GUY WHO PLAYS DRUMS

This is a cool song and a cooler album: Never So Big by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, with vocals performed by Sia off their concept album Here Lies Love. Holy crap, talk about a collaboration.

The album follows former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos (and her nanny Estrella) until she and her family were forced to leave the Philippines.  Random, yeah a little, but David Byrne (former frontman and principal songwriter of Talking Heads) has expressed his fascination with the story and his longtime interest in making a concept album that could be played in a club setting.  

Here Lies Love features guest appearances by female singers on nearly all of the 22 tracks, including Cyndi Lauper on Why Don’t You Love Me and Eleven Days, Sharon Jones on Dancing Together, and Florence Welch on title track Here Lies Love. 

This was the first time I heard Sia sing, and WHAT A VOICE!  The award-winning Australian has collaborated with downtempo duo Zero 7 and is featured covering Paranoid Android on Exit Music: Songs with Radio Heads. 

I’ve been feelin’ this song for months now. Even though it never broke through as a single, tracks that flow and get your head bobbing like Fantastique by Canadian rap legend K-OS aren’t easy to come by these days. Unfortunately, conscious rap usually takes a backseat to flashier hip-hop genres in the mainstream.
Fantastique comes off the 2002 debut album [Exit], a record that gained well-deserved critical acclaim due to an eclectic mix of genres strung together by thought-provoking lyrics and reflective themes.

Two things I love about this song in particular:
1.   The line “pimps just react to things, men make ‘em happen”. Pretty great message here about the cowardliness of those who objectify other human beings, and it flows off the tongue beautifully.
2.  The Outro.  Off the bat, the scratching is top notch.  But what I dig is the 8th-note triplets Randall Stoll (of K.D. Lang fame) lays down on the drums every 3 bars.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen at 2:15. That lag feeling and the snare hit just after the 4th beat (where you expect it to hit) gets me goin’ every single time, and since hearing it it’s been a fun little fill to use in my own drumming. 

Everyday Sunshine by Fishbone is a song that’s been stuck in my head for a while now.  Off their 1991 release The Reality of My Surroundings, this catchy and uplifting tune is by a band that unfortunately most people haven’t heard of.  Thankfully a documentary (also called Everyday Sunshine) is soon it be released, chronicling the strange careers of these ska-punk innovators. 
Fishbone’s music is a hybrid of ska, punk, funk, reggae, and rock. When they started out in the early 80’s they were caught in limbo between the traditionally-separated black and white music communities. What that amounted to was not mainstream success, but instead a devoted cult following.
Today’s incarnation comes after several lineup changes, album flops, and even kidnapping cases. In 1993, before Lollapalooza, guitarist and singer Kendall Jones quit the band. Bassist John Norwood Fisher tracked him down, but was charged with kidnapping!   To get the pioneering bassist’s legal expenses covered, benefit concert was organized and featured legendary 90’s rock groups Porno for Pyros, Primus, Tool, and Alice in Chains.  Gotta love the comradery in the music community!

This is Run To You by KC Roberts & The Live Revolution. The song is originally by Bryan Adams, a legendary Canadian rock singer-songwriter, and was covered by the band as an audition for CBC’s upcoming series Cover Me Canada.

I first discovered KC Roberts with his former band, the Raw Blue, at the Beaches International Jazz Festival in Toronto. He sang like Jamiroquai, played guitar like Jimmy Herring, and rapped like no white man has any business rapping. I was hooked. I bought the album after hearing two songs. I went home, logged into iTunes, and bought another KC Roberts album (his first album with an even older band Tomphoolery). 

His arrangements are impeccable and I drool at this man’s ear for harmony, syncopation, and layering.  All seven members of the current lineup are graduates from some of Toronto’s finest jazz music schools and, needless to say, these guys can f***ing WAIL!  Chino de Villa is an absolute machine on the drums. The chemistry between him and bassist Matt Fullbrooke is undeniable, and as a musician, it’s enviable.

Add some keys into the mix, and the rhythm section sets the stage for KC and some of the city’s best young horn players to fill out the band’s hip, funky, jazzy, soulful sound. Seriously, their music makes me want to get up and dance, what more could someone want from a funk band! 

In my opinion this is truly one of the best groups around and Toronto is lucky to have’em.