Jojo Mayer

[markie04drum]

Not too much mention of Jojo yet here on the new forum. Figured time to start

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mZ-s89XkTs[/youtube]

Pretty decent quality. Separated into several parts, but here is the beginning.

[amoergosum]

Janek Gwizdala - Space in Between Promo:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faUrNoWX7HA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJmDiP8MuPw[/youtube]

[matthughen]

Jojo looked like Screech in 1981

embedding has been disabled but the clip is worth a watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jhkPePapXQ

Man, Jojo looks like a kid but he sounds great. Interesting band with Othello ad Ernest Ranglin. Mad props to Jojo for having this in his history.

[Paul Marangoni]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb5XEqb6cXc[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffQHUycof4[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC1UlHPdEo0[/youtube]

[electrizer]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffQHUycof4[/youtube]

The sound of the bass in the last song they play here is just out of this world. And Jojo? He's been there always

[Paul Marangoni]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5aNAh25fL0[/youtube]

[Avi_drums]

Some killer stuff here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma04Nady1nk[/youtube]

You get the sense this is a guy pushing new ideas, not resting on laurels.

[willyz]

Jojo's got a very dynamic touch. He's able to be really articulate at low volumes but can still bring it when he needs to be loud with his vocabulary. Great stuff!

[Gaddabout]

Some killer stuff here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma04Nady1nk[/youtube]

You get the sense this is a guy pushing new ideas, not resting on laurels.

I've never really thought about the connection before, but this is some DeJohnette-flavored stuff. It's interesting to look at this at think back to some older stuff. I think I can see/hear a lot of JDJ in his playing. They share a bouncy-kind of phrasing process that's a bit wider in scope that most of drummers ... they both have large vocabularies and like to play a lot of swunky things. I'd be curious to know if he's ever listed JDJ at an influence.

It took me a LONG time to process JDJ and start to hear some of his genius. I think now, after only 30 years of patient listening, I'm finally getting to the point where I have a taste for him. Maybe I ride the drumming short bus, but it's an acquired taste. I didn't have the same issue with Jojo, but I never had a moment where I felt he was a jazz drummer trying to fake funk. I had to get past that bias with JDJ, which I think I see now was my own disadvantage of seeing him years later, and wasn't paying attention (or alive) when he was innovating.

[thewikiman]

Some killer stuff here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma04Nady1nk[/youtube]

You get the sense this is a guy pushing new ideas, not resting on laurels.

For me he's pushing new ideas into a very much old ideas musical format... The playing and technique is insane but the musical platform via which it is expressed is resting on the same drum'n'bass laurels it has always rested on. Every Jojo improv is like listening in on a Squarepusher jam session circa 1997.

It's not like drum'n'bass itself hasn't moved on in that time, it very much has - and someone like Anders Meinhardt has moved with it.

I used to be really into DJ culture and it annoyed me, as a musician, that all the talent of the top scratch artists was rarely expressed in a musical format that was interesting to listen to for more than a few minutes at a time...