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Blair's beat
Ex-Chicagoan has his own way of playing the standards
Michael Nejman
Scanning errors uncorrected...
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When Elvis Costello takes the stage Sunday at Alpine Valley right behind him will be former Chicagoan Michael Blair
Blair recently was featured in Musician and Modern Drum mer magazines for his percus sion skills which arc tional if not eccentric So while Costello sings and strums his guitar don't be surprised when Blair starts banging on '62 Olds 88 hubcap Enough dogs had chased it so it has its own little charm whacking Chinese opera gong to make it yelp like Martian-dog bark or playing whiplash and anvil This drumming without boundaries approach is all part of Blair's philosophy of music don't believe in forcing song to fit certain structure lie explained like to bring something new to what song can be like the process of decomposition Decomposition In way it s euphemism for unbridled improvisation Blair said For instance you take basic song that sounds like lot of other songs and maybe you start switching sec tions around You start playing parts backward and forward and you experiment with non- traditional instrumentation It's an exciting approach to music that Blair has endorsed since his school days at the University of Illinois in Cham paign where he enrolled in the master s program in percussion performance could go from playing in the opera to doing an avant- garde chamber concert to play ing in modern-dance concert to conducting the percussion ensemble to playing in rock band at fraternity and wanted to do all of that Blair said
He was plucked from Cham paign to tour with the Paul Winter Consort in the spring of '77 for about year Then it was on to New York to teach master s classes in percussion play the club scene and like most struggling artists work for catering company would cut my hair get in my tuxedo and serve impor tant people he said The coolest thing did was work as the bartender for Madonna's bridal shower In 1985, Tom Waits dis covered Blair's talent for mak ing strange noises and called him to work on the Rain Dogs album Then he brought Blair to Chicago in the spring of '86 to work with him on Frank's Wild Years play produced in cooperation with the Step- Theatre and directed by Gary Sinise Between work ing on the theatrical produc tion and later recording an album of the same name in Chicago's Universal Studios Blair lived in the Rogers Park area After nine years of living in Manhattan he said it was refreshing to have friendlier quieter and safer setting to live in But as his career began to bloom and commuting to Los Angeles and New York became constant necessity Blair re returned to New York 18 months later Although he couldn't live in the city of his choice he began to play with the artists he ad mired always like the way Elvis Costello wrote he said
Elvis is big Waits fan so during our European tour in '85 Elvis came to London and Paris to see the show hang out and be sociable It was at the last show of the Waits tour in Los Angeles when Costello and producer T- Bone Burnett approached Blair to play the marimba on Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood on the King of America album Blair played on the songs and then returned to work with Waits on Frank's Wild Years Several months later Costel lo came to Chicago when he accompanied his wife Cait O'Riordan during her tour with the Pogues Inevitably they all went to see Waits in Frank's Wild Years Tom Elvis the Pogues ev eryone ended up at Holstein's on Lincoln Avenue that night Blair said Elvis and Tom per formed together and then we all got rip-roaring drunk and watched the sun rise Shortly after that night Costello asked Blair to tour with his band the Con federates during 1986. He then solicited Blair to work on Spike the critically ac claimed album Costello re leased earlier this year Costello wanted me to work on 'Spike' right from the begin ning to work on the ar rangements and become part of the core group to which other people would be added Blair said Actually Elvis T-Bone and made up that core Blair also has recently been involved in several other al bums many of which will be released in the next few months including projects by Ireland's Gavin Friday and poet Allen Ginsberg But Blair ultimately wants to release his own record Producer Hal Willner and have already started to plan record Blair said It'll be my own version of deconstructing pop songs
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