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27 November 2010

comparison

On the one hand there’s Buddy Rich. U.S. Marine, well disciplined, and the fastest drummer that ever lived. On the other hand is Keith Moon, British buffoon known for sleeping off hangovers for days and not showing up at his own concerts, and the fastest drummer who ever lived. Both are dead because of things they did, Rich smoked cigarettes and got a brain tumor and Moon drank a tad too much. Both were the best at what they did and will never be duplicated as much as people try. They both were the darlings of talk shows, Rich bashing pop stars of the day and Moon bashing politicians. Although there is more than enough material to compare the two drummers, it is their respective musical genres that will be examined here, as the drummers are the embodiment and product of them.
Jazz was being born in 1919, and so was Buddy Rich. He died in 1987, long after Jazz died. Moon was born in 1946 and died in 1978 which pretty much parallels the rise and fall of rock as well. Would either genre exist without the men or the men have existed without the music is anyone’s guess. While Jazz was born in the southeast United States, Rock and Roll was reared in Memphis, also part of the southeast, so that makes them cousins. Both cousins were the bastard sons of Black and White music and so were embraced by the Negros and vilified by the Whites. Saddled with the Satan brand they provoked fights and religious exorcisms and started family rifts that time would never heal. Jazz became the refuge for poor blacks and whites, while Rock and Roll appealed to those who could afford records and players. This little difference drove their infant tour busses on different roads.
So begins the growing years of adolescence. Jazz was never jealous of its more commercial cousin, preferring to simmer in the smoke-filled clubs and basements of urban areas while Rock played in the sand in California. There was a new mode of transportation available, so Rock took an airplane over to Europe, only to find Jazz was already there. As was so often the case, the lads came back to the states with Rock, leaving Jazz in the dark but giving it a nod as an influence. Cousins being cousins, they shared things freely. Janis and Jimi were sacrifices for rock, while Chet and Miles took the spike for Jazz. The religious zealots were backing down at this time in history because this was the sixties, and being square was passé, so music began to reach places it couldn’t before. There were Christian rock bands and Jewish Jazz groups and sometimes they commingled (remember, it was the sixties) and produced Fusion. Fusion is sort of like a mule; a strange but interesting offspring of two distinctly different breeds, and sort of like the grotesque pink eyed deformed child who is the product of two close cousins. Experimentation over, Rock and Jazz went again to their respective corners to grow up.
If you are old enough to remember Kennedy, you still mourn for rock. Rock went out like a light, but at different times for different people. Might have been when the British lads said farewell, might have been when your old faves went disco, might have been a plane crash, point is there was a specific moment. Jazz on the other hand lingered, spitting up an occasional piece of what once was that would make you think it would come back, but it petered out so silently you never saw the death notice. Every now and then you might see a cheap imitation pop up like an ill-fitting Halloween costume, but it’s soulless, hollow. Both cousins died in their prime and were laid to rest near each other, with their grandpa Country giving the eulogy after he and grandma Blues drove over from Mississippi in Hank’s Cadillac.
So if Buddy and Keith were to meet what would they say to each other? Certainly not anything about drumming, neither one ever practiced and refused to take or give lessons. Would they argue over which type of music was better or would they smother each other with admiration? Both these men were ugly and short, but well loved by everyone they touched, just like their music. Both died too soon, like their music, and both were the backbeat to the soundtrack of my life. Jazz and Rock and Roll were so different, yet so similar. They were interdependent, relying on each other for inspiration but original in what they did with those five basic chords. No comparison when it comes to what to listen to, though; Nighttime is Jazz time and daytime is Rock and Roll.

1 comment:

  1. Such strange pieces...at least, strange compared to what I usually see. Imagine a GP used to dealing with sniffles and arthritis suddenly having a walk-in with a rare tropical disease caused by the bite of a soon-to-be-extinct insect.

    You sent me to the wiki for Keith Moon, The Who never being my cuppa. What a jerk!

    Glad to take it.

    ReplyDelete