Lloyd Gregory, an Introspective

The heart beats and the lungs breathe and music exists outside in some place you cannot touch. It has to do with the fabric of the universe, the very essence of everything. And in my mystical travels I wanted to know, you know, because he has always been there, a part of my musical landscape, and I have always known him, even though I couldn’t call his name. But now I am on a search and destroy mission, to specify, as if he was the thing itself. Only a part of the journey which is music, and maybe a bit diminished in the knowing. But we must pretend to know, because knowing is part of paying the bills. And Barefoot has been bumping into people like Lloyd Gregory. So here is Lloyd Gregory.

There is a disparate amount of Lloyd Gregory on the internet, meaning I can’t find him on Wiki. However, he does have some stuff on Youtube and a Facebook page. Someone at Roxboro Entertainment should fix that, you know. But I’m just going to ease into some Lloyd from something called “At Yoshi’s". I don’t know what it is all about. I’ll leave that to bigger minds than me. Music is the meditation. I’ll leave the details up to God or Barefoot and just sink into the rest of it.

Yeah. The poetry about God may be all a bit over the top. But that’s what jazz does to me, and you have to go with the moment, or else what is the point of living? I’m like that guy on the 1957 Charlie Mingus album who loved jazz music. The sounds of the city like the rhythms of the jazz has infiltrated his very being. Branford Marsalis touched that, twisted himself into it in his 1984 debut album “Scenes in the City“. Probably been listening to that Mingus album - came out three years before he was born - for the past twenty four years.

What does all this have to do with Lloyd Gregory? Please, I’m being pulled through the eye of the needle right now, and Teleman, and the blues, and back to Lloyd. So I’ll let myself go where and when I can. There are very few times when we can touch God.

I am listening to “Shinti“  right now. I don’t know. The percussion is killing me. There’s a stillness, and movement within the stillness, infinite space. A visceral intelligence, and definitely a freedom. And all from plucking a few strings on a semi-acoustic… and the horn, and the drums and keyboards.

That’s Robert Stewart on saxophone. Echoes of Pharaoh Saunders. Janice Maxine Reid on keyboards. Joe Thomas, “Like a Rock,” on bass. And some fellow, echoes of Airto, on percussion and some guy way in the back on drums. Wish I knew who those two guys were. If somebody knows then they should tell me. But, you know, sometimes I couldn’t tell if Airto was there, either, because he was so much a part of everything, and still is.

Like God sinks into the background because we don’t see the Divinity because God is part of everything. Our eyes, our ears, are not attuned to It. Did I say Lloyd Gregory is now recording stuff with his friend Mr. Stanley Clarke? That wheel just keeps turning.

“Doop doop dooby… yeah… doop doop dooby… yeah. I love jazz music.”

DanG says:

Click here for a video of Lloyd Gregory playing “Germ” at the Roxboro label launch party.