RIP Ginger Baker

[EinsteinsHund]

RIP Ginger Baker. One of the best and most inventive drummers ever. I’ve long known about his reputation and saw “Beware of Mr. Baker” just a few month ago, but I’ve always thought that there must be something good and cool (he was cool anyway) about this exceptional man. Thanks **Bo **for confirming my hunch :). I sure can’t top his story, but I’ve got my own Ginger Baker anecdote I already shared last year:

@EinsteinsHund

Back in the early 90s, maybe 1992/3, a gig was announced to happen in a town nearby by the “Ginger Baker Group”. Now the venue was a local youth club in our very rural region of Germany, a venue where local bands played, but a name like Ginger Baker was unthinkable for a spot like that. The problem was: in 1992, nobody here cared for or had even ever heard of one “Ginger Baker” except for all the local musicians and die-hard rock fans like me. So that’s what the audience looked like, maybe 80-100 people in a cellar room of our youth center, half of them drummers themselves. Ginger Baker came up on stage (or what counted for a stage there, a niche in the basement room) with two Swedish guys playing bass and guitar and they play something like Jazz-Rock. The audience was kind and gentle, but everybody in the room knew that it was a farce. After about 45 minutes, Ginger Baker said: “We are very disappointed. We go.”, grabbed his wine bottle and left. What a strange experience.