The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out

This album makes me happy because

A) It is proof that at one time, an album could sell millions and be hugely popular solely because it was the first to combine odd time signatures with popular music (which, at that time in 1959, was jazz). This lasted for roughly 6 months, which means that Battles missed it by about 50 years (sorry guys, maybe it will come back into fashion).*

and

B) It was crucial in kick starting that period of the music business where record labels invested in creativity and artistry (because due to a much more intelligent mass market, that's what was selling) and this went on for almost twenty years (giving us loads and loads of well funded, well thought out, and well recorded music) until Peter Frampton ruined it all by selling 30 million copies of his fucking live record. Asshole.

What I love about it is that without this album Terry Bozzio and Virgil Donati would be bar band drummers like everyone else. To think that of everyone who is an expert in odd times and technical drumming, from Danny Carey to Tim Alexander to Bozzio, to Portnoy, everyone, Joe Morello had to be the first.

The first guy to be comfortable enough in 9/8 to pull off Blue Rondo a la Turk, to solo in 5/4 on Take Five (Which was actually released as a SINGLE fer cripes sake), the first guy to really bring odd times to the masses. He did it with such style and class that his playing still holds up today (and quite honestly, so do the melodies). It takes most drummers years to master odd times, and I am guessing Morello had to find a way to do it in very little time. Joe Morello is a throwback to impeccable timing, precision and rhythm. He is the grandfather of prog rock drumming, even though he probably doesn't know it (and neither do most prog rock fans) but he should be credited for his contribution. If he would have played like shit and this record bombed, people might have stopped experimenting with odd time (eventually disregarding it altogether, thanks Ornette Coleman).

Now let's all go listen to Fates Warning and thank him.


*Imagine if this had never died off. If after this album the only guaranteed way to sell millions of records was to write the most complicated, technically challenging music. Where your local Top 40 station plays nothing but Battles, Dream Theater, and Porcupine Tree, and classic rock stations only played pre-Fragile YES, and King Crimson. I am pretty sure the general population would all go insane. And be good at Math. Wouldn't that be awesome?
Actually, I'm just kidding, that actually sounds like hell.

Audio/Visual Evidence : Take Five, Blue Rondo a la Turk