Daily best music in the world: early 90s zeitgeist

Here's a record I almost forgot about, that had a big impact on the way I play the drums. From 1988-90, David Sanborn was the leading guy getting new and eclectic music to a (reasonably) mass audience, through his syndicated TV show Night Music. His record Another Hand came out on the heels of that in 1991, doing some different stuff than his usual New York R&B thing, and featuring some people who were on the show, like Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, Mark Ribot, Charlie Haden, the group NRBQ. 

Here's Monica Jane, a Bill Frisell tune. Now it sounds like “Americana”, at the time it had a distinctly Pacific Northwest vibe. Frisell had moved to Seattle a couple of years earlier, and Nirvana was just hitting, and the northwest was having a big cultural moment in music. I had just moved to Portland from Los Angeles, and I was really feeling it, anyway.

Joey Baron is on drums here, doing something very fresh then, with a new sound, making a big statement with single notes.   

DBMITW: Joey Baron on Night Music

For those of you too young to remember, there was a live music show on US television at the end of the 80's,called Night Music. Hosted by saxophonist David Sanborn, it was some of the most adventurous music ever to make it onto network TV, and truly eclectic, featuring artists as divergent as Sun Ra, Squeeze, Gladys Night, Sonic Youth, Wayne Shorter, Slim Gaillard, and John Zorn. Here are two of my favorite bands from the period playing on the show, both featuring Joey Baron. First, Bill Frisell's quartet with Kermit Driscoll and Hank Roberts:




... and then Tim Berne's Fractured Fairy Tales:




Another nice clip of Baron, with the sans-Roberts Bill Frisell trio after the break: