#ron edgar

[sixtiesgaragefuzzbeatpsychyeye]

The Music Machine

'Where the Action Is',

California, US, 1966

[theelaggers]

[julio-viernes]

___

Que no se te olvide el guante, Ron.

http://magicpopcat.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/muere-ron-edgar-de-los-music-machine.html

[drumtumblr]

Ron Edgar on The Millennium's "Prelude" (about 9 seconds in)

The Millennium was a short-lived 60s supergroup of California musicians (mostly session guys and sidemen) assembled by producer/songwriter Curt Boettcher.  Boettcher had his fingers in a lot of projects in the 60s and 70s, but The Millennium's sole album, Begin (1968), was meant to be his commercial breakthrough.  The most expensive album ever released on the Columbia label at the time, Begin initially tanked and only achieved critical acclaim and a cult following years later.

Despite The Millennium's reputation as Boettcher's baby, the songwriting credits are pretty well-distributed among the band members, with drummer Ron Edgar and multi-instrumentalist Doug Rhodes splitting credit for "Prelude."  With this in mind, it's hard to determine if it was Edgar, Rhodes, Boettcher, or his co-producer Keith Olsen who came up with the brilliant idea of laying that slightly over-driven, booming, funky groove over harpsichord, congas, and piano. 

Responsibility aside, this short section seems to exist out of time.  In sound, if not construction, it anticipates sample-based works like DJ Shadow's Endtroducing (1996), on which heavy, echoed funk beats over classical instruments essentially becomes a style in itself.  The boom of the drums and Edgar's approach to the rhythm is also oddly Bonhamesque, considering that Begin predates the first Led Zeppelin album by a year.  I also wouldn't at all be surprised to find out that the New Pornographers were going for a specifically Millennium-inspired juxtaposition of heavy drums and pop hooks on Twin Cinema, the album on which Kurt Dahle's drums were first bumped up in the mix and polished with that Bonham sound.

The Millennium doesn't pursue this sound again on Begin.  In fact, the rest of the album, while stylistically diverse, is relatively laid-back (far more along the lines of "To Claudia on Thursday," which "Prelude" segues into) and never as weirdly anachronistic as its intro song.  As far as reeling in the listeners, though, "Prelude" is one for the ages.

* You might say the New Pornographers bore some superficial resemblances to The Millennium in their early supergroup-without-any-famous-people years; that is, before A.C. Newman (solo edition), Dan Bejar's Destroyer, and mostly Neko Case overturned that model.  In any case, given Carl Newman's affection for baroque pop and his previous band Zumpano, there's virtually no way he's not very familiar with The Millennium.