Most Valuable Player

"Classic" Bontuku (!) would frequently award the "most valuable player" award at the end of the gig to whomever had acquitted themselves most admirably. Usually it was a musician, but occassionally it was one of the guys who helped us as crew.

I don't recall whose invention this was...

Riot at Washington School

We had a summer gig at Washington School in Urbana. (I went to this school for Kindergarten-2nd grade, by the way.) Washington is a magnet school, which incidentally was the first place I was exposed to the PLATO computer system, which had occupied alot of my time when I was in school.

This was a Park District gig. I remember this gig well, because Mouse couldn't be there for the gig (this was probably the summer of our discontent - summer 1986, then?), and I had scrambled to find a sub for him. The sub was Fritz Wolf, who is the brother of my best friend from High School, and who knew Oscar because Oscar had instructed the HS marching band drumline at Central HS in the late 1970s.

We were playing on the "showmobile", which you may recall is the Park District's mobile stage...pretty roomy, built-in lights, etc. They have several of them and still use them today.

I don't recall whether there were other players missing. I feel like we were short-handed, but it was a long time ago.

Anyway, we played for about a half hour, and someone got in a fight. I remember some authority figure coming up and getting on the mic and berating the crowd that, because they couldn't behave, they were going to have to stop the show. I don't remember actually seeing the fight in question.

Welcome (in advance) to New Bontuku folks

I'm opening the floodgates, no sense in keeping all the fun to ourselves.

Welcome in advance to the Wachamba/New Bontuku folks.

In the interests of clarity, let's refer to the band you guys played with as Wachamba or Wachamba-Bontuku or New Bontuku, that way the guys who weren't involved with your band can tell what posts are relevent to them.

This Blog will be googled so don't say anything here you wouldn't want google to blab about.

Pre-Bontuku Oscar

Some of Oscar's music from Ghana is available on a couple of compilation CDs.

Here's one, he's on the first track. This is Olufeme (presumably no relation to our version):

Ghana Soundz, Volume 2

The other CD is available there but doesn't have sound clips available. Apparently "Bukom Mashie" was a big hit with the Afro-world crowd.

Oscar recorded a few albums while in the U.S. I can recall one that was a two-color cover with Oscar sitting on the ground cross-legged playing flute (I could be wrong on this, I have another album with a similar pose from a saxophonist I know). The background cover was kind of yellow and the foreground color was brown. I don't recall the contents of the album, except that it seemed very different from what we played, and probably didn't interest me much at the time.

I don't know for certain, this may or may not have been on the Delta label that did "Friends" and "Bontuku". Delta was the local vinyl replication place of choice for the U/Illinois music department in the 1970s.

I can't find my copy of that album now. I've still got "Friends, the Music of Two Continents". My name is consistently misspelled in the liner notes.

The Drumming

As I recall, Oscar would start every gig out with drumming. I think that in the earliest stages, it was just Oscar and Moody, then Oscar and Moody and Bruce (?), then eventually all of us (though I may be crossing wires with later Bontuku configurations).

I know that Moody was frustrated that the drumming hadn't gotten hipper and more advanced. I don't recall how much we actually rehearsed. I know I was pretty limited....a couple of bell patterns, a couple of drum patterns. Sometimes Moody or Oscar would feed me a line. That was a point where I really learned the value of ensemble-think -- what I was doing was laying down part of the bedrock, and Oscar and Moody would take care of being creative.

At some point there was a shift from opening the band up inside to starting outside. That is, everybody would grab a drum or bell or talking drum or whatever, and Oscar would begin the routine on the steps of Nature's Table. The idea, I think, was to (a) maybe draw in some crowd from outside who might not know what was going on, and (b) to get everybody into the crowd playing. We'd walk through, then grab some space in the big square in front of the counter/bathrooms and play there for awhile for whomever wanted to dance. Eventually we'd make our way to the bandstand.

The drum sound really changed alot when they pulled out that big drum. I don't remember it being used early on, so I don't know whether it was an acquisition or what, but it was like a bass drum that slung over the shoulder, and would be played with a bent mallet like the ones we used with the talking drums. My recollection is that only Oscar or Moody played that drum.

There was also a bit of a change later as the Adjido Drum Club was formed. I think these guys might have opened up for Bontuku. This was alot more "serious" than anything we non-drummers were inclined to get involved with. I remember that Danny Deckard was involved. This might have been post-Wachamba. The "New Bontuku" guys will have a better sense about this.

The Music

Bruce pointed out that after awhile, you could start to pick out patterns in the music.

(I don't know if it was Oscar's legendary numeric system as much as the fact that you can only syncopate 4 sixteenths so many ways.)

Oscar would also voice in very rudimentary ways, nothing more complicated than a minor7, dominant7, or 6th chord, and always written in a stacked cluster. So you were never playing a weird extension on a chord. I'm sure it was this way by design.

The "Phase One" charts were just head charts with a simple melody over a guitar and bass riff and open blowing.

It seemed like the "Phase Three" charts were more complicated in that they were longer and had different sections in them. Also, Oscar started putting the trombone part playing countermelodies against the upper horns.

"Phase Five" just seemed to be a compositional extension of "Phase Three"...trickier lines, longer forms, less for the rock and roll crowd to hold their hat on.

I don't recall that Oscar ever wrote anything we couldn't play.

House Parties, Frat Parties

Ah, house parties. I can't remember any of them, they all run together.

Bruce related some interesting stories about a 101 S. Lincoln party.

What does the Blogtuku Collective Consciousness recall about these sundry and salicious events?

Guido's Revenge

I don't remember much about the gig where Guido figured so prominently.

Guido Sinclair, you all may recall, was the fixture at the Table. Salem cigarette in one hand, can of Old Style in the other, Guido was often taking cover (and, some suspected, a little something for himself) when he wasn't playing with his own bands. (Guido's real name was Sinclair Greenwell, by the way.)

Bruce recalls the front end of this story, and it kind of rings a bell with me when I read his mention of it. Guido hijacked the microphone on a gig and apparently told the crowd that Oscar owed him money. My recollection is that Guido thought Oscar had broken something, like a child's toy piano or something. I must not have thought too much of it at the time, except probably that Guido didn't usually do shit like that, and certainly must not have thought anything would come of it, because I was really suprised when the ruckus occurred at the end of the gig.

We all remember that there was a storeroom in the back of the Table. Often this was the location for pre-gig preparation by band and/or staff and/or owner, and apparently this was where Oscar was taking care of counting out the money (cow, cow, cow) from the gig.

Apparently Guido went back and confronted Oscar about the money Oscar supposedly owed Guido, and when Oscar refused, Guido pulled out or grabbed a knife. My recollection of Oscar's account was that he kicked him (Oscar wore those heavy boots all the time) backwards and exited post-haste.

I was outside, and I remember Oscar walking out very rapidly. I don't remember the details from that point on, except that he and Moody went to the payphone at the other side of the parking lot and proceeded to call the cops. I think Guido must have split out the side door, I don't remember him appearing again.

I also don't recall exactly what came of that. Certainly Guido didn't spend any time in jail for it, so I assume the charges were dropped.

Union Station (Springfield)

I recall a gig we did at Union Station in Springfield.

We carpooled over. Somehow we'd scored a couple of rooms at a Springfield hotel, presumably near the gig. I drove 3-4 over, we were the second car and left long enough after that the first car (which included Fitz) made it to the hotel and checked in ahead of time.

(You may remember that on the drive over, we passed "Friends Creek", which we thought was funny, as we'd just gotten done working on Oscar's album, "Friends, the Music of Three Continents".)

We got to the hotel and I decided to pull a fast one, we got into the second room and I called the other one, Fitz answered, and I told him we'd had car trouble and were stuck in Mechanicsburg, which is a little town about halfway between Champaign and Springfield. I broke up before I could figure out whether I'd fooled him (he said I hadn't).

At some point in the room I was in, Montana decided to demonstrate how to light one's own gas. I must say I've never seen that before or since (and I'm not complaining). This was also the trip where we dubbed the giant blue lounge pillow the "Big Blue Duke". I think that there was some simulated "duking" of one of the band members or crew. (The "Blue Duke" monicker ended up being a feature of the Modern Humans, as well.)

Anyway, we got to the gig, and the setup was kind of weird, the room was oblong, so we had to set up with a long brick wall to our backs. I have no recollection of how the gig went, but I do recall that we found Moody napping in the car after the gig and several pints of Guinness.

We went back, and drank beer until late into the evening. Curt, of course, didn't drink beer at all then, so he sat around regailing us as The Human Jukebox. (Ouch!)

It seems to me that at some point someone either got locked out while on a beer run or we had to work out something so they didn't get locked out.

Anyone else recall this gig?

Wow, didn't realize...

Next February, Oscar will be 70 years old. How about that.

The Beginning

Mitch recalls that we started up in Fall, 1985, and that Oscar had already been rehearsing the rhythm section before the horn players joined up.

Apparently Mordecai was recruiting players and roped in Curt and Mitch at the same time. It seems to me I came in after Mitch.

Mark Dziuba reportedly played the first gig on afr. drums, a happy hour at Nature's Table, then left because the band was too loud.

I don't remember this gig, I'm not sure if I was involved or not.

Who remembers more details on how the band formed up?

Welcome to Blogtuku

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