When I got the dates for Bonnaroo 2010 I didn’t think I’d be writing an obituary — much less two, with one obituary about an artist who didn’t play in the set I filmed. But before I look forward, I have to look back. Here are two amazing clips — a tribute to Roc Raida, and !!! delivering a fully classic set at Bonnaroo 2008.
Bonnaroo 2004: I’m still fairly new and two of the shows that make me feel permanently at home come from Patti Smith, and the X-Ecutioners. I’d known and loved the X-Men to the point of taking them for granted and maybe I didn’t need to hear the Apache break…but I went to their set because as someone who’s been collecting vinyl since 1972 and sweating the DJ ever since, it’s a part of me. And seeing them get very grateful bodies moving, while, as it happened, Praxis featuring Bernie Worrel Buckethead, Lily Hayden, et al, played next door creating a mystical sound bleed, including Maggot Brain which reminded me of when I was 12(?) and I got the 33 1/3 7” with the little hole and this devastating tune on the B-side, and left me sporting a Kool-Aid smile the rest of that night, and made Bonnaroo a sort of homecoming…there’s nothing like feeling very deeply nuanced memories of your earliest days of music love and hero worship as you find yourself seemingly very far from home. It physically hurts me that I don’t have any footage, but I, like many there that night, carry that set in my heart forever. It’s such a mean irony that Roc Raida, who’s dharma was the meticulous yet Zen understanding of the passing of infinity through a single beat, would shuffle off this mortal coil because of a freak accident affecting the beat of his own large heart. RIP Roc Raida, and Thank You for that night in Tennessee.
Bonnaroo 2008: !!!’s set at Bonnaroo remains one-of my all-time favorite sets, anywhere, ever. To my mind — and you might laugh at this — they epitomized what a jam band should sound like…I know that sounds weird, but anyone who was at that set will attest to the fact that they were seriously trucking through all kinds of rhythms, from nervy, we-got-the-bus-on-the-road-full-speed-ahead ‘Dead-style windings through Latin percussion and synth grooves, with lotsa straight-up knob-twittled squelchy, dancey, funk-slash-digi-funk. I’m looking forward to singer Shanon Funchess’s full-length and live dates as A Rose Parade, with Gerard Smith from TV On The Radio. I had to include a hard–working roadie who had been keen to get shit done quickly so’s he could lively up himself in the pit, which he did, and lead singer Nic Offer feeds off of his energy as they both bust some earnest moves. Another dude working the gate cracked me up, griping that he’d missed his chance at a beer run because he had to hang back and escort the “fuckin’ Olson Twins” in to what M.I.A. dubbed her “last show ever!” — which it wasn’t, thankfully. By way of The Fates adding insult to injury to the Mr. Pissed-off Gatekeeper, when he finally made it to Wal-Mart much later to get beer, he was mocked further by the presence of “Olson twins merch everywhere”.
I’m posting !!!’s set as a celebration of what the drummer brings to a band. Performing here is drummer Paul Quattrone, of whom who I think the irreplaceable Gerhardt Fuchs would approve. Fuchs who also died tragically this year, wasn’t at Bonnaroo 2008 because, as a gifted in-demand muso, he was seemingly everywhere at once playing in multiple bands, including mainstay The Juan MacLean. Now, like Roc Raida, he really is everywhere at once. Looking back at this footage now, it kinda feels like Offer is the band’s Shaman, howling with both pain of loss and celebration of rhythm’s spirit as well as its future ghosts, and when it all ends with a slo-mo of Joe Everyfest being hoisted skyward by his peers, well, that just feels like a wish to defy gravity symbolically in the service of never letting any one else fall – if only….
RIP Anthony Williams, AKA Grand Master Roc Raida and Gerhardt “Jerry” Fuchs, of whom it can be said amongst so many other things: they played exquisitely well with others.
They lived the art of never missing a beat…
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