Influences: Bato Bato

My Dad’s all time fav. My Dad was a jazz musician – played double bass in Jazz bands in Chicago in the 50’s. While touring around the Chicago scene my Dad was invited to play with Count Basie’s band one night, he met Gene Krupa – Gene showed his boots that laced up half way to his knee – said it was for faster kicks. Hearing these stories and records… Subconsciously I know this is what put me on to playing drums from day one.

My brother Mark was always playing music, he was / still is a shredder on all instruments – early 80’s I remember sitting in his room listening to him play guitar – big chorus – big phase. This was one of the first tracks I latched on to being around big bro – there was something different and unconventional about it that made me utterly curious – it felt adult yet had some ska / punk undertones. Anyway, that’s this..

My other brother Cameron would drive me in his VW wagon – he had an array of tapes in the glove box – he would draw all of the albums / artists names with ball point pen on the labels. I can still remember the cracking sound of this tape popping in the deck… and his CRAMPS horror font on the label.

When we moved to London in 86’ my Dad would tape me pirate radio shows. I still want to know how he found them but I specifically remember a jungle special Kiss FM tape. My hero.

In 92’ we moved back to California- really got in to beats, all that early east coast 90’s raw chopped up jazz breaks same with the west coast G-funk baselines, belt in the washing machine snares, west coast leads…

I was introduced to Jah Shaka & Eden Ahbez at the same time. Both opposing sides of the sound spectrum yet hold as much inspiration weight equally. My close friend Jason Mendez put me on to both of these seminal recordings. Message music.

Eden’s message, music and poetry are great examples for human sustainability – to be happy living with with less by appreciating the natural world… Also – He wasn’t a hippy… He was a nature boy – a big difference, a lot to be said for that. He would talk about the hippy’s coming in and tearing up the place.. It took a prophet to release this kind of music in the time of booming industrialisation, America was not ready for this… The exotic sounds, so live and percussive. Endless listens!

1000% power. Limited resources and lifted states. Essential business. The overall philosophy of this production and the lifestyle that gives me total confidence that the roots man way of life is the end all of truth.

When I first moved to LA in 2002 I met a group of Brazilians – they introduced me to a lot of music – I would spend a lot of time with this crew. I had a girlfriend at that time as well from Rio, her parents gave me the Tom Jobim e Convaidados CD. Endless respect and admiration for the Brazilian beat and swung rhythms.

This album was a huge impact on me – such a strong independent production. To know he played, produced and wrote these tracks.. Early drum machine pioneer.. He came from a heavy duty music family – touring as a kid etc – later on he broke out and and got in to some forward thinking technique and approach to song structure etc, again like the Eden record – at the time this was not happening, at least on Shuggies level, way ahead. The title says it all.