Not sure exactly why my listenings veered so completely away from Dhafer Youssef after my introduction to his work a little over four years ago now, but for whatever reason, that general landscape (which for me started with bass wizard Avishai Cohen and then added a small but pretty wide pantheon of greats including John Zorn, Anouar Brahem, Toumani Diabaté, Steve Tibbetts, and eventually Youssef) just seemed to get quickly over-run by other things; the most likely candidate explanation may be the sudden impact and epiphany of Tool and all that went with that, but at any rate…
…today I just happened to run across this clip, wherein Youssef now has a new album featuring, among others I don’t yet know, Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller, Dave Holland, and Vinnie Colaiuta. Whoa!
Uh, yeah, okay, it may be time to reconnect. Boy’s been busy!
Even among the pretty stunning pantheon of Zappa drummers, Vinnie Colaiuta kinda stands out. I can recall seeing, a few years ago, some video clips of a storytelling roundtable of Zappa drummers, organized by Terry Bozzio, and including Ralph Humphrey, Chester Thompson, Ruth Underwood, and Chad Wackerman–a really fascinating production in its own right–and these guys all talk about Vinnie the way guitarists talk about Allan Holdsworth, with a nearly unspoken reverence.
Need more be said? And yet more could easily be said. The drum solo, impressive though it can be, is hardly the biggest challenge a Zappa drummer would face in the course of a show. Famously complex written pieces and organically called-out changes crossing styles just for starters, all at the whim of Zappa as conductor, and then improvising within that…
I don’t even recall exactly how I first came across this clip of YouTuber Rob Brown discussing what might be called a “Vinnie moment”, but it deserves a bookmark here–both for the obvious agoggery, and also for Brown’s delivery, which is truly giggle-worthy.
For those who aren’t familiar with the name, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta is generally regarded as so far advanced as to be nearly an alien intelligence on the kit. Even Zappa’s other drummers talk about him in a way that’s not unlike hearing guitarists talk about Allan Holdsworth. To wit: there’s good, there’s great, there’s amazing, and then there’s Vinnie.
So it’s not surprising, perhaps, that this Rob Brown might periodically look for whatever Vinnie is doing lately, to analyze and bring to his audience. Apparently he struck a rather thick vein of gold:
So, I’m watching him do his thing, and then, all of a sudden, in the middle of this song…there’s a two-bar break, for a drum fill…
…he pulls thisfill…right out of thin air.
and we cut to Vinnie, who plays something that at first glance might just seem like a smooth roll which nonetheless ends with a nice resolving flam.
Cut back to Rob, who hilariously shakes his head and goes all verklempt; this is what cements the need for a bookmark for the video as a whole.
I saw this drum fill, and I absolutely lost it.
The dude, with the calmness of somebody just sipping a coffee and reading the paper on the beach, just decides to announce that he’s Batman.
He then breaks down the fill for the aspiring drummer, and it quickly becomes apparent that this was no random drum roll. Not hardly! Inside two bars of 4/4, Colaiuta fits three groups of five sixteenth-note triplets, orchestrated as a first group of five that repeats itself, and then a concluding group that exits with a whole beat left over for separation.
Sounds like Vinnie. While it’s not that nobody else could play this kind of fill, what makes him so special is that he really does just come up with things like this on the spot, all the time–fully orchestrated, thought out, appropriate to the music, and delivered with a precision and calmness that belies all The Awesome that’s really going on while you’re not looking.
Craftygrass 