By: Joe Vecc
Submitted: 2010-10-29 14:42:09 | Word Count: 567
When I was a young kid I used to listen to my mom play the piano in our basement as I sat on the stairs watching her. She used to have a Cat Stevens Piano Book among many others. It was an upright piano and the basement was gloomy and damp. Except she apparently liked playing the piano enough to deal with those surroundings plus I was interested in enough to listen and watch.
She used to listen to pianist, songwriter and singer Billy Joel. She also had these classical albums that I referred to as ooohm bah bah music since a lot of the songs used to be in three. She was self taught I suppose but was determined enough to patiently practice the piano and could visibly read piano music. I'll have to ask her if she ever got formal piano lessons as she grew up.
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So it goes without saying that yes I in time made my way over to the piano and would experiment. I was young and adventurous and apparently truly dark and dissonant on them keys from what I can recollect and from what I know now. I used to do things like play a low note on the piano and then play a high note on the piano. The darker and dissonant it was the better it sounded to me. If it was creepy than it was high-quality. I of course had the palm on several keys technique down pretty good to boot. I used to bust out some strange ryhthms and would even kick the base of the piano for an extra polyrhythm effect. I speculate that was the initial signs of being a genuine drummer.
So I estimate it makes sense that afterward on in life while I was an undergrad applied percussion major I at Umass Amherst was naturally apt to develop an interest towards Debussy Music. I really should have been a jazz studies major because at that time that was all I was listening to and had been taken underneath the wings of a large amount all of the graduate jazz studies students. I felt like a badass. I was freelance gigging with all of the best jazz players that school had to offer at the time and was earning money doing it. I did learn how to play the piano some more at college.
Who was I listening to? Coltrane, Miles, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Jackie MacLean... you name it if it was respectable and from the 60's I was on it. And I didn't get the gigs since of no other reason other than I was able to swing. I had by now gone through a fusion Dave Weckle/Chick Corea phase and was into Be-Bop and Hard Bop solely. Oh, I forgot to refer to Charlie Parker. And with being at that school, it goes without saying that I got into Archie Shepps Music and in fact studied with his drummer, a living legend...Stephen McCraven. Tom McClung is their pianist and he is totally worth checkin' out... he's got mad skills!
