Five Star Review: Max Roach Drum Soli

Drum soler gedda bad rap. It's twue. I remember some no doubt sage old RYMer (pro)claiming that hating drum solos made you rockist. And it's true, no lisp thith time. John Bonham and Ginger Baker were cackhanded wack mechanix but letting that taint Art Blakey or Famadou Don Moye is like claiming Moor Mother must be a racist because she's a rapper and so is 6ix9ine.

There's only been like five good rock drummers anyway and all but one of them doubled in jazz and improv and only one them ever really took solos, and he could do that because he was motherfucking Jaki Leibezeit. 

I honestly love the sounds of a well-recorded, well-played solo trap kit more than the vast majority of more traditionally melodic instruments (and when there's like four of 'em at once? mmmmmmmmmmmm, that's nice.) And when I fished from the always significantly delicious Inconstant Sol (blog) an entire album of Max Roach, a Particularly Epochal Person (P.E.P.) in the history of jazzerations, slamablamming by his lonesome, you know I was Highly Anticipatory. And it smacks! Kisses, mwah! I always thought that Roach, like Ellington and Mingus, was far more important and worthwhile for his arrangements and ideas and talent-nurturing than pure performance skillz (that's why I dunnae like Junney Mongle.) Blakey was the thunderballstrike to your earpins - Roach was a little more polite. Well, if Art Gardrumkle invented rock 'n' roll, then Maximillian Roachispierre was busy doing things a little more... This Heat. Yeah, I hear a metric h*ckt*n of Charles Hayward here! Or am I chronologically backwards, ladies and gems? These drums don't just go talking, they rant, they pant, they conversate, they chitterchat. These are not dumdrums or humdrumdrums. This is pure virtuosity on Heifitz/Menuhin/Annapurna Devi-levels and they will wash your mindmouth out with "Toad"-Forgetting Soap.

I'll never forget sage old RYMer avant-classical-president/demagogue docperkins (pro)claiming that the drummer on Obscura should/could perform Xenakis' percussion compositions. Well, here Roachee (not that one) one-ups Danny L. Harle sneaking ballet Stravinsky into the snare programming of some innocent k-pop ditty by performing an Autechre tribute on solitary hi-hat... in the 70s!