Lavis Praise

Squeeze - Take Me I'm Yours

I'm doing my death-level best to spread out the mortality memorials, so I can't be held responsible for overwhelming everyone with a grief so profound they go sprinting into the nearest woodchipper, you know?

What is it about all these drummers and bass players dying at once, can anyone fill me in? Is their some disastrous rhythm section shortage in The Great Beyond, that all these cats are being summoned home to their eternal reward at once like this?

No, that isn't Philip Glass. When he goes they'll have to pour me into a Pint Glass, I'll be so wrung out.

That's Gilson Lavis -- the drummer of postpunk/powerpop stalwarts Squeeze -- who passed away the other day at 74.

Probably one of the very few drummers who could say they backed both Chuck Berry and Dolly Parton on (unfortunately separate, imagine those two together?) UK tours in the mid 1970s, he joined Squeeze in 1976 after answering their ad when they were forming.

He was with them for their heyday, and left in 1992 to pursue painting, which he became super successful at, with all sorts of gallery shows of his portraits since he moved on from music.

Having grown up adoring Squeeze -- and having always appreciated how he served their eclectic and catchy pop confections so tastefully as their drummer -- there was no way I was not gonna give him his flowers, as the young'uns say, on here.

That's gonna be the guy's calling card as a musician, in the ten centuries from now when they're still rocking Pulling Mussels from the Shell and are again Tempted to spin East Side Story, for instance.

That all of their tunes were both the same and very different and distinct, and that Gilson Lavis never played a single note that didn't prioritize the song and exactly what it needed to both drive and support it.

Anyway, this master of sticks and, later, brushes has moved on to join the ancestors in the forever firmament. So the other day, when I saw my hero PervFesser Goody had worked on and DIMEposted this show here from the pinnacle of Squeeze in 1981, I instantly remembered it was on Bill's Bevy Of Boosted Boots, and that what they were streaming there likely went higher in the spectral analysis -- and, therefore, the audible high end  -- than the 12 kHz he was being forced to wring from a generated FM cassette.

Well, I may not be right about much, but the 20 kHz lossless the stream contained sure was a major improvement, and now -- in honor of Gilson Lavis and after running it by the PervFesser for some minimal pitch adjustments -- we can get this incredible concert circulating in its tastiest, most sonically superior iteration yet.

Squeeze

The Ritz

New York City, New York USA

6.28.1981

01 introduction

02 If I Didn't Love You

03 Another Nail In My Heart

04 Take Me I'm Yours

05 Too Many Teardrops

06 Separate Beds

07 Piccadilly

08 Someone Else's Heart

09 Farfisa Beat

10 I Think I'm Go Go

11 Is That Love

12 Vicky Verky

13 Slightly Drunk

14 Tempted

15 Cool for Cats

16 In Quintessence

17 Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)

18 Yap Yap Yap

19 Slap and Tickle

20 Messed Around

21 Goodbye Girl

22 Labelled with Love

23 There At the Top

24 Up the Junction

25 outro

Total time 1:32:04

disc break goes after Track 14

Glenn Tilbrook - guitar & vocals

Chris Difford - guitar & vocals

Paul Carrack - keyboards & vocals

John Bently - bass

Gilson Lavis - drums

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, repaired, edited and remastered by EN -- 

with minimal speed/pitch adjustments by PervFesser Goody -- November 2025
602 MB FLAC/direct link

I'll be back next weekend, as more rigor mortis sets in, with yet another fallen warrior of sound, and then again on Thanksgiving with what -- speaking of musical deities now departed --  may be shaping up to be a real Feast of St. Anthony, if I do say so.

It would, however, have put another nail in my heart not to tribute Gilson Lavis, who -- after a career supplying the beat to some of the best songs of the Rock era, as well as the portraiture to a thousand faces -- has gone up the junction, but not before leaving us in quintessence. OK, those were bad puns and I Think I'm Go Go now.--J.

6.27.1951 - 11.5.2025

Pascoal Saints Day

Hermeto Pascoal Grupo + Sadao Watanabe - Jegue

I'm sick af with food poisoning from supermarket sushi, but between trips to the porcelain throne I have come to place a true visionary upon his.

His isn't porcelain, though. Pure Platinum.

Most music aficionados know him from a lone cameo he did on a Miles Davis -- it should say all you need to know that MDIII positively worshiped this cat -- record. Although we know that's just the tip of the trip.

When you get into iconic figures like this -- this person is easily one of the most revered musicians ever to come from Brazil, a country that has produced a whole lotta top-ranking players and composers -- it's almost impossible to find adequate or even half-assed words to do them any kind of reasonable justice.

I will say this, however: When I think of music today, and I think of what it's so manifestly lacking, I think of the word organic.

And there's never, ever been, and likely won't ever be, a music person whose output and approach embodied that organic quality more than Hermeto Pascoal, who died at 89 about six weeks ago after an extensive career putting the organic, natural Muse into every iota of sound he made.

An albino from birth and thusly socially challenged by the taunts of other kids, his dad gave him an accordion at age 4 and, well, I'm pretty sure he was glad he did.

PSA: Seriously, if you're a parent reading this, please run out immediately and get your child their musical instrument of choice ASAP, I am just saying.

By seven, he was onto the million flute varieties that would become a main axe for him as his art arc trajectoried through the decades.

From there it was (here comes that word again) an organic progression to the various wind and reed instruments he'd add to his formidable arsenal.

During his come-up he also learned piano, as if he needed to be a virtuoso on yet another thing.

PSA II: Listening parents? This phony AI Autotune assholery may go outta style soon, and you don't want little Johnny and poor l'il Janey to be left out in the cold cutout bin, do you? Hie thee! To thy nearest Music Instrument Emporium forthwith!

Because if you look around you, what you're seeing is what happens when Music is taken out of schools.

Anyway Hermeto Pascoal is a whole lot more than just a nice tune on a wild Miles Electric platter, and I'm bringing you some proof from under a Tokyo sky at the close of the Sizzlin' Seventies.

Hermeto Pascoal Grupo + Sadao Wantanabe

Live Under the Sky '79 

"Brazilian Night"

Denen Coliseum

Tokyo, Japan

7.29.1979

01 introductions

02 Birds

03 Just Cruisin'

04 Manha de Carnaval

05 Samba Em Praia

06 Samba Do Marcos

07 Serenade

08 Jegue

09 California Shower

10 Instant Tokyo

11 Suite Paulistana

12 Montreux

13 Susto

14 Lagoa da Canoa

Total time: 1:55:53

disc break goes after Track 06

Tracks 11-14 are bonus tracks from the Montreux Jazz Festival, Montreux CH 7.20.1979

these are unissued outtakes from the classic 1979 "Ao Vivo Montreux" album on the Atlantic label

Hermeto Pascoal - keyboards, flutes, reeds, pianica, vocals & percussion 

Claudio Araújo Chamie de Queiroz - reeds & flutes 

Antonio Luiz de Santana (Pernambuco) - percussion 

Jovino Jose Dos Santos-Neto - keyboards 

Realcino Lima Filho (Nenê) - drums & percussion 

Rosemarie Pidner (Zabelê) - percussion 

Itiberê Luiz Zwarg - bass 

Nivaldo Ornelas - reeds & flute

Sadao Watanabe - alto & soprano saxophones (Tracks 01-10 only)

the Tokyo portion is sourced from a (likely 1st or 2nd gen) off-air FM cassette capture of the original NHK-FM broadcast

the Montreux portion is sourced from a master off-air FM cassette capture of a broadcast from WBUR-FM in Boston, MA

edited, repaired, slightly remuxed, assembled and remastered for unity by EN, October 2025
725 MB FLAC/direct link

This one has circulated forever, but it's not hard to understand why when you hear this mega-band Hermeto Pascoal is leading, as the audience goes justifiably buck wild.

I will try to sneak in the other death post I have ready after Daylight Savings time hits here in a few hours, but I was compelled to memorialize HP and worked on this show for a bit -- which also features Japanese reed god Sadao Watanabe blowing his mind throughout its two hours of Samba Fusion mayhem, as well as all the Montreux Jazz Festival takes that didn't make HP's 1979 burning live album Ao Vivo -- so it might be in a state worthy of such a galaxy-class Maestro!--J.

6.22.1936 - 9.13.2025

Back-to-Back Jacks: Foday of Remembrance

Foday Musa Suso & Jack DeJohnette - World Wide Funk

I didn't really plan it this way. Not at all.

Originally I was like, OK, Jack DeJohnette is as impactful a musician as any single person I could name has been on my life, but 2 1/2 hours of prime, undercirculated music that didn't even exist as a ROIO until I streamed and steam cleaned it for 12 hours is enough, right?

Of course, I had this other show I wanted to work on where JDJ collaborates with the guru of Gambian kora, Foday Musa Suso. But there's so much stuff to do related to these musical passings, I gotta pick my spots. Naturally I can't stand at this terminal 16 hours at a time, with only Edwards' Chocolate Satin Pie to sustain me, and expect to not lapse into a diabetic coma, or at least some form of hypoglycemic shock.

Well, I put that show -- which circulated 20 years ago, in the old SHN lossless format, in a very volume-lacking DAT transfer -- on last night, because honestly the music is so damn great, I was leaning toward taking a shot at it anyway, despite the joint pain.

Once I discovered that Foday Musa Suso -- essentially the Shuggie Otis of Gambia, and well worthy of a day on here any year ending in an Arabic numeral anyway -- had himself passed away at 75 at the end of May this year, I was opening Audacity faster than one of these 117 MPH sinkers these pitchers are throwing on my muted TV screen.

So in honor of these two friends that have unfortunately gone on to The Great Gig In The Sky recently, I stayed up all night messing with this performance, which was well-captured but for the lacking volume and a slightly drummy mix, which I ever-so-slightly rebalanced with the AI stemsplitting tool. There's also some strange and fascinating electronical flourishes in it on and off that I have no idea the origin of -- it might be Jack, but it happens at points where his hands are occupied percussing, so I can't be certain -- but there's looping and blurpy stuff going on for sure, unless someone put PCP in my grapefruit juice. Again.

We eulogized Jack yesterday, so a bit about FMS, who was an authentic African griot and was 400 years descended from the inventor of the kora. He wasn't just a kora master, but proficient at a bunch of different instruments, some that would be considered Western and some distinctly not.

At 27, in 1977, he emigrated to Chicago, and played with just about everyone there at the time. These eventually came to include Jack DeJohnette, himself a native of the Windy City, with whom he forged a decades-long bond of friendship and music.

The name with whom I most associate Foday Musa Suso in my tiny, provincial mind is that of Herbie Hancock, and I think the first time I remember ever hearing anyone play the kora was FMS on the pianist's 1984 electronic masterpiece Sound System.

When you hear what these two giants get up to in this 66 minutes of blissness, you'll understand why I had to rinse this one in the washer and get it blasting.

Foday Musa Suso & Jack DeJohnette

Jazzfestival 2002

Otto Gruber Hall

Saalfelden, Austria

8.23.2002

01 JDJ introduces the concert 

02 Ocean Wave

03 Ancient Techno 

04 Rose Garden

05 World Wide Funk

06 'Gouni

07 Kaira

08 Makola

09 Mountain Love Dance

Total time: 1:05:38

Foday Musa Suso - kora, doussn'gouni & vocals

Jack DeJohnette - drums, percussion & vocals

plus unidentified electronics

soundboard DAT of indeterminate origin

very slightly remux-rebalanced, edited and remastered for unity by EN, October 2025
347 MB FLAC/direct link

I have even more mortality, queued up like the line for an overdosed starlet around the rainy funeral home, in the coming days, but this show was so cool -- and I love JDJ and FMS just that much -- that I felt compelled to pare, flair and share their paired wares from the very first time, 23 years ago, they met on a stage.--J.

2.18.1950 - 5.25.2025                     8.9.1942 - 10.26.2025

Walkoff Jack

Jack DeJohnette's Directions - Eiderdown III

You can surmise how much I hate writing these, but the deaths are piling up worse than the trash on the streets of Manhattan during a 1970s garbageworkers' strike. So I'm using this week to catch up to them all, beginning with this one, which is as devastating as any.

This backyard pic was taken 48 hours before he passed, which made a lot of folks disbelieve the initial reports the other night. Annual checkups might be in order, as much as I distrust for-profit medicine.

The next morning, it somehow all turned out to be sad but true, and I began the Sound Eulogy Process that's been working way OT of late.

To acknowledge this to represent as big of a loss as the death of any possible living musician is somehow an understatement, something I know I'm well known for the world over.

I almost don't know what to say about him. The breadth of his talents and the meaning of his music to me are so extensive as to be nearly indescribable.

What can you say? Is it even possible, in a human life, to have a more tremendous and as lasting of an impact, across such a wide stylistic spectrum, upon one's chosen field than this one?

He really came to the fore in the mid 1960s, when Charles Lloyd hired him as the drummer in that wild quartet with Keith Jarrett.

The legend has it that prior to then, Herbie Hancock had him in his band as the bass player for several months before he realized, hey wait a minute... this guy is really a drummer that plays the drums with the sensitivity and melodicism of a pianist, and he's a damn good pianist too.

He also played reeds, you know. There's a whole sequence in this concert I am about to share where he goes off on tenor sax and duets with Alex Foster, who is at that moment duetting with himself via a very Brian Eno-esque, Roxy Music 2 H.B. Echoplex effect.

Just in the course of the 2 1/2 hours of this show, he bounces from electric keyboards to drums to piano to horn. I imagine if they'd have gone on longer those nights 50 years ago in SF, he'd have eventually seized the bass as well. And maybe sang, and played guitar with his teeth.

That's the thing though, isn't it? When some cats switch from their primary instrument -- what folks think of them as a player of when they spring to mind -- you hear the downgrade in expressive possibilities immediately. If you don't agree, try Ornette on violin sometime. Not that I don't adore Ornette on anything, but you hear the difference from alto to that.

With today's dearly departed deity -- whom most people think of as one of the best drummers ever to grip sticks -- that switch from axe to axe was always a transition from strength to strength.

He's gone now, having passed on suddenly two days ago at 83. Gone, but for the irrevocable fact that the things he did whilst upright and aboveground are so immortal, they couldn't even build a statue to Jack DeJohnette, because such an obsidian edifice would be too static and lifeless to capture the diverse, ever-in-motion life essence of the man.

Jack DeJohnette's Directions

Great American Music Hall

San Francisco, California USA

10.10+11.1975

01 One for Devadip and the Professor

02 Cosmic Chicken/drum solo

03 The Vikings Are Coming

04 Memories/Eiderdown I

05 Eiderdown II

06 Untitled/drum solo

07 Memories II

08 Malibu Reggae

09 Eiderdown III

Total time: 2:31:57

disc break goes after Track 04

Tracks 01-04 & 9: 10.10.1975

Tracks 05-08: 10.11.1975

Jack DeJohnette - drums, keyboards & tenor saxophone 

John Abercrombie - guitar 

Alex Foster - alto & tenor saxophones

Mike Richmond - bass

256/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault

spectral analysis is lossless past the 16 kHz FM cutoff

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited & remastered by EN, October 2025
883 MB FLAC/direct link

So there's 151 minutes of evidence I dragged off Bill's Boots, a minimal fragment to slightly substantiate the deserved superlatives if you don't believe what I just typed. It sounded kinda flat as a pancake sonically, but once I put it in the dishwasher for 12 hours it got clean enough to eat off.

I'll be back sooner than I wanna be, but as long as music figures the inapproachable, toppermost caliber of Jack DeJohnette are gonna keep up and dying, I guess it's gonna be up to people like me to make sure the things they left behind are in the best shape they can be. This, as part of my Cultural Heritage Immortality Program, a necessary innovation when the CHIPs are down like they are.

So ten trillion Thank Yous, of course, to Jack DeJohnette for a lifetime of transcendent and peerless beauty, ongoing since I first heard Miles' Live-Evil -- what JDJ and Airto Moreira get into on that platter basically recalibrates human DNA permanently after 90 seconds of the first track -- and asked "What is this music?!?"--J.

8.9.1942 - 10.26.2025