LogFAQs > #964246567

19nd
Game: DrumMania
Title: Waza
Composer: Jimmy Weckl
Nominator: @Janus5k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtlE0VdAoyE

I JUST had a funny moment of realization. Im not entirely sure if this intentional or not but.. The drum solo/fill at :04 (or maybe even some of the others) is reminding me very hard of chick corea elektric band to the point I think it may even be exactly the same as a drum bit in an actual chick corea elektric band song (but I haven't been able to figure out exactly which chick corea elektric band song I'm thinking of).

This is significant because well...what's the name of Chick Corea Elektric Band's drummer? Dave WECKL. And Jimmy weckl as an alias is obviously a reference to him. But despite always having considered the name reference obvious, I never really thought much about in exactly which ways jimmy weckl sounded like Dave weckl beyond "both jazz fusion" until just now! they always seemed pretty distinct from each other to me, despite the obvious influence. but now I wonder if there actually really are a bunch of CCEB references in his stuff

i think my first exposure to chick corea elektric band specifically was possibly this exact youtube video?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH12eN8tCzw

and that video is so funny.,...it is in japan, maybe there is a possibility that Harumi "Jimmy Weckl" Ueko is actually one of the audience members of that video?! i wonder if you can see his blurry body... anyways i have linked tghat video because it shows Dave Weckl acting so crazy in those drums, so you might get what i mean, a bit. another example, for your use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyglNYoXw6M

dave weckl in the 80s and 90s. man that guy was so cool. i am so mad that some old guy told him he was too cool and made him stop having those dense machine rhythms for a while; but now he is cool again now that he has not been thwarted by evil old people who don't like music that sounds like rhythm game fake fusion

i remember a pretty distinct moment my taste majorly shifted that started with b8, one that might be a bit surprising:

- I've long described myself as a fan of jazz fusion, and was in jazz bands since I was quite young and as i said it was one of the most prominent elements of most of my life. But despite that, my exposure to particularly harmonically unusual jazz fusion was very limited initially. In my head "fusion" was mostly like...metheny, and some smoother or more "modern sounding" stuff but nothing tonally particularly crazy. at least not overtly, the fusion i'd heard was /complex/ but very subtle about its complexities, etc

- Then "Jimmy wekcl icicles " from jubeat got nominated for vgmc and I basically exploded. It was soooo0 off-the-wall harmonically ridiculous like...any individual layer of it would sound like totally "wrong" random notes. But every element together created something somehow cohesive even if overstimulating. i was obsessed with the song and could not stop drowning myself in its material

- Now like. Thats my baseline for what "jazz fusion" means when I say I like it and want it. It opened up my world pretty profoundly. I was already familiar with chick corea so the weckl connection was obvious, but I hadn't heard much that took this stuff /that/ far in the direction of chaotic rhythms and challenging chords

- It solidified jazz fusion as a more specifically favorite category to me. Rather than broadly "jazz" that i described myself as aligned with before. I wanted this crazy stuff and never really looked back !!

i know a lot more fusion these days and could list endless icicles-esque examples, but it really shook up my perception of what jazz and fusion could be. i actually probably underestimate how profound an influence jimmy weckl was on me as a result.

WAZA relative to other jimmy weckl is, hmm. well nothing's ever been able to compete with icicles for me for some reason, but it's pretty great. i have a hard time talking about it specifically (why this writeup is "talking about [the genre] or artist" but) BUIT it's good. i like how you can't latch on to what exact tempo the track is from the way it starts, but then it eventually settles into it's adventurous chaos. i think it exemplifies a lot of the stuff i like about fusion in general...the way it keeps these excessively high levels of intricacy to a point it's some of the most difficult stuff most people could attempt to analyze BUT it never actually sounds like it's doing that for the sa ke of it. i mean some people might say this is "complexity for the sake of complexity" and they wouldn't be wrong...(and i think of complexity-for-the-sake-of-complexity as a GOOD thing) but, there's a lot of elements here, where they don't even sound complex at all! they sound "groovy" and they sound "smooth" and whatever. but when you actually try to pick apart what's happening it's fucking wild and bizarre. it's kinda like what i alluded to about icicles, any individual layer in isolation sounds like basically random notes, but when mixed together it makes the whole thing together make way more sense. this song is full of stuff that is WAaaay weirder than it sounds. it's also full of stuff that sounds way weirder than it is (like the fact that the whole thing is just 'weird 4/4' haha)

great tune that reminds me of why this guy is one of the most influential musicians on my tastes