Too Hip for a Major Label

This article was originally published in 1998. Note: since its publication, I've come to enjoy more commercial music then I did back then, thanks to the advent of Fuse, a cable and satellite music video channel leaning towards modern and indie rock, and extreme metal.

Babatunde Olatunji: Love Drum Talk
Chesky WO160 (CD)

Too Hip For The Room: All-Time Greatest Hips
TOOHIP01 (CD)

Thanks to a combination of chance, serendipity, friendship and I suppose fate, I've recently come across two CDs which are musically and sonically wonderful—and which also cause me to wonder about just how much great music is out there that no one knows about or will ever get a chance to hear.

That's because neither of these CDs are major-label releases—which means that their distribution, promotion and notoriety range from probably not enough in the case of one to a barely-discernible blip on the radar screen (so far) for the other. While the major-label monoliths churn out toxic wastelands of boring, pathetic, uninspired, even repulsive "product"—an utterly appropriate term, as calling the stuff on radio and video today "music" is a gross travesty and an insult to the sensibilities—there are legions of artists whose music will never receive recognition because they don't fit into commercially acceptable formats and don't have megaconglomerate marketing muscle behind them.

Well, at least I can do my part. By virtue of my lofty position as a recognized reviewer (oh oh, here comes the pooper scooper!), I do get to hear CDs from any number of sources outside the mainstream. And I find it encouraging that there are lord knows how many artists out there whose CDs are worth hearing—and worth turning people onto. While I become profoundly depressed at the state of pop radio today, the out-of-mainstream CDs I'm starting to hear more and more of these days give me profound encouragement.

I stand in awe of the recent Chesky Records release, Love Drum Talk by the legendary percussionist Babatunde Olatunji, a titanic musician born in Africa who first gained American notoriety over 30 years ago with his famous Olatunji! Drums of Passion LP. Olatunji has since become a major force in music worldwide, with a diverse career spanning gigs with Coltrane in the Sixties to the recent formation of the percussion supergroup Planet Drum with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

This disc is simply staggering. It's as if some elemental, primeval mystical musical force was somehow magically captured on a piece of polycarbonate, to be released when played back on a music system as a genie is released from its bottle. Olatunji and his large band (11 in all) of musicians and vocalists play a wide variety of traditional and modern percussion instruments such as ashiko and ngoma drums, djembe, junjun, agogo, sekere and drum set (gotta look some of those up! what you hear—congas, bongos, shakers, cowbells, tambourines and more), electric fretless bass, acoustic guitars and mandolins. The ensemble sound is huge, yet never cluttered or busy—the players interlock with breathtaking empathy, rhythms and counter rhythms playing on and off one another in a dazzling display of percussive virtuosity.

As you may imagine considering the percussion-based nature of the music, the songs are rhythmically charged and intense—they make you want to move, dance, jump, bounce and...well, you figure it out. The musicians let the songs stretch out—tracks range from around six to around thirteen minutes—yet all sense of time is lost when listening. The songs simply become, and flow with a sense of naturalness and effortlessness, going on for the amount of time they need to, no more, no less. The lyrics (the ones I can understand anyway) are full of heart and humanity, my favorite being "Long Distance Lover," a song about love becoming more intense the more the distance from loved ones increases. Play this disc a few times, and the songs will insinuate themselves into your head; you'll be hearing them long after you shut the stereo off.

The sound quality is as staggering as the music. The band was recorded in St. Peter's Episcopal Church in New York using just two microphones, with an additional spot mike for Olatunji's vocals. It sounds it—you're there. The band was recorded with what I'd call an ideal perspective—just the right amount of direct and room sound, with precise instrumental and vocal image placement on a large (but not exaggeratedly overwrought), for want of a better word, soundstage. (It's more like the band is simply spread out in front of you.)

Because the band was recorded "live" with this technique, some of you might be a little put off by the overall quality of the instrumental mix, because you don't hear that "everything spotlighted" sound you hear in a multi-miked mix where every instrument is defined in sonic bas relief. The bass can sound a little indistinct; sometimes a vocalist will fade into the background, and so on—it's a different kind of sound than a typical studio production. Still, it's an amazing sound, with a jaw-opening, you-are-there realism you'll never hear in a panned mono multi-miked production. Tonal balance and detail resolution are excellent (Chesky is using its 96/24 High Resolution Technology on this one), with just a hint of a dry flavor to the overall sound quality, and what I hear as a slight curtailment of note decay.

Special mention must be made of the dynamics, which are incredible. A conversation with Assistant Producer and all-around audio good guy Steve Guttenberg (who insisted I hear this disc) confirmed that no compression was used in the recording of this CD. Hence, the dynamic range is wide, from whispers of shekeres in the background to the gut-thumping "boom!" of a vigorously-struck conga-whatever-it-is. Turn this one up loud, and the illusion of reality is uncanny.

Most incredible of all? Guttenberg told me that all the songs were composed on the spot! The musicians, as they were warming up, getting a balance and a feel for the room and each other, just played what they felt and followed Olatunji's lead and hand signals. No wonder the music sounds so fresh, organic and alive. Considering the multi-part vocal harmonies and complex instrumental interplay, this is a remarkable musical accomplishment. As I said, I stand in awe of this album.

Postscript: In fairness, I should qualify my earlier remarks about the relative obscurity of non-major label releases when I talk about this one, for in fact, Chesky has not only established itself as a major player in our little audiophile world, it has also established itself as a jazz label of no minor import. Still ain't no Sony Music, but at least Chesky has reached the point where Love Drum Talk has received a well-deserved Grammy nomination for best world music album (I'm writing this three days before the awards ceremony.)

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The story of how I came to hear Too Hip For The Room's All-Time Greatest Hips CD, a clever disc full of humor, ironic insight and even outright silliness, may interest you. One of my favorite bands is Blue Oyster Cult, for their brilliant songs, lyrics and powerful musicianship (Buck Dharma is one of the best lead guitarists in rock history). Some of you may know them for their classic rock hits, "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" and "Burnin' for You." Anyway, the members of BOC are really nice guys, who maintain communication with their fans via an America Online bulletin board (go to Keyword-MMC and you'll find it) which I participate in. From this bulletin board, I became aware of Too Hip For The Room—the three members of the band are serious BOC fans—they told the board members about their new CD and I just had to hear it ear unheard, figuring these were my kind of guys.

What a blast! The songs are delivered in a kind of modern-folk style (forgive me for these kinds of broad-brush analogies, but they do help to get a handle on things), instrumentation being largely Ovation acoustic guitar, congas, bongos, acoustic-electric bass (a hollow body instrument the size of an electric bass, with a built-in pickup that provides a hybrid acoustic/electric tone) and assorted other instruments. The band makes heavy use of multiple-part harmony vocals, very well done, and the whole thing has a rough-hewn, homespun quality about it, with some loose rhythms and the occasional off note left in.

While not a parody a la Weird Al Yankovic or a musical comedy album like some of the old Bonzo Dog Band things, THFTR does have a wry streak about them, as evidenced the lyrics in "Overwhelmed": "Well I'm overworked, underpaid, underdressed and overweight/...so overall it's understood/Why I'm a little overwhelmed by it all!" In another song, "My Girl is Like A Freight Train"...'cause she's got a big caboose! (But the singer says that's a good thing, and he does love her, even if she threatened to leave him if he sang the song....) One thing I can't figure out is why the protagonist in one of the songs "feels like Frankie Avalon, working without a net"...?

The sound quality is an excellent example of the fact that you no longer need a professional recording studio to make a great recording. In fact, this CD, recorded in a home studio using Fostex eight-track analog and digital recorders is in many ways far more realistic-sounding than a professional pop production. Instruments and vocals have an uncanny sense of realism about them, because they are recorded "straight up," with no compression, EQ, Aphex Aural Exciter, BBE, Orban or Lexicon-type "enhancements" and all the other outboard studio gear pro studios and producers use to give records that radio-friendly studio "sheen" and "punch"—while destroying realism by killing dynamics and giving the overall recorded sound an artificial, hyped-up quality.

Ironic—most home studios don't have the kind of processors the big bucks studios have—so they can't use them—so their productions have a more "direct-to-tape" quality about them—so they ultimately sound more "real," with a more accurate tonal balance and a far greater sense of clarity, immediacy, openness and presence. Although you'll hear some vocal and instrumental overload distortion on a few songs, such is the case on this THFTR disc—really, the overall vocal and instrumental clarity on Greatest Hips far exceeds most anything else I've heard lately.

Back to the Blue Oyster Cult connection. (Is it true there's a BOC tribute band called Purple Clam Religion?) The kicker on the Greatest Hips disc is an outrageous medley of BOC's "(Don't Fear) the Reaper/Burnin' for You featuring none other than Buck Dharma himself on vocals! Performed as a medium-tempo shuffle (think "Fever" or "Stray Cat Strut") with acoustic guitar, percussion, acoustic-electric bass and gorgeous harmony vocals, the track is a real hoot, and the sonics are fabulous.

If all this sounds like you might dig it as much as I do, you can contact the band at Too Hip For The Room, PO Box 1300, Bellmore, NY 11710 or e-mail TooHipRoom@aol.com. I haven't had this much fun since the days my dentist allowed nitrous oxide in his office!