Classic Rock, Exactly as It Was
Thanks to Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, residents of the South Fork have had plenty of remedies for a long winter’s inevitable cabin fever. This off-season has seen a multitude of musical events that have warmed the cold nights, many of them paying tribute to rock ’n’ roll’s classic era and the artists who made it so.
Tomorrow’s 8 p.m. show, “The Ultimate Classic Rock Experience,” takes the concept a bit further. The evening will spotlight Corky Laing, best known as the drummer of Mountain (“Mississippi Queen,” “Nantucket Sleighride”), and Kofi Baker, the son of Ginger Baker, drummer of bands including Cream, Blind Faith, and the Graham Bond Organisation. They will perform and provide firsthand accounts of the rock ’n’ roll life, partaking in a question-and-answer session.
Cream and Mountain exemplify the power-trio rock ’n’ roll band format. Though the latter group often included a fourth member on keyboards, both helped to popularize the guitar/bass/drums lineup and explosive blues-based sonic explorations. The groups are also linked by the late Felix Pappalardi, who produced the former and co-founded the latter, and the late Jack Bruce, Cream’s bassist, who later performed and recorded with Mr. Laing and Mountain’s guitarist, Leslie West.
Both Mr. Laing and Mr. Baker spoke last week of their emphasis on authentic, faithful renditions of the music for which they are known. “At Bay Street, you’re going to hear the songs exactly the way they were played, in the same voice,” Mr. Laing said from Helsinki, as he wrapped a European tour of “Corky Laing Plays Mountain.” “I’m going back and enjoying some beautifully arranged music,” he said, “playing Mountain songs the way they were originally recorded in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It seems to be a good thing; a lot of the bands of that era don’t play the songs the way they did originally. Over 40 years, you go through changes and play things differently. I think we lost a lot of audience. The reason they fell in love with the music was the arrangements.”
European audiences remain both ardent fans of classic rock ’n’ roll and particular about its performance. “We found people wanted to hear it the way it was,” said Mr. Laing, who lives in Greenport. “They know the words, the arrangements, and they’ll be brutally honest: ‘You forgot the downbeat on the sixth measure of the second verse.’ It’s been very rewarding, being asked to do a European tour, but it will be nice to bring it to the neighborhood, to Bay Street. I love that place.”
Mr. Baker, a jazz musician like his father, likewise found that fans wanted to hear the music for which the elder Mr. Baker is known. He was inspired to form “Kofi Baker’s Cream Experience” after seeing his father’s band during its 2005 reunion, and also performs with Sons of Cream, a group featuring Malcolm Bruce and the guitarist Godfrey Townsend, who is known for playing the music of Cream’s guitarist, Eric Clapton. Mr. Townsend will join the musicians on Friday.
The younger Mr. Baker stays true to his father’s group, he said, by virtue of Cream’s emphasis on improvisation, which fused blues, psychedelia, and pop, sometimes in lengthy jams that endure on recordings of its late-1960s concerts. “We do it close to how they did it back then,” he said, albeit “more fiery, more jammy. Cream is basically a jazz band that went pop: the head of a tune, then you jammed, then back to the head again. That’s where I’m at, improv’ing. I play differently every night.”
Mr. Baker, said Mr. Laing, is “a brilliant drummer. Kofi plays with strength, energy, power. He plays very much like his dad, and at the same time adds his Kofi-isms.” Ginger Baker, whom the website AllMusic.com describes as “rock’s first superstar drummer” and the 1960s’ most influential percussionist, “is quite a character,” Mr. Laing said. (The elder Mr. Baker is the subject of the must-see documentary “Beware of Mr. Baker.”)
In “The Ultimate Classic Rock Experience,” Mr. Laing promises “an energetic musical experience, taking it back to the power-trio rock” as practiced by Mountain and Cream. “It’s all about the music.” And, he added with atypical understatement, “there’s going to be a lot of drums.”
Tickets to “The Ultimate Classic Rock Experience” cost $25 today and $30 tomorrow and are available at the box office and at baystreet.org.