Tony Levin on drummers

[SunByrne]

Not a Tony story, but the last post reminded me of something. I was hanging out with Pat Mastelotto outside a Stickmen/Power Trio concert years ago,

Very cool. I saw Stick Men in 2024, great show.

and a kid comes up and says that he hated to interrupt, but he just had to tell Pat how cool he thought a recent Crimson DVD was – especially the communication between Trey Gunn and Pat, where Trey kept walking over and talking to him. Pat thanked him, and when the kid moved on, he told me he didn’t have the heart to tell him, but every time Trey walked over it was to shout “Where the F is the one?”

HAHAHAHAHA... that's hilarious. There's no shortage of Crimson songs where losing track of the 1 is pretty understandable, though.

 

[Dave Klausner]

And it doesn’t help that often the band is playing in different time signatures. Thrak, for example, has half the band in 5/4 and half in 7/4. That means that they share a downbeat every 35 beats (5 measures of 7, or 7 measures of 5). I don’t recall the tune, but Belew said they were playing a gig where they missed the shared downbeat to go to the next section, and for the time signature he was playing in, it meant they had to cycle through something like 42 bars before another shared downbeat!

 

[jerry]

The almost reverential way he sings "Steve Gadd" is so indicative of how humble Tony still can be, despite having played with ALL THOSE DRUMMERS!!!!

They both came up from the Rochester NY and Eastman school of music scene.