When I started this blog I posted on a slew of message boards looking for submissions and I got the standard fare. John Bonham, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, etc... While those guys are all great, they were not really what I was looking for. Then someone mentioned Zigaboo Modeliste. This was the kind of thing I was looking for. Every drummer knows who Keith Moon and John Bonham are, but does every drummer know who Zigaboo Modeliste is?No.
Hell, I didn't, but shortly after getting this record I realized that I DID know Modeliste (or at least, his playing). He is one of the most sampled drummers in history and I am pretty sure that I have heard every song on this record in some form being sampled by hip hop artists and DJ's.
Zigaboo's (I love typing that name) style is loose, laid back and funky. Really funky. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and 311 today, which would be a shame (if there was such a thing as a sarcasm font, it would be applied here). Certain drummers play ahead of the beat to give songs this forward momentum, but I find that Modeliste plays slightly behind the beat, giving the songs this lazy, smooth feel, like your walking down the street without a care in the world. Whenever I listen to this record I feel like I am in a Mario Van Peebles blaxploitation film from the seventies.
Modeliste is an expert at layering his patterns with high hat trills, well placed snare hits and smooth cymbal work. His patterns rarely change during songs but he builds on them so that things don't get tedious. He is like Questlove from the sixties.
Even if he's not as known as Bonham and Moon, he has probably been heard just as much. Now I can finally put a name to the samples I keep hearing (which I am sure will make me a hit at parties).
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I would have chosen the first one , simply called " The Meters " It's got the classics " Sissy Strut " and " Cardova "
ReplyDelete" Fire On the Bijou " is wonderful too but at that point the Meters were not just doing instrumentals . The band was to disolve after that and morph into the Neville Brothers .
Zigaboo is considered one of the best examples of what came to be called " second line rhythm "