Whammer jammer midi
It’s always good to have a mentor who already knows the ropes and kind of helps you stay away from some of the bad stuff. It’s been such a thrill for me to be doing this. I’m pretty old-school and the music that I love is from probably the eighties and before, and the stories that Dick has about the industry and the road is just so fascinating to me. When we’re together, it’s like just the two of us making music and it’s been a very enriching experience. Sometimes we talk about the age difference but we don’t notice it till we think about it. He’s really been sort of a guiding light for my career and we’ve become very, very close and very good friends. It’s like the best, most generous welcome to Boston. Of course I jumped on that opportunity and I was so honored. Yeah, me coming here, moving to Boston, I was working with Ralph and next thing I know Ralph says that Magic Dick, somebody that I listened to when I was in Singapore and admired, wanted to work with me. Shun: I was just enjoying listening to you compliment me (laughs). Shun, please hop in if you want to add anything to what I’m saying.
In other words, we’re a duo by choice not because that’s just how it happened to work out. For those people who are minimalists, I think minimalism is thought of as a preferred mode of working and being rather than just an alternative. And I recognized very quickly that Shun and I share something in common, which is a love of minimalism. I was impressed with Shun’s composition and the way he played and his use of space. I don’t think I can emphasize enough to you how impressed I was and why I was impressed with his approach and his playing. I think it was a YouTube thing of Funky Thumb Stuff and I was immediately impressed with Shun’s playing. So because of my connection to Ralph, I immediately decided to click on the link that he had provided for me to hear some of Shun’s stuff. His manager, Ralph Jaccodine, was an old friend of mine so that’s why I happened to have been on this list. Shun’s manager sent out an email blast to a whole bunch of undisclosed recipients announcing that he had signed a new young artist that he was very, very excited about. MD: It was sort of accidental the way I came upon Shun. Glide talked to both Magic Dick and Shun Ng last week about how their music came together, what they have planned for the future and how two seemingly different musicians can create something so right.ĭick, how did you come across Shun and what made that light go off that you wanted to make some music with him? He came back to the States (he was born in Chicago) to attend Berklee in Boston and before he knew it he was sitting in a room with Magic Dick wailing away on “Whammer Jammer.” But once he found the guitar, his fate was sealed. Shun Ng was raised in Singapore and didn’t discover his guitar calling until his mid-teens, having grown up in a household that stressed academics. Although their bread and butter was the soulful undercurrents of R&B, blues and rock, with their 1981 album Freeze Frame, they added a springier pop sound to their music, going to #1 on the charts on the bounce of the single “Centerfold.” Magic Dick was an important component of the J Geils Band, springboarding songs such as “Sanctuary,” “Homework, “Just Can’t Stop Me” and his signature blowfest “Whammer Jammer” with his soulful, often jazzed up harmonica playing. A founding member of the J Geils Band, when it was a simple acoustic trio in the mid-1960’s, with John Geils and bass player Danny Klein, the band remolded their sound and with the addition of Peter Wolf became a top live act of the seventies and eighties. Magic Dick has a long history in rock & roll. And although they have only released one official song, a cover of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag,” they have more music in the works. J Geils Band harmonica player Magic Dick felt that pinch of excitement as soon as he checked out a young guitar player named Shun Ng.
Some of our greatest songs were created by two or more musicians sitting together in a room humming out a melody or rattling off some words of folly or wisdom. Ask most songwriters and they will tell you that collaborating with another artist can be the spark of life … or at least the spark for some great music.