So Rick Beato went to see the current live incarnation of Shakti, which sounds like it was exactly as impressive as you’d think it would be, but what really stuck out at him was the opening act–which was some hick playing solo improv on the five-string banjo by the name of…Béla Fleck.
I believe you, Rick. I really do.
I had to giggle a little at all this. Of course the Banjo Boy Wonder blew my own mind for the first time in about 1997, I think, at my own first year at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and while I don’t think he has ever not been impressive since then, there are still…capital-M Moments that stand out, even for him. I can totally believe that Rick got to see one of those, and I totally get his excitement-of-a-mind-blown-kid reaction here.
I get it. It’s real. I’ve seen several of those Moments myself. Béla belongs to that ridiculously august company of top-circle master improvisers that make you wonder about what the actual limitations of a human being might really be: company like Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, John Coltrane, Allan Holdsworth, Guthrie Govan, and at least arguably–and apropos of Rick’s evening here–John McLaughlin.
I giggled a little bit, too, because Rick talked about being familiar with the Flecktones, but didn’t seem to realize that the most melodically obvious of the cornerstone pieces that Béla was so playfully montage-ing around, in the ten-years-ago clip, was a Flecktones tune, the classic “Sunset Road”; he picked up on other musical references, but not that one. It’s a good reminder that, as encyclopedically knowledgeable as Rick Beato is–and I do love him for this–even he’s got gaps, and given the things he clearly likes and reports on, it’s a little surprising that he wouldn’t have had his personal gobsmackdown by Béla, long ago now.
In this regard, I also kinda wondered, as he referenced Shakti the group, why he didn’t mention that group’s original Shankar, Lakshminarayana Shankar, who is every little bit the improvisational monster that McLaughlin is–and probably even more worth amplifying since far fewer Westerners will have heard of him than of John McLaughlin. (Seriously, if you haven’t heard L. Shankar play before, check out the first three Shakti albums from the ’70s, which is him on “just violin” (ha!), or one of his own records such as Raga Aberi, where he plays the custom “double violin” of his own specification, an instrument of enormous range and unique sound, and played in a way that really will blow.your.mind.)
Given how great Rick is at analysis in general, and how much he seems to appreciate many of the same things that I do, I would truly love to sit down with him for a few hours and just see how many things that he may not actually know about, but would theoretically want to know about–things that I’d have thought he’d have mentioned long ago and multiple times, given other parts of the same landscape that he has mentioned…
I’ve got a list of such apparent anomalies, including:
- King Crimson in general. AFAIK, Crim appears only once in his channel’s history; he got to go see the Beast live, not too long ago, and clearly had some prior knowledge of the group, plus he was duly impressed at watching all those elder statesmen crunch through Crim’s complex catalog. It seems really weird to me, that Beato wouldn’t have run across the ’70s Crim’s group-improv output and had at least something to say about it. I mean: full group improvisation, in a rock context, often in odd times and with distinctly abrasive melodic features… It seems to me that he has talked all around those subjects, but never directly of what would seem like the most obvious exponent of their practice.
- Robert Fripp in general, both within and without Crimson. Beato seems to delight in discussing unique instrumental voices and styles among guitar players, but I’ve never heard him mention Fripp’s style, which is nothing if not unique. Rick seems acutely aware of names like Holdsworth, Metheny, McLaughlin, Van Halen, and of course a pantheon of others…but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him discuss Fripp directly…huh? The absence just seems weird somehow, given the amount of influence Fripp has had…regardless of what whether or not you like Fripp or his work, it would seem to me to actually require intention, to speak that much of all the areas in which Fripp was involved and with impact, from Crimson to Peter Gabriel, Bowie, Eno, etc.–especially in the improvisational landscape–and not actually speak of Fripp himself. I mean, the in-joke about King Crimson in the ’80s and ’90s was that at a Crim show, all the non-guitarists in the audience were glued to Adrian Belew (and justifiably so; the man is amazing!), but all the guitarists were locked on Fripp the whole time. That’s influence.
- Weather Report. Beato has discussed Jaco many times of course, but why not Miroslav Vitous or the early Weather Report of which he was such an important part? Beato himself is a classically trained bassist like Vitous, and I think there is much to say about the truly open improvisational–group improvisational–aesthetic of the first few years of Weather Report, before Vitous was forced out in favor of the more tribal transitional sound that most people think of with Weather Report. Those first two albums are phenomenally creative, and really unique.
- Michael Hedges. Beato has done at least one great interview with Mike Dawes, who is an absolutely fabulous and deserving talent to highlight, but how about the true originator of that “violent acoustic guitar” aesthetic that Dawes does so well? Michael Hedges’ first few albums were absolutely unique in the extant landscape of the time, and you can hear the influence of Hedges (and to be thorough also Preston Reed, who was contemporaneous with Hedges–different style and aesthetic, and less popular, but still influential and absolutely worth talking about) on the amazing crop of acoustic “extended technique” players we have now, like Dawes, Don Ross, Antoine Dufour, Erik Mongrain, Kaki King, Andy McKee, etc.
- Percy Jones of Brand X. He is a little like Preston Reed, in that he was contemporaneous with another musician who went on to far greater fame and attention; Jones is a fretless bass player who emerged right around the same time as Jaco Pastorius. Jones’ style is absolutely nothing like Jaco’s, but his style is absolutely unique and I’ve never known anyone to have effectively copied his sound. Seriously, listen to the bass on those first few Brand X records, and tell me if there has ever been anybody who sounded even remotely like that. I would think Beato would love to highlight such originality, but I don’t recall ever hearing him mention Jones by name. Again: weird.
There are a few other, more specific examples that I wonder about, from Steve Morse’s High Tension Wires record (specifically), to bluegrassers such as the astonishing Tony Rice (I’d love to hear Rick talk about Rice’s skills at implying a melody without actually playing it, or to hear his thoughts about Rice’s comments that he has to improvise or he’d bore himself to death), to some of the other influences on guitar playing that are less talked about than the usual jazz-blues pantheon that everyone knows: I’m thinking about people like Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Davey Graham, and maybe Pierre Bensusan.
But I are a nerd, remember? I think about things like this. 🙂
Craftygrass 