Songsmiths is my current project and will eventually be the main focus of this blog, but I though I would start with the back story...
On Christmas day in 1974, Santa gave me a Mickey Mouse drum kit and I promptly bit out the paper heads like a human can opener. Did I became a drummer on that day or was it 5 years later when I raised my hand to drum in the school band? I was nine then. I'm going with school band since that's when I first treated a drum as anything other than a chew toy. That's when the playing started, 39 years ago.
This is a recording of the Greenwich High School Jazz Band from 1988. We had won the McDonald's Tri-State (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) Big Band competition and our prize was to play at the Village Gate in NYC along with winners from some of the other categories. The concert was hosted, recorded and later broadcast by a Jazz radio station in Stamford, Connecticut. I recorded it on my boom box while listening in my room. The gig, the crowd, the radio...the bug bit hard.
The song (Latina Lady, I think) is pretty long, so feel free to start in the middle. You don't want to miss the best part...
► Listen on DSound
► Listen from source (IPFS)