“Look Back in Anger” is an under­rat­ed Bowie song on an under­rat­ed Bowie album (Lodger) but it’s always been a favorite because of the fury and thun­der of the back­ing band. And the MVP of that six per­son group is drum­mer Den­nis Davis. A mem­ber of Roy Ayers’ jazz-funk group at first, he joined Bowie’s session/touring band dur­ing the Young Amer­i­cans ses­sions and stayed through Scary Mon­sters. He’s that most per­fect of drum­mers too: end­less­ly inven­tive, yet nev­er gets in the way of the funk.

But this track might be one of his crown­ing achieve­ments. A ner­vous, propul­sive rhythm on the drums car­ries the song, dou­bled on congas/percussion, but pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti buries it in the mix a bit so it doesn’t over­whelm the oper­at­ic arc of the song.

Recent­ly, Davis’ young son Hikaru has been mak­ing a video explor­ing his father’s lega­cy, after Den­nis passed away in 2016. Which means that this adorable ele­men­tary school stu­dent has been sit­ting down with the likes of Bowie side­men Ster­ling Camp­bell, Car­los Alo­mar, Jan Michael Ale­jan­dro, Emir Ksasan, and George Mur­ray, along with Roy Ayers and the mem­bers of his band.

In the above video, Hikaru inter­views Tony Vis­con­ti about the afore­men­tioned track (the producer’s favorite) and we get to hear for the first time ever Davis’ iso­lat­ed drum and con­ga tracks.
“He’s play­ing so many things at once…and yet it nev­er sounds busy,” Vis­con­ti says.

Davis incor­po­rat­ed a lot of Latin influ­ences and loved triplets wher­ev­er he could drop them in.
Vis­con­ti doesn’t real­ly add much more. They, like most of you will prob­a­bly do, just sit there and lis­ten, jaws hang­ing open.

Because Davis is on pret­ty much every post-Spi­ders Bowie album of the ‘70s he real­ly should be men­tioned in the same breath as the Bon­hams and Kei­th Moons of the world, but in the mean­time here’s a few more clas­sic Davis moments:

Although slathered with Bri­an Eno’s noise-gate treat­ments, Davis’ beat is sol­id and promi­nent on “Sound and Vision”

This live ver­sion of “Sta­tion to Sta­tion” from 1978 show­cas­es what an unstop­pable force Davis was live. Adri­an Belew (King Crim­son, Talk­ing Heads) pro­vides sear­ing gui­tar work. Tran­scen­dent.

A clas­sic track from Roy Ayers Ubiq­ui­ty, heavy in the Afro-Cuban groove, and Davis is front and cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

How Drums & Bass Make the Song: Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Led Zep­pelin, Rush, The Pix­ies, The Bea­t­les to Roy­al Blood

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

I’ve had Trout Mask Repli­ca in my col­lec­tion for years. I can’t say I reg­u­lar­ly pull it out to give it a lis­ten, but I know I’d nev­er get rid of it. It’s a some­times impen­e­tra­ble slab of genius, wrought from end­less ses­sions and then a short burst of record­ing, led by a man who couldn’t read music, was prone to fits of vio­lent anger, but dammit knew what he want­ed. (And Zap­pa pro­duced.) When I learned lat­er that the house where a lot of this went down was locat­ed in the hills behind the sub­urbs of Wood­land Hills, it made the insur­rec­tion of the album all the more mag­i­cal.

But yes, it’s a hard one to get into. There are no “hits.” There’s no foot tap­pin’ pop (well, mayyyyybe “Ella Guru,” and only because I knew it first as a cov­er by XTC.) It’s dis­cor­dant. Don Van Vli­et aka Cap­tain Beef­heart sounds pos­sessed by Howl­in’ Wolf try­ing to sing nurs­ery rhymes on acid, and it often plays like mem­bers of the band are in dif­fer­ent areas of the house with a vague idea of what the oth­ers are doing. (This is actu­al­ly a bit close to the truth).

Vox’s con­tin­u­ing series “Ear­worm,” host­ed by Estelle Caswell, attempts to con­vert lis­ten­ers who may have nev­er heard of the album, by tak­ing apart the open­ing track, “Frown­land.”

As Caswell explains, with help from musi­col­o­gists Samuel Andreyev and Susan Rogers, Van Vli­et meld­ed blues and free jazz, and played it with a decon­struct­ed rock band instru­men­ta­tion. Drums and bass did not lock down a rhythm–they played inde­pen­dent of the oth­ers, with the bass even play­ing chords. Rhythm and lead gui­tar played two dif­fer­ent time sig­na­tures each, and nei­ther were easy, 4/4 rhythms. And then there’s the sax­o­phone work, drop­ping in to squonk and thrash like Ornette Cole­man. As Mag­ic Band mem­bers point out, Van Vli­et didn’t under­stand that a bass or a gui­tar did not have the same range of notes as an 88-key piano, which was Van Vliet’s song­writ­ing instru­ment.

How­ev­er, only jazz­bos dig on learn­ing about polyrhythms. There’s so many oth­er rea­sons to appre­ci­ate Trout Mask. For one, it’s in the proud tra­di­tion of Euro­pean sur­re­al­ism but also comes from a par­tic­u­lar “old weird Amer­i­ca” that pro­duced some of our most bril­liant nut­cas­es. (How many peo­ple, learn­ing that Van Vli­et was raised near Joshua Tree, nod­ded in enlight­en­ment? Of course he was.) You want drug music, the album says…well then, this is the uncut stuff.

And then some­times it real­ly just hits hard: “Moon­light On Ver­mont” is relent­less, with a cor­r­us­cat­ing gui­tar line and Beef­heart worked up into a lath­er over “that old time reli­gion.” He quotes Blind Willie John­son, con­flates pagan­ism and Puri­tanism, and tran­scends both. (Maybe this is the gate­way song for new­bies?)

The Vox video pre­cedes its defense with some neg­a­tive reviews from the con­tem­po­rary press, but this Dick Lar­son review from the time under­stood it from the get go, who writes about it as a giant step for­ward after Beefheart’s two pre­vi­ous, more acces­si­ble albums:

Dylan would sym­pa­thise with Beefheart’s ‘nature-and-love-trips’, but the Cap­tain is faster and more bul­bous (and he’s got his band). But this is it. In straight­en­ing out his music, he’s found some kind of reli­gion. It may be in hair pies (yes!) or in Frown­land, but main­ly it’s peo­ple, chil­dren and coun­try men and women. And this is a new delight for Beef­heart – a rough out­door human­i­ty blend­ed with humour and a rich ver­bal vom­it of imagery.

It is a wild album, lit­er­al­ly. There are field record­ings in between the music, with sounds of crick­ets and a plane pass­ing over­head. The LP art shows the band stand­ing, crouch­ing, and hid­ing in the over­grown back­yard of the house. There’s mys­te­ri­ous things in the stream below and only some of them are fish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Hear a Rare Poet­ry Read­ing by Cap­tain Beef­heart (1993)

Cap­tain Beef­heart Issues His “Ten Com­mand­ments of Gui­tar Play­ing”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The End­less Sum­mer is over. The arche­typ­al 1966 surf doc­u­men­tary might have been scored by The San­dals, but the sound and the cul­tur­al dom­i­nance of surf cul­ture would per­haps nev­er come into being, and may not have sur­vived the decade, with­out Dick Dale, who died on March 18th at the age of 81. His gnarly, men­ac­ing gui­tar on songs like “Miser­lou” and “Pipeline” turned a fad dom­i­nat­ed by the teen anthems of The Beach Boys and Annette Funicello’s post-Mouseke­teers biki­ni and bee­hive into gen­uine­ly grit­ty rock and roll.

Dale’s sound defined the risky wan­der­lust of surf­ing that ear­ly skate­board­ers picked up on in the 70s and 80s, snow­board­ers in the 90s, and so on. Hun­dreds of gui­tarists stole from his dis­tinc­tive tech­nique long after the 60s surf rock craze died at the hands of British invaders. Dale rode the sound into the 21st cen­tu­ry, tour­ing and per­form­ing across a Unit­ed States whose pop­u­lar cul­ture he helped invent by appear­ing on (where else) The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

But it’s arguable whether his fame would have sur­vived as long with­out Quentin Tarantino’s shrewd use of “Misir­lou” in Pulp Fic­tion’s open­ing cred­its. It so hap­pens that Dale almost didn’t sur­vive past the six­ties him­self. If he had died from what seemed like a ter­mi­nal can­cer in 1965, it’s pos­si­ble surf gui­tar would have died with him, become a curi­ous rel­ic rather than a liv­ing tra­di­tion.

Jimi Hen­drix thought so—at least accord­ing to Dale in the lin­er notes to 1997’s Bet­ter Shred Than Dead: The Dick Dale Anthol­o­gy. “Then you’ll nev­er hear surf music again,” Hen­drix sup­pos­ed­ly said. Maybe in the purest sense, it’s true. Only Dale tru­ly “trans­ferred,” as he put it, the “tremen­dous amount of pow­er” of surf­ing into the gui­tar. His play­ing was an extreme sport; his shows were “stomps”; the audi­ence nev­er stopped mov­ing for a minute, whoop­ing and hol­ler­ing along with him.

And still, his cav­ernous gui­tar filled ball­rooms. He pushed Fend­er to build loud­er and loud­er ampli­fiers, and every­one else along with them. Like Hen­drix, he was a lefty who played a flipped-over right-hand­ed Fend­er Strat. Yet Dale didn’t restring the gui­tar, effec­tive­ly play­ing it upside-down. He used the heav­i­est strings he could find, the loud­est amps that could be made, and more reverb than any­one had pre­vi­ous­ly thought advis­able. “Bands like the Beach Boys,” writes Aman­da Petru­sich at The New York­er, “often sang about surf­ing,” but the genre Dale invent­ed “was wet and gnarly and uncon­cerned with romance or sweet­ness.”

His style earned Dale the title of “King of the Surf Gui­tar,” also the title of his sec­ond album and a fact he liked to trum­pet as often as he could, along with claims that he was called the “Father of Heavy Met­al.” (Link Wray might like a word.) He was a tire­less pro­mot­er and per­former with­out whose influ­ence there may’ve been no End­less Sum­mer-scor­ing San­dals or Sur­faris’ “Wipe Out”—surf cul­ture essen­tials that trav­eled the world.

Surf rock became a niche sound, pop­u­lar with increas­ing­ly spe­cial­ized audi­ences, before Quentin Taran­ti­no made it cool again. Pulp Fic­tion’s use of the song was not an iron­ic detourne­ment, but a gen­uine reminder of how dan­ger­ous Dale sound­ed. He buz­z­sawed through the ear­ly-six­ties scene of skin­ny ties and big hair. The footage of him above play­ing “Misir­lou” with The Del Tones—all of whom wear ter­ri­fied smiles and iden­ti­cal suits, above—is strange­ly Lynchi­an.

Part of the incon­gruity comes from watch­ing square white Amer­i­cans bounce through a haunt­ing Egypt­ian folk song, while look­ing like they should be play­ing “Mr. Sand­man.” Dale made 50s pop seem child­ish, and sound-tracked the entry of mild­ly adult sit­u­a­tions in 60s surf movies. He deserved to have fared bet­ter from his influ­ence and fame.

Dale’s last cou­ple decades were spent like too many oth­er peo­ple in the U.S. He couldn’t stop tour­ing, he said, “because I will die. Phys­i­cal­ly and lit­er­al­ly, I will die.” After his first recov­ery from col­orec­tal can­cer in 1965, he con­tin­ued to bat­tle the dis­ease,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post. “Up until the end of his life, Dale was explic­it that he toured to fund his treat­ment” after his can­cer returned. He couldn’t retire even when his career rebound­ed, twice after his ear­ly six­ties’ hey­day: first in 1987 when he record­ed “Pipeline” (fur­ther up) with Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an and again after Pulp Fic­tion.

His fans con­tin­ued to sup­port him not because he was a hip nos­tal­gia act, but, he said, because he grew and branched out as a gui­tar play­er and he was hon­est about his dif­fi­cul­ties, and peo­ple con­nect­ed. He was an Amer­i­can orig­i­nal. The son of Lebanese immi­grants, he took the music of his par­ents’ home coun­try, blend­ed it with coun­try swing and blues, and played it dirty, wet, and as loud as it could go, some­thing no one had quite done before and thou­sands have done since.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

The Beach Par­ty Film: A Short Appre­ci­a­tion of One of the Odd­est Sub­gen­res in Film His­to­ry

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Steve Reich’s Clap­ping Music is one of the sim­plest scores of mod­ern clas­si­cal music, and as you might soon find out, one of the most dif­fi­cult to per­form. Writ­ten in 1972 while on a Euro­pean tour and after a night of mediocre fla­men­co, Clap­ping Music is for two play­ers. One claps a steady rhythm (tech­ni­cal­ly an African Bell Rhythm).

A sec­ond per­former claps in uni­son in the same pat­tern for eight bars. At the end of the eighth bar, the sec­ond per­former goes out of sync for one eighth note and after anoth­er eight bars, goes out of sync again. This con­tin­ues until both play­ers are back in uni­son. (The above video explains this tech­nique visu­al­ly).

For Reich it was a sim­pler evo­lu­tion of “phase” com­po­si­tions that he had been cre­at­ing since 1965. The ear­li­er exam­ple was “It’s Gonna Rain,” which used two tape loops of a Pen­te­costal street preacher’s rant going slow­ly out of sync with each oth­er, reveal­ing first an echo and then, as the two loops wind up 180 degrees out of sync, pure apoc­a­lyp­tic cacoph­o­ny.

The sync issues were due to the vagaries of the ana­log machines them­selves, but Reich moved on to recre­at­ing phase music with actu­al instru­ments. In 1967 he com­posed “Piano Phase,” in which a sim­ple melody is played by two musi­cians first in uni­son, and then slow­ly out of sync. Reich fol­lowed up with “Reed Phase” and “Vio­lin Phase,” the lat­ter of which was set to dance by Anne Tere­sa of Keers­maek­er.

Asked about per­form­ing “Clap­ping Music” live, Reich told Clas­sicFM:

It’s a piece that I’m always stand­ing up there doing, and it makes me ner­vous every time because you’re very exposed, as it’s just you and the oth­er guy. If you make one lit­tle hes­i­ta­tion you can find your­self at a place in the piece where you have to fig­ure out where you are to get things right. So it nev­er ceas­es to be a chal­lenge; it’s easy on one lev­el, but it’s chal­leng­ing on anoth­er.

If you’d like to have a go at Clap­ping Music, there is a free app from the Lon­don Sin­foni­et­ta and Touch­press that plays the steady loop while you try to go out of phase. (It tracks and rates your per­for­mance, with the hope you’ll per­fect it.) I haven’t had a chance myself to try it out, but if you have, let us know in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Reich is Call­ing: A Min­i­mal­ist Ring­tone for the iPhone

Hear Steve Reich’s Min­i­mal­ist Com­po­si­tions in a 28-Hour Playlist: A Jour­ney Through His Influ­en­tial Record­ings

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores to Music by Radio­head, Talk­ing Heads, LCD Soundsys­tem, Photek & Oth­er Elec­tron­ic/­Post-Punk/A­vant-Garde Musi­cians

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.