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Marty Willson-Piper

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Aug 07 2020

TO WHERE I AM NOW

Have you ever cut yourself and don’t know when it happened? The other day I cut my right thumb on broken glass from the cafétiere that I knocked off the table in the studio. It bled and bled and left a small cut, ok I saw it happen. Well, today, I felt something on my other thumb and looked and there was another cut in the same place. It hurt but wasn’t bleeding and I have no idea when or how I did it. It must have not quite drawn blood but feels the same as the cut that did. So that got me thinking about how confidently we walk around when we are so fragile. That soft flesh, rips and tears so easily, we are so quickly damaged in an accident, it’s a wonder we risk leaving the house at all. In 2019, 38,800 people in the US lost their lives in road accidents because they are made of flesh. It’s easy to lose concentration for a moment and get damaged and you don’t have to be in a car, you can simply trip and bang your head. I have a new theory, seeing that masks are in, I think we should all start wearing helmets too. Imagine how many lives would be saved if people wore helmets in cars or even on the street. We are way too prone to bodily catastrophe to be out in the world in our soft skin, waiting to be punctured, slit, ruptured, at any moment.

It was hot out there today and the British beaches are freaking out over the number of people they expect on this coming weekend. Masks in the shops but not on the beaches or the bars. The recent pictures of busy weekends have been horrendous with thousands of people crammed together, I guess they must miss each other. I always imagined that a crowded beach was a must to avoid at the best of times (see what I did there?). By the late afternoon it had cooled down and that made me think about clouds and how the sun’s heat is so restricted by them. How long can this burning ball go on for anyway?

I was also thinking about radiation and shouldn’t we do everything to protect ourselves from radiation bombarding us from space? I was reading about it and we are protected by a bubble that is called our magnetosphere. Does damage to the environment damage the magnetosphere? This is not my field of expertise, I’m the most unscientific person you’ve ever met but I do get the feeling that creatures as fragile as us may want to be more careful about how we treat ourselves and our planet. Duh!

Olivia Willson-Piper 2020

Today Olivia went out of town (what a concept) to pick up my (now hers) boysenberry suede fringed jacket that I bought in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco from Aardvarks in the eighties. It had fossilised and needed to be softened and cleaned. I used to wear it, there are some clips, here’s a photo of me wearing it. I presume it’s authentic because of when I bought it and where I bought it and how it looks. It’s quite heavy and I’d hate to wear it in the rain but David Crosby 1969 – look out. I had a cool leather jacket that I used to wear too, I think I gave that to my daughter Signe. By the way, it’s my granddaughter Ines’ name day today. Lovely.

Olivia Willson-Piper 2020

I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in the same place for so long. Not leaving town once, no trips to the storage house or to London or travelling at all. It’s very weird. I’m so used to moving around, being in different places, going on tour, playing shows all over the place and sleeping in different beds, waking up in the morning and not knowing which side of the bed has the wall. I’ll be very happy to see that road ahead in the future, travelling from town to town from country to country, from language to language, presuming we can get to Portugal and I don’t need all kinds of paperwork to get around in Europe. Well, I guess we could move to a future Scotland, member of the EU and a separate country from England.

I watched the Man City/Real Madrid game and it really needed the crowd. A lot of great players, two stupid mistakes from Real Madrid and Man City are through to play Lyon who surprisingly beat Juventus on away goals. Tomorrow Chelsea play Bayern Munich and Barcelona play Napoli. Something to watch after the studio. I’m just hoping it’s not hot so the complainer from across the way doesn’t have his windows open.

It’s obvious that we need a building and when I look at the story of the woman whose husband passed and left 50,000 records, we really need to establish the In Deep Music Archive complex before I pop my clogs.

Music today is some instrumental albums from Herbie Hancock starting in 1969 with Fat Albert Rotunda (1969), his eighth, and first album for Warner Brothers after leaving Blue Note. It signalled a change in direction from Jazz to instrumental Soul, in this case made for a TV special which might have demanded a change from where he was musically with Blue Note. It’s more middle of the road, it had to be.

But then for the next three albums, he began searching, starting with Mwandishi (1971), then Crossings (1972), and Sextant (1973), and then the Jazz Fusion defining classic Head Hunters (1973). I don’t have Sextant or any of the earlier albums but do have sporadic records into the seventies and eighties. Herbie Hancock is a legend in his genre and famously played with Miles Davis as well as creating his own bands with the cream of Jazz musicians of whichever era he was in. (His first solo record was 1961.)

Mwandishi is something of a left turn. When you consider the Jazz of his earlier sixties albums this is a jump. Each member of the sextet adopted a Swahili name, Hancock’s was Mwandishi which means composer. But if you liked In A Silent Way (1969) by Miles Davis you are probably going to like this. Surprisingly Ronnie Montrose plays on the opening track but the core sextet of Buster Williams (Mchezaji) – bass, Billy Hart (Jabali) – drums, Eddie Henderson (Mganga) – trumpet and flugelhorn, Bennie Maupin (Mwile) – flute and bass clarinet, and Julian Priester (Pepo Mtoto) – trombone was the starting point for Hancock’s journey into these three experimental albums that must have been inspired by making In A Silent Way in February of the same year.

It’s always the experimental albums that I like (by anybody) and I just ordered Sextant (£2.99) – bargain. Tonight I can listen to it on Spotify. Each of the three exploratory albums has three long tracks and takes you on an exotic journey of rhythms, sounds and grooves with pianos and percussion, trumpets and saxophones, busy basses and soundscapes. I love these kinds of musical journeys.

On Crossings, the track Water Torture really sounds like soundtrack music to a sci-fi movie. It’s a long way from middle of the road or Be-Bop Jazz. On this track and the second track Quasar, you can thank Moog player/synth pioneer Patrick Gleeson who was brought in to set Hancock up with the new-fangled machines but Hancock was so impressed with Gleeson he had him join the group. He’s kinda like what Eno was to Roxy Music except Roxy Music sound like Herman’s Hermits next to this. These last two songs are credited to Bennie Maupin, the sax/flute/clarinet player. I can never figure out how jazzers’ credits work, it sounds like one big crazy space-age jam to me and if this is all written out then they have very special brains.

Sextant carries on opening with electronic weirdness galore mixed with trumpet as it glides its way into groove land. I can’t recommend these three experimental albums enough but you do of course have to like the idea. If you are still with us by the time you get to track 3 on Sextant, the 20 minute Hornets, then I guess you like it.

Head Hunters was a different thing altogether, a different band, a different vibe, a funky groove that made the jazzers, the Blues guys, the Rock people and the funkers happy. It was the biggest selling Jazz album to date (till 1976 when George Benson took over with Breezin’). Only Bennie Maupin survived from the sextet, Hancock played all the synths. Paul Jackson played bass, Harvey Mason played drums with Bill Summers on percussion. To give you an idea of just how funky it was, track 3 is called Sly.

There are so many albums to investigate it’s hard to know where to start, like anything, it just depends on what kind of thing you like but if you are a fan of Joni Mitchell you might like River: The Joni Letters from 2007 where he covers her songs. He played with her on Mingus in 1979 and has been friends since. The album won a Grammy in 2008. In 2014 he played on You’re Dead by Flying Lotus, I’m a fan and have the albums and one day I’ll break them out. The problem with all these artists is that they are deep or have deep catalogues or both, you could write volumes about them and listen to them for weeks, so please do.

Songs Of The Daze – Herbie Hancock and the band live in Molde, Norway, 1970. Those crazy Norwegians, they understand this stuff! I know, I’ve played there with Anekdoten!


TV performance for “Jazz Harmonie”, probably recorded around March 23rd 1972 at Studio de Joinville le Pont in Paris, France.

Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi with:

Herbie Hancock – k
Bennie Maupin – ss, fl, bcl
Julian Priester – tb
Ed Henderson – tp
Buster Williams – b
Billy Hart – dr


Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters – Butterfly (November 1974, Bremen, Germany @ Musikladen).

Herbie Hancock – keyboards
Bennie Maupin – reeds
Paul Jackson – bass
Mike Clark – drums
Bill Summers – percussion

Written by Marty Willson-Piper · Categorized: Blog

Missing

This is my stolen 1965 Rickenbacker 12-string, serial number EB157. If there's any chance of this guitar coming back to me before I go to meet my maker, then that would be wonderful. Please contact me if you have any information.

11209512_1669022976719710_7288437867089763325_n

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You usually don’t spend the day in the studio an You usually don’t spend the day in the studio and the night at a gig but if you put the studio next to the gig then there’s a greater chance. So @salimnourallah did just that, he put the gig and the studio next to each other and made it possible for me to spend the day recording and the evening playing live 🎵

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TO WHERE I AM NOW A visit in the studio today fro TO WHERE I AM NOW

A visit in the studio today from old mate Mark Burgess from The Chameleons who has been hanging in Texas recently. I was thinking about the two of us growing up in the northwest of England and all these years later finding ourselves in such an unlikely spot together. We fixed a few issues in the universe and I carried on recording some guitars until Mark had to leave. Mark had played at the Galactic Headquarters next to the studio this year as Olivia and I had four years ago and this reminded me to remind myself to remind everyone to remind their friends that we will be playing there with Salim on Saturday, New Year’s Eve, for the ultimate in intimate performance. You can get tickets here (follow link below).

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TO WHERE I AM NOW Sadness manifested in a buildin TO WHERE I AM NOW

Sadness manifested in a building, today we went to visit Paisley Park. Prince built Paisley Park in Chanhassen, about twenty minutes southwest of Minneapolis. It opened in 1987 and he recorded his later albums there. Apart from Prince, REM also recorded and mixed Out Of Time there, recording Kate Pearson’s vocal on Shiny Happy People vocal. Madonna had Prince play guitar on three songs from Like A Prayer and the two co-wrote Love Song, finishing it remotely due to Madonna not being able to stand the cold weather and the rather desolate location of the studio. Of course, there are things around but it’s not in the city and it’s not in the countryside, it’s in a suburb, no distractions, just what Prince wanted.

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In Deep Music Archive

Songwriting & Guitar Guidance with Marty Willson-Piper
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"These are awesome sessions that I highly recommend for guitar players of all levels. Very informative, frank discussions on everything related to guitar and music in general. Definitely a must for anyone pursuing songwriting."
(Stephen G., VA, USA)

"Marty knows how to bypass scales and get to the heart of feel and timing. His musical knowledge spans multiple cultures and genres. Perhaps most importantly, Marty is a cool dude. I highly recommend his guitar guidance." (Jed B., MN, USA)

"Ok, so you’re sitting in your home and Marty is across the world but is actually right here teaching you how to play guitar and write songs. He is a delight to talk to and he is your teacher, meaning he wants to see you get something out of his lessons. You know he’s paying attention and wants to steer you in the right direction. I am so grateful and humbled that he offers his time in this manner. This is an amazing opportunity for anyone who admires anything from his enormous body of work. How often do you get to learn from somebody that inspired you in the first place? Amazing." (Ann S., CA, USA)

Missing

This is my stolen 1965 Rickenbacker 12-string, serial number EB157. If there’s any chance of this guitar coming back to me before I go to meet my maker, then that would be wonderful. Please contact me if you have any information.

11209512_1669022976719710_7288437867089763325_n

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