Just a note to tell you he was Jeff Beck’s drummer last night.<\/p>\n
Rhonda Smith played bass with Prince, as well as Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.\u00c2\u00a0 And Jason Rebello has played keyboards with Sting and Chaka Khan.\u00c2\u00a0 And all three were incredible, but I want to focus on Mr. Walden.\u00c2\u00a0 Whom I remembered as being announced for this tour, but didn’t recognize on sight.<\/p>\n
But you don’t have to recognize a player to realize he’s great.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t confuse fame with talent.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve been doing that for far too long.\u00c2\u00a0 The machine tells us to follow someone, we go to the gig and applaud, and ultimately we forget them.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re creatures of the media more than music.\u00c2\u00a0 Then there are others who never get the big push, but manage to eke out careers, sometimes quite successfully, and when you’re exposed to them, you’re wowed.<\/p>\n
I could reel off some of Mr. Walden’s credits.\u00c2\u00a0 I could send you to his Wikipedia page.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not the point.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching him last night I was mesmerized not only by his power, but his fills, how he turned his kit into a musical instrument.\u00c2\u00a0 He just wasn’t banging, he just wasn’t performing, he was making music!\u00c2\u00a0 Tying down the bottom with Ms. Pierce.\u00c2\u00a0 And bottom doesn’t have to be plodding.\u00c2\u00a0 These guys were dancing all around down there.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, they provided a foundation.<\/p>\n
Used to be we revered people for their musicianship.<\/p>\n
Then we applauded them for their dancing.\u00c2\u00a0 And now it’s about the production, the show.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s talent that ultimately survives.\u00c2\u00a0 And that requires dedication and practice. 10,000 hours alone in your room working it out on your instrument as opposed to playing the keyboard on your computer, spreading the word how great you are.<\/p>\n
This guy was not the main attraction.\u00c2\u00a0 He was support, although he did more than that on stage, he was a vibrant member of the ensemble.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m telling you about him because he was so damn good!\u00c2\u00a0 The way he held the cymbals and hit them, the way he rat-a-tatted on the drums in a way that energized me, made me pay attention, drew me in and kept me there.<\/p>\n
This is the future of music.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a scrim between audience and performer, keeping each separate, but a transmission from player to listener, a bonding.\u00c2\u00a0 Which happens mostly live these days, since recordings are so manipulated.\u00c2\u00a0 And when you experience it you tell everyone you know, because you want to share the joy, you want to turn them on to something so great.\u00c2\u00a0 And you never forget it.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what great music, great playing is…indelible.<\/p>\n
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Just a note to tell you he was Jeff Beck’s drummer last night. Rhonda Smith played bass with Prince, as well as Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.\u00c2\u00a0 And Jason Rebello has played keyboards with Sting and Chaka Khan.\u00c2\u00a0 And all three were incredible, but I want to focus on Mr. Walden.\u00c2\u00a0 Whom I remembered as being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-JO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}