King Crimson - VROOOM / Coda: Marine 475 (Live At The Warfield Theatre, 1995)
#billbruford #kingcrimson #yes #tamadrums #billbruford’searthworks
When Robert Fripp convened an early rehearsal for this King Crimson sextet at my house in the mid-1990s, my percussive colleague Pat Mastelotto and I had never met. I asked him what instrument he was going to be playing. He explained he was also playing tubs – we were to be a two-drummer outfit. That’s a curve ball, right there, but we got right down to it. We were from very different backgrounds and experiences, and brought different skills and enthusiasms to the table. Pat was from a solid background. Loud and consistent, he hit ‘em hard and in a way that discouraged surprises. Me: the closet jazzer, seduced by progressive rock, lighter in style, with a taste for the unlikely, the unpredictable and the odd-meter.
We spent a lot of time in the back of the bus, wood-shedding fun things to do with two drum kits, like metrical wheels-within-wheels (B’Boom; Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream), or displacing the rhythm so I p