America - Simon and Garfunkel and a treat for my drummer friends...

Simon and Garfunkel were looking for the America that promised them they could be anything they wanted to be.  They found it - will we reclaim that legacy? 

Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together

I've got some real estate here in my bag

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies

And walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"

It took me four days to hitch-hike from Saginaw

I've come to look for America

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy

I said, "Be careful, his bow tie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"

"We smoked the last one an hour ago"

So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine

And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping,

"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why"

Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike

They've all come to look for America

AII come to look for America

AII come to look for America

And for my drummer friends in the blogsphere:  The late great Larrie Londin.

Hal Blaine, one of the best session drummers of all time, played on the above Simon and Garfunkel clip.  It got me to thinking about another great session drummer that has never been properly recognized (except by some of us drummers.) 

  

I was blessed to have been able to see Larrie at the first Zildjian Days in California in 1981.  I had just spent an intense week at a drum workshop with Carmine Appice at the University of California.  I headed home to Sedona, AZ,  gathered up my husband and headed back to California for Zildjian days with headliner Steve Gadd.  

I'll never forget when Larrie walked on stage.  He was wearing one of his trademark Hawaiian shirts and was easily twice as heavy as he is in this video.  The audience was mostly younger slash and bang metal types, sadly lacking in rudiments,  and you could hear the snickers.  But by the time Larrie was through the entire auditorium erupted in cheers, foot stomping, and was begging for more.  That "old" man (I was 36 at the time and Larrie was 38) showed those young pups a thing or two!

Steve Gadd, on the other hand, was so stoned he could barely stand up (literally), and never really played at all.  So much for being a headliner.  

Larrie tragically  died in 1992 at the age of 48  of a heart attack.  The world of music lost not only a modest and humble man but one of the greatest teachers and drummers ever...

  This video was from 1991.