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Chico Hamilton: Living the Beat

February 16th, 2010 | No Comments

Are people born with rhythm?

Chico Hamilton by Todd Boebel

Sitting down at the kitchen table inside 88-year-old jazz legend Chico Hamilton‘s midtown Manhattan apartment, chewing the fat about jazz music and his storied career as a drummer and bandleader – a career that includes holding court for jazz royals “Duke” Ellington and “Count” Basie, playing storied musical engagements with his school kid pal Charles Mingus, receiving a living legend of jazz award from the Kennedy Center, and recording on over 60 albums – likely marks one of those stories I’ll tell my grandchildren one day. Not only did Hamilton leave a musical legacy that virtually mirrors the history of jazz since the 1940s, but in just a short visit I learned that Chico just recently suffered congestive heart failure, yet continues to play shows with guys half his age and just recently put out an incredible new album titled the Twelve Tones of Love (released last April on Joyous Shout Records).

This question of rhythm came up about midway through the chat and Chico said, “Well they all got a heart. They all feel the beat of their heart.”

From there, he ordered me, “Put you’re your hand on your heart. Now take your other hand and keep the beat. Now sing this, ‘Do Do Do Do; Doot Doot,’” as he nodded along with the four quarter notes and two subsequent half notes. “Let me hear you sing it,” he said, chuckling as I sang through the beat. “That’s the oldest beat that I know of; that’s the bottom line of jazz. That’s The Charleston.”

I think I just took a music lesson from a living jazz legend. Check that one off the bucket list.

Composer

Chico’s new album, Twelve Tones of Love, sounds at once fresh, mellow, listenable, funky, and melodic – as fresh a jazz album as I’ve heard in ages – but Hamilton downplays all of these in a charismatic, albeit humble manner.

“There’s no such thing as new music,” he says. “Somewhere, somebody played that same note. The only thing different is the rhythmic articulation. We still don’t know which came first, rhythm or movement. The freest thing that a human being can do is dance.”

In talking about his studio effort, I inquired if the title referenced the musical approach known as the twelve-tone method.

“Exactly. C, C#, and all the way up,” he says. “I do it because there ain’t no bad notes. Every note means something. It’s simple; you hear the sound, you play the note.”

Chico Hamilton by Todd Boebel

If only it was so easy. Hamilton has a way of describing music where you know he feels it in a way not everybody can. “You’re playing in all the keys,” he adds. “Keys don’t mean a thing. That enables you to play what’s called a moveable ‘do’ [as in do-re-mi].”

Prodigy

In his early days, Chico made a quick study to jazz and earned himself early recognition on the West Coast.

“When I was eight-years-old, my mother took me to the Paramount to see Duke Ellington and his orchestra. Back then, the orchestra stood in a pyramid and at the top was Sonny Greer. Man, he had more drums than a drum store. People just went nuts for him. He was the first real percussionist.”

At eight years of age, Chico experienced that cathartic performance and subsequently realized he had a unique talent. “Play me anything, I can play it,” he claims. The West Coast jazz scene took to Chico like a burr on wool and before long he was playing with his idols like Lester Young, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, and George Jones. “Eight years later, I was in that exact same seat, playing with Duke at 16-years-old.”

Bandleader

Having tackled the drums and percussion with Ray Lewis authority, Chico stepped out front into the limelight in 1955 as a bandleader and he never looked back. This is a curious feat given the fact that Hamilton came from a largely self-taught background. Presumably, learning the drums and keeping time comes more naturally, but Hamilton evolved into one of the finest bandleaders of the day – many days for that matter – which comes as a direct tertiary of his dedication to the craft, his understanding of space, and the piecing together of different skill sets. Asked what makes a great bandleader, Chico responded diplomatically, “A better word is ‘good.’ What makes a ‘good’ bandleader? To be a good bandleader, you have to be a great sideman first. You can’t run before you can crawl.”

Continue reading for more on Chico Hamilton…

The freest thing that a human being can do is dance.

-Chico Hamilton

Photo by: Todd Boebel

Teacher

Similarly, almost from the get-go, Hamilton established not only a reputation as a virtuoso player, but also as a launching pad for aspiring jazz musicians. In fact, the seminal jazz bible, Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz, attributes the late legendary alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy’s earliest successes and notoriety to his association with Hamilton.

Chico Hamilton by Todd Boebel

What drives Hamilton to make the effort to look out for the careers of younger musicians on the rise, while many musicians preoccupy themselves foremost with furthering their own careers?

“That’s just the way I grew up,” he says. “I got help from the pros like Lester Young and Joe Jones. Basically, I was self-taught, which is not easy. I’m still teaching myself new things. I still take lessons from time to time.”

This “what goes around comes around” attitude led Hamilton to become an original founding member of The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in 1987. Over 20 years later, while Chico rarely leaves the confines of his New York City apartment – equipped with a drum kit and keyboard parked in front of his living room television – he still makes the effort to teach an ensemble class at the New School. To this day, most of the players in Chico’s live band are former students from the program.

“What I stress when I teach is that it takes all kinds of music to make music,” he offers. “I don’t care if it’s country western or pop-rock, if it’s good, it deserves to be played and it deserves to be listened to.”

Film Contributor

Perhaps a tribute to the depth of Chico’s personality, which easily maneuvers a balance of quick wit, thoughtful emotion, and quirky philosophies, Hamilton has also enjoyed a long career adding his colorful contexts to the movie industry, contributing compositions, pre-recorded numbers for soundtracks, and even his well-worn face as an actor.

“There’s only been one producer/director that I actually liked and that is Roman Polanski. In the film Repulsion, we had 25 music cues and yet we only had a single discussion. For the rest, he was cool. The producers, they forget why they hired you.”

It’s funny, because you often hear how everyone in Hollywood wants a piece of the soundtrack and should have a say in the music, but Hamilton’s sentiments definitely mirror these notions.

“They ultimately become the music people. First, they want the music in a certain place, but then they take it out and put it in another place; the wrong place,” Chico states emphatically. “The interesting part about writing music for film is knowing where not to put music.”

Person

Chico Hamilton by Todd Boebel

To think that a jazz legend with over 70 years in the upper crust of music’s finest still gets hurt feelings may be mind boggling, but it’s also true. As a music fan, casual listener or even critic, sometimes we forget that we’re judging somebody’s life’s work, and it may well influence them.

“Every time I play – whether I sound good, bad, or different – I’m doing the best I can. You can’t please people as far as the music’s concerned,” he says. “I want to make something clear: I don’t play music for people; I play music for music’s sake. That way you don’t get your feelings hurt. I realize that I have been blessed to the extent that music is God’s will and God’s will shall be done.”

Hamilton returned to these themes a number of times throughout the course of our short visit. While a wise musical philosopher on the outside, the fact that he’s both a deeply emotional man and musician came across as clear as highway thinking.

“You know what my name is? It’s Foreststorn. Back when I was in the service, people kept looking at my name not knowing how to say it. So, people started calling me Chico. You know what Chico means?”

Doesn’t it mean boy?

“It means ‘little boy’,” he retorts. And there must be something to that, because 88 years later, Chico Hamilton still runs with the passion of a young boy, and frankly, it’s both inspiring and entirely contagious. We should all be so lucky to achieve such broad reach and versatility in our chosen field, and keep at it with the same unbridled furor after so many years – particularly when that field is music.

Chico Hamilton will perform two shows on Saturday February, 20 at Bohemian Caverns in Washington, DC. Tickets available here.

Chico Hamilton EPK

Chico Hamilton | MySpace Music Videos

JamBase | The Beat
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Google Positions Living Stories as Olive Branch to Publishers

December 9th, 2009 | No Comments

Google is working with The New York Times and the Washington Post on Living Stories, a news platform that streamlines topical news content on one page to keep users from clicking on story links that send them veering off to different destinations. While the newspaper article leads with the most important news, information from prior coverage is often repeated with each new online article and the same article is presented to everyone regardless of whether they already read it. By putting coverage on a single page with one URL, Living Stories organizes information by developments in the story and points out updates.
–

Google Dec. 8 teamed with The New York Times and the
Washington Post on Living Stories, an experimental news platform that
streamlines news content on one page to keep users from clicking on story
links that send them veering off to different destinations.
The move is the late…

Living Colour | 10.30 | NYC

November 13th, 2009 | No Comments

Words by: Matt Draper | Images by: Greg Aiello

Living Colour :: 10.30.09 :: Highline Ballroom :: New York, NY

Living Colour :: 10.30 :: New York

When thinking about Living Colour, most music fans remember a funk-metal foursome who was a regular fixture on MTV in the early ’90s. Sporting enough neon to guide an airplane in, their outfits matched their sound: a loud, explosive force comprised of many flavors.

26 years after forming in New York City, Living Colour returned to Manhattan’s Highline Ballroom as part of a world tour in support of its fifth album, The Chair in the Doorway.

To be clear, this was not a reunion tour. Frontman Corey Glover has gone on record to say that despite each member’s side projects, Living Colour has been together for nearly a decade following its eight-year hiatus. These side projects included Glover playing the role of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun forming the drum and bass group Head>>Fake, and guitarist Vernon Reid playing with a range of artists, including forming the Yohimbe Brothers with DJ Logic. However, with the new album and massive tour, the band has a feel of reinvention. Better put, this latest incarnation of Living Colour features the same blistering metal-funk rockers who, as we found out at the Highline, have an even greater arsenal of sounds.

From his first words (“We’re baaaaaack!”), Glover commanded a vice grip on the sold out crowd, who was already fist-pumping during the first few lines of the band’s opener, “Burning Bridges,” an aggressive rock song that opens the new album. Glover led the way with his signature halting vocals, made all the more mesmerizing by his night-before-Halloween butcher costume, complete with goggles and leather apron. Calhoun and Wimbish drove the beat while Reid joined the fray to send the song home with his trademark wailing, dizzying guitar.

Vernon Reid :: 10.30 :: New York

A pair of new songs, “The Chair” and “Decadance,” followed next. “Chair,” which, according to a recent JamBase interview served as the album’s key metaphor, evoked a dark, hardcore feel with shouting vocals and deep, dripping bass lines, while “Decadance’s” hard-charging metal sound echoed early Metallica.

Reid stepped to the forefront in the next song, fan-favorite “Middle Man” from the band’s first album, Vivid. As Reid made a flourish of short solos, Glover showed off his vocal range, moving from powerful chorus shouts to flying falsettos. Riding a fired-up crowd hanging on every lyric, Glover unleashed his snarl, which built up to an exploding guitar solo by Reid.

“Time’s Up” followed, featuring Calhoun’s pulsating, rapid-fire drums before moving into “Go Away,” another dark, metal-tinged song. Mirroring many of the politically charged tunes from the Stain album, “Go Away” saw Glover twisting and lunging while belting out stinging lyrics on the topics of suffering and starvation. Reid was again let off his leash for a frenzied solo that seemed to climb higher with Glover’s final chorus shout of “Go awaaaaaaay!” Exhausted, Glover stuck out his tongue as if to pant after the full-body workout.

Shifting gears, Calhoun laid down delicate drums to a sampled backing beat that led to “Method.” The manufactured beats sandwiched between Living Colour’s heavy live sound built a layered effect, adding a new – and welcome – contemporary element to the band’s repertoire.

Corey Glover :: 10.30 :: New York

And then it was time for church. Summoning every ounce of gospel and soul, Glover took over the room with an extended vocal introduction to “Open Letter to a Landlord,” Vivid‘s housing-project anthem. Standing at the mic, bathed in a yellow spotlight, it was hard not to be blown away by Glover’s vocal command. As loud as it was beautiful, Glover hung onto the final word, “memories,” for what seemed like 15 seconds before letting it vanish into Reid’s ripping guitar. A large video screen behind Calhoun served as a visual of the lyrics, displaying dilapidated houses surrounded by flames.

The band then launched into “Bi,” a standard funk-rock tune that quickly became a set highlight when a ferocious Wimbish, now wielding a tiger-patterned bass, hopped down into the crowd and launched into a raging solo that featured him playing with fingers and, yes, his teeth.

“Y’all ain’t ready,” said Glover to the frenzied crowd, which included a packed floor section and second level of seated diners, many of whom had abandoned their chairs. And we weren’t ready, as Calhoun proceeded to slay the crowd with an eye-popping drum solo that made those played by Widespread Panic or The Dead seem like yawners in comparison. Clocking in at more than 10 minutes, Calhoun unleashed an onslaught of sonic weapons, manipulating drum-machines, smashing gongs, and hammering techno-triggered cymbals with neon-tipped drumsticks that made him look like the conductor of a firework show.

Doug Wimbish :: 10.30

With all four members returning to the stage, the band moved back in time with a cover of The Temptations‘ “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” that quickly moved into the old-school hit “Glamour Boys.” Next was new one “Behind the Sun” followed by “Hard Times,” a funky blues number, and “Out of Mind,” a primal, stripped-down metal song warmly greeted by a few head-bangers in the front row.

And just when the band appeared ready to turn it up another level, things took an unusual turn. While Glover spoke to the crowd between songs, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Reid. What seemed like funny interplay between the two became a bit awkward, with Glover calling Reid a “crack head” several times (maybe for good reason – though Reid was killing it on guitar, he was shouting a steady stream of gibberish and at one point delayed a song when he didn’t realize his axe wasn’t plugged in).

A forgettable “Elvis is Dead” came next. Played at hyper-speed and featuring saxophone work by Jeff Smith, the song seemed to meander throughout. While impressive, Smith’s solo never hit the song’s high note and, with Reid looking a bit lost, the song came undone before transitioning to a short rendition of Elvis‘ “Hound Dog.”

“Type,” another crowd favorite, kicked the energy back up. The band sped up the studio version, striking a harder, faster tone before stopping on a dime to float into the tune’s “children of concrete and steel” chorus. With the song changing tempos, Glover’s vocals ebbed and flowed over Reid’s crunching guitar licks, and the song melted into a soaring, reggae-inspired finish.

With the band hitting its stride – and with the brief drama behind it – a familiar voice boomed over the speakers. It was Malcolm X, whose soundbite, “And during the few moments that we have left…,” serves as the introduction to “Cult of Personality,” the band’s biggest song that still, 20 years and a million worn-out cassette tapes later, carries an absolutely infectious hook. The crowd erupted with Reid’s first guitar lick and ended up providing, via Glover’s direction, back-up vocals through most of the song, including belting the last stanza at the top of its collective lungs.

Living Colour :: 10.30 :: New York

The band returned for an encore, with Glover informing the crowd he and Reid were bickering backstage over the final song. After mentioning the options – “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” or “Asshole” – Reid piped up, “Why not both?”

And that’s what they did. “Love” came out tight and super funky, and “Asshole” added a melodic touch to finish the show.

The crowd was beyond satiated and the band left the stage to a sea of clapping hands and full-throttle screams. A long line waited to buy merchandise, and the post-show crowd spilling onto 16th Street sung high praise. Living Colour delivered a rollicking two hours of metal, rock, punk, funk, and even a bit of dance music with Calhoun’s drum-circus solo. Minus a couple thrash-heavy metal tunes and Reid’s end-of-show aloofness, they threw down. Simply put, the band came roaring out of the gate, mowing through old and new material with balance while adding some new flavors. While things have drastically changed in both New York (the Highline Ballroom didn’t exist the last time the band put out an album) and the music industry (songs are now purchased electronically) since its beginnings, Living Colour continues to deliver a downright gripping live experience.

Living Colour :: 10.30.09 :: Highline Ballroom :: New York, NY

Burning Bridges, The Chair, Decadance, Middleman, Time’s Up, Go Away, Method, Open Letter to a Landlord, Bi, Drum Solo, Papa was a Rollin’ Stone, Glamour Boys, Behind the Sun, Hard Times, Out of Mind, Elvis is Dead, Hound Dog, Type, Cult of Personality

Encore: Love Rears Its Ugly Head, Asshole

JamBase | Colourful
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Shiller: “Look up ‘Bubble’ in an Economic Textbook and It’s Not There. [People] are Living in a ‘Pretend-and-Extend’ Environment”

October 19th, 2009 | No Comments

Robert J. Shiller is one of the most prominent American economists and is one of the 100 most prominent economists in the world.Shiller recently confirmed two points that alternative financial writers have been making for years:(1) Mainstream economis…

From ancient life to alien life: Living where the sun don’t shine

October 8th, 2009 | No Comments

A Caribbean cruise may unlock one of biology’s oldest secrets—both on Earth and elsewhere in the universe

MODERN life is powered by the sun. But photosynthesis, the process that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into plants, is a mere 2.4 billion years old. Life itself goes back at least 3.5 billion years. Before photosynthesis, the energy must have come from something else. Without understanding what that something was, it is impossible to know how life on Earth got going. Moreover, there are those who think that whatever did power Earth-bound life before photosynthesis might also power it on other planets. Which is why, on October 7th, a mission was launched from Cape Canaveral—not from the rocket pads in the north of the cape, but from the docks at its south.

The good ship Cape Hatteras, crewed by Chris German of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), in Massachusetts, and his colleagues, will act as a base for the exploration of a region of inner, rather than outer space—specifically, the Mid-Cayman Rise, a submarine mountain range that lies under almost 7km (about 4 miles) of water near Grand Cayman island in the Caribbean. When it gets there, Cape Hatteras will launch Nereus, an unmanned submarine, named after an ancient Greek sea god, that is capable of withstanding the pressure at such depth (it went down 11km on a previous expedition). …

Toy Story Mania! Brings Carnival Fun to the Living Room Exclusively for Wiiâ„¢

October 2nd, 2009 | No Comments

Starring the Charming Cast of the Disneyâ€¢Pixar Toy Story Franchise, Toy Story Mania! Captures the Allure of the Midway Alongside Bonus 3-D Gameplay October 2nd 2009. – Toy Story Mania!, inspired by Disney/Pixar â€œToy Story,â€ is now available for the Wiiâ„¢ home video game console. The newest title from Disney Interactive Studios brings the classic [...]

Living Colour: A Lively Conversation

September 26th, 2009 | No Comments

By: Dennis Cook

Living Colour by Bill Bernstein

Who says a jazz band can’t play dance music?
Who says a rock band can’t play funky?
Who says a funk band can’t play rock?
Oh yeah!
We’re gonna play some funk so loud
We’re gonna rock and roll around
Watch them dance, Watch them dance

Rock music is a strange sausage. Originally stuffed with blues structures, jazz energy and country compositional sensibilities, the casing continues to stretch in the wake of electric fusion, hip hop, glam and countless other ingredients. And while some revel in trying to simplify rock’s flavors there are those that savor its capacity for complexities and contradictions. Since their explosive emergence in 1988 up through their potent new album, The Chair in the Doorway (released September 15 on Megaforce), Living Colour has been a poster child for rock’s expansive nature. Their latest release presents their intrinsic diversity with an overhanging cohesiveness that suggests the band makes more sense today than ever. As continents and cultures creep ever closer, Living Colour’s disregard for borders and healthy engagement with the world as it is seems right on time.

Their first single, “Cult of Personality,” was so striking, so unique and so forceful that it knocked one on their heels. It seemed a defining sound that a band could milk for ages but not long afterward they offered something as playful and humorous as “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” as single. The sense that Living Colour – Vernon Reid (guitar), Corey Glover (vocals), Doug Wimbish (bass) and Will Calhoun – could do anything lies at their core. This is a band that has truly freed their minds enough to embrace music outside of expectations or posted restrictions. For those of us in the late ’80s who loved Bad Brains, Chic, Ornette Coleman, Pere Ubu and The Talking Heads with equal vigor, Living Colour’s arrival seemed a beacon for heavy duty diversity. And absolutely nothing has changed since the group reformed in 2003 after an eight year hiatus.

Corey Glover by Greg Styer

“We don’t live in a monolithic kind of world. We never did. We supposedly – at least they sold us the idea – live in a melting pot with all kinds of different people and things in it. Particularly for African-American and people of color, you’ve been told you’re living in somebody else’s world and you have to adapt. So, we’ve always tried to adapt our world into the world that exists, into the everyday world. So, we took from everything,” says Corey Glover. “I will listen to an Eric Dolphy record right before I listen to some Creedence. It’s all the same shit to me!”

This potentially sloppy, utterly enthusiastic embrace of wide ranging musics is what rock is all about. At its best, the genre welcomes all comers and sorts out the collisions as they occur.

“Absolutely! Some people will often look at [Living Colour] and say we’re a funk-metal band. Well, that’s very limiting in its scope. We’re more than people who just play funk and metal. If you listen to the work you’ll know that to be true. It’s not the rote idea of what rock ‘n’ roll was,” Glover observes. “Vernon and I are from Brooklyn, Crown Heights in particular, where there’s a big African-American population, a big Caribbean and Latino community, as well as Hasidic Jews. So, who’s NOT going to listen to ALL kinds of stuff coming out of people’s car radios?”

However, not everyone has their big ears and after having spent close to a decade on the sidelines, Living Colour, a band whose debut, Vivid, was a Top 10 album with four high charting singles, found that much of their audience had dissipated.

“We came back in 2003 and nobody paid attention,” says Vernon Reid, while acknowledging that the time out of the spotlight helped the revived group grow stronger creatively. “This is the point bands of our vintage make desperate attempts to regain their youth. They try to come back to what they did before or, God help us, try to become hip. I believe we sidestepped those pitfalls.”

The Chair In The Doorway is certainly their most striking outing since Vivid, and perhaps their most cohesive, together album to date, working together from end-to-end in overlapping sonics and themes. It’s the kind of record one can come back to in six months or a year and keep discovering new things as they unravel different passages.

Vernon Reid by Greg Styer

“I’m amazed at the way it turned out. Each record we’ve made has had its own circumstances, their own difficulties. I think I had the most fun making Vivid because we were riding a rush of adrenalin for even having come that far. To have gotten that far was pure gravy,” says Reid. “Now, with The Chair In The Doorway, we’re a band with history. We’ve been through a breakup. We’ve had an original member leave the group [bassist Muzz Skillings left in 1992]. We’ve had children; we’re all fathers – it’s a beautiful burden and you are dad forever whatever happens! We’ve gone through all the various emotional thingsÂ…well, I don’t want to get too grand. Nobody shot anybody or anything! Nobody slept with anybody else’s wife! There’s certain places we haven’t gone but we’ve had a pretty intense band experience, and to make this record was real work to realize it.”

“We had a plan. The name of the record came before everything else, so each piece had to fit into that idea. That was the rubric we needed to figure out if a song worked or not for the record,” says Glover, touching on the album’s subtle interconnectedness. “That’s what the title is supposed to be. Some of my conversations with Vernon going into this had a surreal or super-real quality to them. My idea with The Chair in the Doorway was really talking about the four of us [in Living Colour], and talking about how some things are obvious to some people and not obvious to others, on the inside and the outside.”

“The Chair In The Doorway is unique amongst our catalog because it’s the first record where we had the title of the album before we had any songs. During the initial recordings for CollideÃ¸scope (2003) we were putting ourselves through so much pressure, ill at ease having just come back together. In a way, 9/11 gave us something to make that record kind of about. The song ‘Flying’ is a direct result of 9/11. ‘A Question of When’ was written before 9/11 but became about 9/11,” continues Reid. “So, we had a break during recording CollideÃ¸scope and Corey and I went to see Spiderman 2. And there’s the usual bellyaching afterwards and Corey says, ‘You know, the chair is in the doorway.’ That’s one of the typical Yogi Berric type of things Corey will say. Then, later on we were in Paris doing press for CollideÃ¸scope, waiting for a photographer in this lovely courtyard, and I turned to Corey and said, ‘You know that thing you say about the chair being in the doorway? That’s the title of our next album.’”

Doug Wimbish by Greg Styer

“What I love about it is it’s the rarest of things, completely concrete – the chair is a physical thing – AND completely abstract. That’s what’s beautiful and terrible about language. That’s why political language is never to be trusted. George Orwell knew very well that language has many layers and levels. With music it’s often about who can come up with the phrase that pays,” laughs Reid. “The Chair In The Doorway spoke to me. There’s an obstruction. It’s an obvious obstruction. Who placed it there and who’s gonna get up and displace the obstruction? The chair is not supposed to be in the doorway. The chair’s supposed to be at a table or desk. The Chair In The Door is an unintended concept album. The title exerted this weird energy on the whole project. It’s so much about how we get in our own way and how something is so obviously in our way.”

A big part of the new release’s flavor is bassist Doug Wimbish, a veteran of industrial groove pioneers Tackhead, the revered On-U Sound label and former member of the Sugarhill Gang house band. His style is stealthy and lethal, a snake charmer with significant bite.

“Doug is really the catalyst for this new record. Without Doug Wimbish we wouldn’t have made the CD we did in Prague. It was Doug that codified all this music. He took all the grooves we did at sound checks and gigs and put them on a list for us to listen to and figure out what we were gonna do. Doug was the man in terms of how this record came to be what it is,” enthuses Glover. “There’s these gypsy bands that come out of the Czech Republic that takes bits of funk and rock and really mix stuff together. That’s how Doug really got involved in this scene and they introduced him to [Sono Studio in Prague, where The Chair in the Doorway was recorded]. These are people who appreciate music on all levels because this is a just-opening-up Eastern Bloc country that’s taking in everything. The guys who run the studio were a major catalyst for cool things on the new album.”

Continue reading for more on Living Colour…

. In a lot of ways, I think this is a good time for rock, and I think it’s going to become a better time for rock. When I look at say The Mars Volta, the complexion of what rock is has been fundamentally altered. And that’s a good thing.

-Vernon Reid

Race has been a pronounced issue for Living Colour since day one, but almost always coming from outside the band. Inside, these guys understand that rock is the child of multiple influences – some white, some black and some brown. The notion that black men playing rock is somehow unusual announces the ignorance of any critic speaking such nonsense. One would have to conveniently forget Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Buddy Guy, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and countless others to utter such stupidity.

“Rock was an amalgam of so many things. It was mutt music to begin with. It was a little bit of gospel, a little bit of country music, a little bit of classical, a little bit of everything just thrown in there and all of a sudden here’s this new thing. That’s the only way innovation occurs. Something new is born of several different mothers and fathers,” says Glover. “The fact that we didn’t come directly from the blues, that a lot of it came from fusion jazz, maybe set people back a bit. Unfortunately, I read a lot of blogs, and the so-called metal blogs think we’re a metal band. We’re not a metal band. There’s aspects of metal music to it – we play HARD – but we’re in no way a metal band. There’s no particular category that suits us well. You couldn’t say we’re a jazz band or a complete rock band because we play elements of R&B. So, what are you going to say? We’re a band. Leave it at that.”

Will Calhoun & Corey Glover
by Greg Styer

Modern music culture has become very comfortable labeling things. It’s easier to market and sell that way, but music itself is fluid and hard to contain. It is, by nature, liquid stuff.

“It should be fluid! Do you listen to your iPod that way? You’re not going to go the ‘Rock’ category and just listen to rock songs. No, you hit play and whatever comes up you’re surprised and delighted by because it’s all the music that you love,” says Glover. “The other day I was listening to [69 Boyz'] ‘Tootsee Roll’ and then something real dark like the Swans came on afterwards and it worked!”

Realizing that he wasn’t alone in his struggles, in 1985 Vernon Reid co-founded the Black Rock Coalition, an organization formed in “reaction to the constrictions that the commercial music industry places on Black artists.” The Coalition continues to this day and Reid is suitably proud and excited about the current generation of artists of color reshaping rock and popular music.

“Now we have great bands like TV on the Radio, Santigold and Earl Greyhound on the scene. And there’s Afro-punk, which is kind of the snarky little brother to the Black Rock Coalition,” says Reid. “I’ll tell you what’s really got me jazzed right now. A really good friend of mine, William DuVall, is the new singer in Alice In Chains and I’m so happy for him. I had a solo record, This little room, that was going to be the follow-up to Mistaken Identity (1996) and William sings on two of the songs on that (unreleased) record. In a lot of ways, I think this is a good time for rock, and I think it’s going to become a better time for rock. When I look at say The Mars Volta, the complexion of what rock is has been fundamentally altered. And that’s a good thing.”

“One of the things I love about The Mars Volta is I don’t get it! I listen to it and it’s weird. It’s partly in Spanish but it’s prog. I love the fact that I didn’t already know where it was going,” continues Reid. “So much rock is a lifestyle, a factory produced thing. Led Zeppelin was still tied to the blues in a fundamental way, but the idea behind Led Zeppelin was still this experimental thing. You hear these bootlegs where they played ‘The Battle of Evermore’ for a half hour! There’s this whole notion that they were the beginning of cock rock – and in a way it is – but there’s so much more to it.”

Will Calhoun by Bill Bernstein

One characteristic that runs throughout Living Colour’s catalog is a pronounced love of interesting sounds. Beyond the stellar musicianship and compositional edge, their albums overflow with cool noises and interesting digressions. This passion extends to a breathless enthusiasm for old gear like Mellotrons.

“You’re singing my song right there! There’s something about an instrument, because of the nature of what it is, that lends an air of instant nostalgia to anything you do with it,” offers Reid. “Hearing the sound of strings that sound like they’re from an old movie instantly transports you. Psychedelia wouldn’t have been possible without the Mellotron. The sound of those Beatles records is justÂ…[Reid trails off into a sigh of pure delight].”

“We recorded The Chair In The Door in a very different way. With all the other records we’d been hitting the tunes and playing and playing them in front of people. With this record we did overdubs with live skeletons, and a lot of this record was broken down into parts and components, which in a sense is how things are done now. There’s parts of this record that are very live. You can tell that ‘Bless Those’ is just recorded live. There’s a lot of tunes that are very dense, and what I like about ‘Bless Those’ is it’s very stripped down, very rock ‘n’ roll band. We went 360-degrees with that tune, where one take was too bar-bandy, etc. At the end of the day it was right the first time,” says Reid. “Other pieces like ‘Behind The Sun’ were found digging through an archive of things we’d done. I heard it and said, ‘Oh, that’s that crazy tapping riff!’ We wound up getting into it and it evolved, like the whole project. I think album concept still has merit as an organizing principle. I think sequencing matters. I think having a body of songs that pertain to something – a real song cycle – matters. I think the fact that you can release a single song and not be tied to an album is cool, but people say the album is over or irrelevant and I don’t believe that. Further on the convergence of various technologies are going to take the notion of albums and the experiential objects therein and change them.”

“The [new album] was inspirational to me. When they heard me sing something new or in a different way it helped inspire us to do more stuff. I tried to get at things the best I could,” says Glover. “Technically, I’d been schooled constantly by the time we got the studio because I’d been touring with Jesus Christ Superstar [playing Judas Iscariot] for two years (2006-2008). So, my voice was ready to go when it was time to hit play because I haven’t stopped singing for two years! My vocal coach gave me a lot of good ideas if you want to keep doing this. You need to have a personal routine but also growth, because if there’s no growth it becomes boring and uninteresting. The singer is the emotional interpreter of the song. If he’s not able to tell you what the emotions are that the band is playing then it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just not worth doing if you don’t throw your personality into it. It’s the bravado or the angst or the melancholy of whoever is singing and those they’re singing with. And with an uncategorized band it’s going to be different every time.”

Living Colour by Bill Bernstein

Regardless of anything else they may do, Living Colour will likely always be best known for “Cult of Personality,” simply one of the great moments in late 20th century music. It’s a piece that will be knocking skulls together and making folks question the celebrity driven nature of modern culture long after all of us are resting ashily in our urns. The song has become so ubiquitous – Guitar Hero anyone? – it’s become part of the contemporary background noise through no fault of its own.

“What I really didn’t want to be were the people I was singing about [laughs]. At a certain point it kinda got that way, but that’s not what I was saying. There’s a certain thing that goes on. Just watch the Sonia Sotomayor hearings to see it,” says Glover. “What’s funny about it is it’s a phenomenon that occurs in every aspect of life. There’s an insurance salesman that every other insurance salesman talks about. What we were talking about is rock stars. And I’m not a rock star. Mick Jagger isn’t a rock star. Barack Obama IS a rock star! I’m not the one who can stop traffic. Michael Jackson is the biggest star in the worldÂ…next to Barack Obama [laughs].”

“I read a book a while back that said that what people do to their betters is raise them up, bring them down and then raise them up again. And it’s only after their death that they truly raise them up and the reality of their impact can be assessed. It’s what happened with Elvis. He was the biggest thing in the world, then they said he was kind of corny and then he died and he was the greatest thing in the world again,” comments Glover. “It’s going to happen to every person of any note everywhere in the world. It happened to Bill Clinton. It happened to Ed Koch. It happens to your local community board member, who once seemed so new and young and hip. Look at John Travolta’s career! That’s the way it works. That’s how [culture] manifests itself. You’re hot shit one minute and then you’re out. Like Frank Sinatra said, ‘That’s life’ [laughs].”

“As long as there’s a forum for social commentary – whether it comes from music or the arts or life itself – there’s always going to be a conversation to be had. There’s always going to be a conversation to what’s considered infantile or sophomoric. There’s going to be a real conversation about the world we live in. That’s what philosophy is, and that’s how these things come apart. That’s how we deal with our music,” says Glover. “This conversation is one we’re trying to have with our audience. Of course, some people would love to hear Living Colour do ‘Back In Black’ and we’d love to get out there and do that, too [laughs].”

Living Colour is on tour right now. Dates available here.

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