cream and Blind Faith such rock powerhouses, and essentially was the archetype of rock drummer, have diminished. “I want people to understand,” he told the nearly sold-out audience for the opening show of his first American tour in 17 years. “I’m 74 years old and I’ve got a lot of physical limitations. If I can’t play all you want me to, I’m sorry. But I do my best.” The irony was that the apology was unnecessary. Unless someone went to the show mistakenly expecting Baker’s 1960s rock repertoire, it was a perfectly enjoyable night of jazz that was better than most music you’ll hear, and offered Baker’s still formidable skills – and even flashes of what they once were. In a concert that offered nine songs in 85 minutes of music (plus and intermission), Baker did pretty much everything right. He played songs that were percussion-oriented, though that might have been the result of Baker’s band, His Jazz Confusion, being made up of him, another percussionist and a bassist, with just a sax providing melody. He surrounded himself with players of the highest caliber. And when he spoke, he was delightfully contrary and prickly—not in an unpleasant way, but in the endearing manner of a crotchety uncle. “Ginger!” someone from the crowd shouted before a song. “Be quiet!” he shouted back, in the was someone would chasten a child. When people in the crowd hooted enthusiastically after an especially good excursion on the Ron Miles’ song “Ginger Spice,” Baker quipped, “Stop heckling! Really, behave yourselves.” (He had introduced the song by sardonically noting Miles had “never heard of the Spice Girls.”) In fact, Baker was almost grandfatherly in his appearance: Bespectacled, his famous ginger hair now mostly white and receding, dressed in a plum dress shirt. But his playing, and that of his band, was very good, indeed. The show opened with Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” – reserved jazz, heavy on sax from accomplished player Pee Wee Ellis. Baker spent most of the song on the cymbals, and the crowd cheered when his playing first came to the front. That was the pattern of many of the songs: Baker letting his players carry the limelight until he would have a run or two in the middle or end. The second song, the Ellis-written “Twelve and More Blues,” gave the spotlight to bassist Alec Dankworth, who was impressive. Then, mid-song, Baker displayed some of his renowned power, with double-stick strikes that again drew big cheers. Dankworth got another workout on Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas,” and this time he got the cheers, deservedly. The aforementioned “Ginger Spice” was much more Baker’s vehicle, and he was all over his kit, though it was much more about precision than power. After a 15-minute intermission, the group returned with a three-song set that started with “Ding Dong Dan,” highlighting second percussionist Abass Dodoo. It showed that His Jazz Confusion is no star-trip vehicle – it’s a real band. A later song, smoother with more melody, had no drum solo at all. The group’s encore – “You want to watch me die,” he replied to the audience’s loud, sustained cheers . “You’d like that, right?“ – was a fun, loose song called “Why?” Baker explained, “In my life, I’ve had many bad things happen to me,” he said. “And I always ask – why?” The song then took off, with breaks in which the audience was encouraged to shout, “Why?” But the night’s best was the song with which Ginger Baker and His Jazz Confusion closed the main set. Perhaps to mollify those who longed to hear Bakers thunder from Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” he played “Aiko Biaye,” a song from Ginger Baker’s Airforce, his post-Blind Faith band. It offered Baker’s most powerful playing of the night, with double-stick slams, sustained rolls and almost a military-beat attack. It gave a flash of just how good Baker was, and showed that, even with diminished skills, his concerts are a worthy outing. The concert was the centerpiece of the venue’s new Lambertville Music Hall series.
MUSIC REVIEW A Room Is Tense as African Rhythms Meet Jazz Ginger Baker Heats Up the Iridium
Ruby Washington/The New York Times By BEN RATLIFF Published: October 10, 2013
Behind the drums at Iridium on Wednesday night, Ginger Baker leaned back, his chin drawn in toward his Adam’s apple, holding his sticks toward the bottom, his time as far back as his posture, head fixed within a narrow swiveling perimeter, wide eyes on amber alert.
He was playing a version of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” with his new band, Ginger Baker Jazz Confusion, which comes to jazz sideways or through very old roots, and is not confused at all: it is quite sure what it’s about. Those eyes were curious, though. Was he about to boil over or just listening hard? Or both?
Soon the problem became clear: he couldn’t hear his high-hat cymbal properly through his stage monitor. After a series of increasingly irritated gestures to the sound man, the problem was fixed, but the room remained tense.
Mr. Baker, 74, hasn’t done a club gig in New York since 1997, and was last seen here at Madison Square Garden in 2005, with his old band Cream. In the 1960s, he had brought to Cream the layered implications of jazz drumming; he understood, through a studious and wild musicality, the magnetized force between marching and dancing rhythms, between Baby Dodds and Max Roach, and lodged that knowledge in an English improvising rock band. In the 1970s, he lived in Nigeria, where he toured and recorded with Fela, the great bandleader and exemplar of Afrobeat.
What you get through Sunday at the Iridium is essentially African cross-rhythms through the filter of a pianoless jazz group — or vice versa. But material and style aren’t so important: you’re getting the essence of his sound, up close, with two kick drums and two snare drums, played in polyrhythmic conjunction with another drummer, the Ghanaian hand-percussionist Abass Dodoo. And his personality.
He spoke slowly to the crowd between songs, in the unmistakable tone of a man who will not be negotiated with. When he heard talking over his own words, he raised his voice and told the crowd, not humorously, to shut up.
Besides Mr. Baker and Mr. Dodoo, the quartet includes the tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, from James Brown’s late-’60s band, and the English bassist Alec Dankworth. It gravitates toward vamps in 6- and 12- and 2-beat patterns. The rhythm makes the music spread outward, with Mr. Ellis’s solos built up from mostly simple, sturdy songs, based in blues or scales.
It’s not fussy, as the heavy, elegant rhythm rises up. It seems as if the band could set up in a village square almost anywhere in the world and do business.
And it was tense music, almost always — even in the most peaceful of its material, like “Aiko Biaye,” an adapted Nigerian folk song — because Mr. Baker’s sound is so imposing and broad, slow and confident, from the double snares to the steady pedaling of his high-hat. It’s not loud with ambition, but with spirit and intent.
Concert Review: Ginger Baker's Jazz Confusion at Iridium, NYC The volatile drummer's still got it at 74 By Jeff Tamarkin
Some came to hear “Toad,” or at least “Sunshine of Your Love,” but there would be nothing remotely resembling Cream tonight. Others, having recently seen Beware of Mr. Baker, the 2012 documentary profiling the irascible 74-year-old British drummer, undoubtedly hoped he would smack someone in the nose with his cane, as he does to the director in one of the defining moments of the film. But the closest he came to that was grimacing repeatedly when the soundman neglected to turn the volume up on his hi-hat mic to his satisfaction. What Ginger Baker came to do tonight—and will continue to do here through Sunday, and on the other dates of his short American tour—was to play jazz.
That in itself should not have surprised anyone. Jazz was Baker’s first love—he played the music in the early ’60s before he detoured into rock, blues and, later, world music, and he’s never seen himself as anything other than a jazz drummer. The few years he spent with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in the groundbreaking Cream, followed by Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Air Force and other rock-oriented outfits, gave him his fame as one of the all-time power drummers, but he’s long expressed his disdain for most rock and has downplayed his own influence on the genre, dismissing even the most celebrated rock drummers as inferior to his own jazz heroes.
So when he turned up on opening night at Iridium with a quartet—Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion—featuring tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis (a renowned alumnus of James Brown’s troupe and Van Morrison’s bands), bassist Alec Dankworth (the son of British vocalist Cleo Laine and saxophonist/clarinetist John Dankworth) and the Ghanaian percussionist Abbas Dodoo (Baker introduced the imposing man as “my bodyguard”), it was clear that Baker meant business. And get down to business was what they did, immediately launching into a slowly but deliberately unfolding reading of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints.” Although he still performs on a kit sporting double bass drums, Baker’s touch is lighter now, more nuanced. As he’s always done, he spent much time on his toms but also on his small crash cymbals and hi-hat. The muscular, pyrotechnic displays of his Cream days have given way to polyrhythmic duets with his African cohort, and plenty of funky swinging. And for that Baker couldn’t have chosen two more sympathetic collaborators than Ellis and Dankworth, both of whom were always in the pocket here, providing all of the melody and giving Baker and Dodoo plenty to feed off.
Following the Shorter piece, Baker noted that “I’m getting old” and that, despite the desires of the venue’s management, he would break the first set into two parts, taking a break when he felt he needed one. But there were no signs of weakness at all, no flagging in his playing. In Ellis’ “Twelve and More Blues,” Baker and Dodoo engaged in a call-and-response with the saxophonist’s lead lines and Dankworth’s double bass, veering into serious post-bop territory at times. Baker at first was tentative, toodling on snare as he waited for the volume on his hi-hat to be turned up, then he tore loose, settling into a deep, intricate groove with Dodoo that was maintained into the next number, which Baker described in advance as being inspired by the Atlas Mountains of Algeria. With Ellis approximating a Coltranesque Eastern motif and Dankworth, now on electric, providing a root and counterpointing the melody, the quartet locked into some of its most thrilling music of the evening.
“Cyril Davies,” a midtempo tribute to the pioneering British bluesman, brought out Ellis’ soul side, and “Ginger Spice,” written by trumpeter Ron Miles, who recorded the tune with Baker on the drummer’s 1999 album Coward of the Country, found Baker doubling the time while Dankworth locked into a repetitive bassline. As Ellis squealed giddily in his upper register, Baker and Dodoo took the cue and accelerated the pace, syncing tightly and giving the bassist enough space to take one of his most impressively inventive solos of the night.
Following the short break previously announced, the group returned with Ellis’ “Ding Dong Dang,” a swinging blues that featured several tradeoffs between the saxist and the two drummers (one of which found Ellis quoting what sounded vaguely like the Fleetwood Mac/Santana classic “Black Magic Woman” for a bar or two). “Aiko Biaye,” which Baker introed as an “old Lagos folk song,” highlighted the Afro-centric nature of the quartet’s rhythmic leanings. Baker, minus the fury of his younger days and more interested in subtleties, was clearly at home in this world—he briefly joined Fela Kuti’s Nigerian outfit Afrika 70 in the early ’70s and spent much time living and working in South Africa. Here, he was at his happiest burrowing deeper and deeper into twisted cross- rhythms with Dodoo, an exciting player who augmented his congas with various cymbals and other percussive tools, serving as a foil for the now more-reserved Baker with showmanship and flair.
For their encore, Jazz Confusion performed “Why?,” which required the audience to shout the titular word when prompted by breaks in the 1-2-3/1-2-3/1-2-3 beat. That tune was the closest Ginger Baker came to producing a smile this night, but just the fact that he was here, alive and still quite capable on his instrument, was enough of a reason for this mostly-over-50 crowd to go home happy. Review: At the Dakota, drummer Ginger Baker marches to a jazz beat
By Dan Emerson Special to the Pioneer Press
POSTED: 10/15/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT
Ginger Baker
There was rock royalty represented onstage at the Dakota Jazz Club on Tuesday night, in the person of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Ginger Baker, who opened a two-night stand with his Jazz Confusion quartet.
Even in his 1960s days with arena rock juggernauts Cream and Blind Faith, Baker played with noticeably more complexity and finesse than most of his rock drumming colleagues, while attracting attention with his flamboyant, jazz-steeped style.
The 74-year-old Baker -- whose famous red hair has long since turned gray -- has always harbored jazz aspirations, a side of his musical persona he is indulging with his current tour.
The Jazz Confusion group also includes saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, whose credits include arranging and co-writing several major James Brown hits back in the '60s; bassist Alec Dankworth (the son of the prominent English jazz duo Cleo Laine and John Dankworth); and Abass Dodoo, a hand percussionist from Ghana.
Along with American jazz and blues, African rhythms have also played a major role in Baker's development and evolution as a drummer. After Blind Faith, he lived and played music in Nigeria from 1970 to 1976.
Tuesday's early set opened with a relatively straightforward performance of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints." There was some complexity, in the form of the polyrhythms played in tandem by Baker and Dodoo, a highly skilled percussionist who relied mostly on his congas. The two veteran musicians are a potent rhythm team.
Rhythmically, the piece -- and much of the other music played Tuesday night -- was strikingly reminiscent of jazz recordings made back in the late 1960s and early '70s by the late great jazz drummer Elvin Jones. Jones' propensity for multiple layers of rhythm is shared by Baker. In addition, Baker and Jones were once verbal sparring partners, and famously staged a "drum battle" in the '70s.
The early set also included "Twelve and More Blues, a composition by Ellis featuring a quirky melody line and stop-time rhythm.
Another piece was "Ginger Spice," a composition by trumpeter Ron Miles that also featured a relatively simple melody and chord pattern, but complicated and exuberant polyrhythms laid down by Dodoo and Baker. Dodoo used his left-hand stick to play a blindingly fast pattern on two small cymbals mounted alongside his congas.
Dankworth played a brisk pattern on his Fender bass that was perfectly synchronized to the drumbeat.
The relatively brief opening set also included "Ain Temouchant," an instrumental tune Baker once wrote to commemorate a near-death experience he had on an Algerian mountainside. Baker drove his car off the mountain. The car landed in an olive tree, allowing Baker to continue his storied musical career.
Ginger Baker and Jazz Confusion will perform again at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis. bebopified Pamela Espeland, 16th October. Pictures by John Whiting.
Baker has always loved jazz. He started out as a jazz drummer in the 1960s and brought its colors and complexities along when he moved into rock and superstardom. In the 1990s, he formed the Ginger Baker Trio with Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden and later created a group called the Denver Jazz Quintet-to-Octet (DJQ2O) with trumpeter Ron Miles and bassist Artie Moore. He played with Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. His double-bass-drum kit is a direct descendant of Louis Belleson’s.
So Baker is not just another former rock (or pop, or country) star who decides to make a comeback through jazz. He’s been a jazz musician all along. In fact, don’t call him a rock drummer. He prefers jazz drummer.
Baker named his latest group Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion, and it’s a real jazz band, with roots in America, England, and Africa.
Schooled by Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis played with James Brown, Maceo Parker, and Van Morrison. Bassist Alec Dankworth is the son of the great British jazz vocalist Cleo Laine and jazz saxophonist/bandleader John Dankworth. Ghanaian percussionist Abbas Dodoo has worked with Baker for many years; Baker affectionately introduced the big man as “my bodyguard.” He played congas, cowbell, and shekere (beaded gourd).
Anyone in the audience at the Dakota who was hoping for some “White Room” or “Sunshine of Your Love” was put straight by the first song of the night, Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” a jazz classic newly infused with African polyrhythms. The rest of the set brought blues and world music and more jazz.
How was the show? It was good. Very good, and often thrilling. Heavy on the drums, but that’s what everyone came to hear. The legendary, terrifying Ginger Baker, live! Especially when Baker and Dodoo fell into a groove, it was all about the drums, pounding and interweaving those intricate rhythms in among the thunder of Baker’s two basses. Ellis eschewed the funk for which he’s famous and stuck to straight-ahead jazz, making sounds that probably surprised some of his fans in the house: sustained notes, like singing. It was direct and serious and down to business. In some ways, it was more like a rock concert than many jazz performances; players took solos, but they were short, with no out-there improvisations that can make those unfamiliar with jazz squirm in their chairs. Last night won’t go down in history as the most transcendant or revelatory jazz concert ever, but it was one that a broad cross-section of music lovers – jazz fans, rock fans, ’60s survivors and hipsters – could appreciate and enjoy.
Touring is not easy for Baker. He has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), caused by smoking, and he still smokes; he says it helps him deal with the pain of another serious medical condition that plagues him, degenerative osteoarthritis of the spine. He told The Mirror that “drumming is agony.” He doesn’t launch into five- or ten-minute solos anymore, but neither does he hold back, even when it hurts, and from what he says, it always hurts.
At the Dakota, he took a 20-minute break midway through because he needed it. When he talked to the crowd after playing a tune, he was short of breath. When he stood up, Dodoo moved in to help him walk off stage. “Let me recover a bit,” he said before the break. “I’m getting too old for this.” When Baker returned, after playing “Cyril Davies” (what he called “the lull before the storm”) and then “St. Thomas” (the storm), he said, “I’m far too old for this. It’s not a joke, it’s serious!” It was Dodoo who urged us to call him back for the encore. “Make some noise!” he shouted. “Say Gin-gah Ba-kah! Gin-gah Ba-kah!” We did. When the band returned, Baker introduced the encore with, “Terrible things have happened to me in the past, and they keep happening right up until today. And always, when these things happen, I ask a question: Why?” And we sang along: Why? Why? Why?
Review: Ginger Baker at Yoshi’s Oakland October 23, 2013 Written by M B L
Ginger Baker made a pilgrimage to Oakland this weekend. Saturday’s two shows were completely sold out and Sunday only had a few empty chairs. It is hard to say what brought the crowds. Looked like a lot of folks last saw him playing alongside Eric Clapton with Cream or Blind Faith.
I was among a smaller, slightly younger group that had seen the recent documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, more interested in Ginger Baker the man, one of the great drummers of all time but also a fascinating character that lived in Nigeria from 1970-76 collaborating with Fela. A man that is continuously followed by tragedy, some self- inflicted. A scary dude that tells it like it is with no patience for bullshit. If you don’t have time for the movie, check out this recent interview with Rolling Stone.
Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion was a four-piece with Ginger on a serious set up including double bass drums. There was a ‘drunk-driving taxi guy from Ghana’ on conga and bongo (Abass Dodoo). He played cowbell and three tiny cymbals mostly with his hands. Alec Dankworth played amazing upright bass and a mean electric to boot. The sax player, Pee Wee Ellis, sat in a chair the whole time. Ellis played with James Brown in the ’60s and Van Morrison through the ’80s and ’90s. He is one of those players that makes it look so easy. He wrote one song from the setlist entitled “Twelve and More Blues”. Solos went from sax to bass to drums with Ginger and the taxi-conga man playing together with a wild African result.
Ginger wrote one song while driving “at top speed” in the Atlas Mountains of North Algeria. He lost control of the vehicle and landed in a small village. The long hypnotic tune left me on camel back with William Burroughs when suddenly Ginger’s car comes flying through the sky to land on the dirt road in front of us.
They played “Footprints” by Wayne Shorter and “Ginger Spice” by Ron Miles with a fierce solo of tiny cymbals from Abass Dodoo. After a short break they played a slow blues with an unnerving metronome beat coming from the conga player. The last song of the night was a “killer” from Lagos Nigeria that was described as both “a lullaby and a war crime.”
For the encore Ginger commented that this was the 20th show in 10 days and it was “bloody hard work.” He suggested this might be his last show, and we might all see him die on stage. Indeed, he was panting and wheezing as he spoke between songs, years of cigarette smoking and the resulting COPD at work. He spoke of the tragedy that seems to follow him around, and despite the crowds nervous laughter, he insisted that it was not a laughing matter. The wife of his children was at the moment in the ICU and not expected to make it. These events always made him ask “Why?” which became the last song of the evening with breaks for the crowd to yell “Why?!” During this tune the sax player cut loose, taking us from Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance” to James Brown’s “I Feel Good”. The conga player pulled out some drumsticks and went haywire on those tiny cymbals, his arms a complete blur.