KING OF THE SWINGERS
(Formerly THE FIRE SONG from
the JUNGLE BOOK by Louis Prima)
The year was 1994, and I was working at the GILSON CAFE AND CINEMA on weekends. The Jazz Lounge was upstairs at the time. There were very late nights. I’d been playing in a rock band for 2 years by then and thought that rock musicians were badass. I learned pretty quickly that Jazz musicians were a notch up on the badass meter. And that they partied a little harder, believe it or not. They just weren’t as stupid about it, and they dressed better.
I heard a ton of music that year and it assuredly seeped into my brain. One thing I took from those nights was how the drummers could make anything into anything else just by laying off of the hi-hats and cymbals. They also sparingly used the bass drum, which was the complete opposite of how I though you played a drumset.
I watched the JUNGLE BOOK one night on TV, and my Dad told me that Louis Prima (pronounced LOO-EE) was a killer Jazz musician back in the day. I hadn’t even thought about the music in Disney films being music. Those were cartoons, right? So I bought a Disney CD of theme songs and MIND WIDENED. I learned the chords to THE FIRE SONG immediately. I’d play that for the rest of my life at almost every show. Who the heck doesn’t love that part of the JUNGLE BOOK? Every show you’d play the song at would instantly become a much happier place after you played that song. You’d forget all the shit in your life and regress back to the great feelings you had while watching King Looie dance around Moglii during the movie.
Christopher Eddy EVENTUALLY used a multi-pad electric drum thingy (which he would eventually use at the XL CENTER when we played there.) (What?) (I’ll explain on another post later on.) Here he used some analog bongos, (now called Analongos) and an Anaconga. And stuff.
Recorded by Christopher on his NC-17 microphone at Starbucks in Granby, CT in 2006.
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