Questlove Reaches Into The Mailbag & Answers - March 15

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest Left Show is a production of iHeart Radio. All right, y'all, this is Letters to the Quest Left Show again. If you have any letters, slide into our dms. First of all, follow QLs on all the socials please and also subscribe and like on YouTube. That is the fuel to our fire. If you like these episodes and whatnot. Look, it just takes a second. Please like and subscribe. With trying to build a nation of inform music heads here, Yeah, thank you, I like doing this. Give me more questions.

00:00:37
Speaker 2: All right, Steven asks. You've been getting into this James Brown mustache period quite a bit, and I wanted to ask you your opinion on the track Deep.

00:00:45
Speaker 1: In It my favorite period by the way.

00:00:48
Speaker 2: Yes, you and Christian McBride right, Yes, it sounds like he was trying to get into his very white bag. But to me, it also sounds just like one uncle who's passed his prime and is trying to holler at the young twenty something at the bar. Any thoughts about that song in particular.

00:01:03
Speaker 1: Look, I'm telling you again, I'm stand on ten toe's with this. The genius of James Brown. I mean, it's low hanging fruit. Just to talk about the actual genius of James Brown. Like literally that yes, there's a period between sixty seven and seventy four when at least sixty percent of his output changes the world, and literally is the blueprint that we file to this day as far as music, dance, music, drum breaks, rap, all those things. But for me, the period after his prime, which is seventy five to really eighty nine ninety one, when he stopped making records, that his hands down my favorite favorite period of James Brown, simply because he's so intense and so committed that his bad period is really like, if it's bad, I like it. If it's mediocre, I hate it. And that's the thing, Like James Brown has never been mediocre. So, yes, the song is on an album. It's on Sex Machine Today, which again this is his attempt to you know, delve back into his past to try to update it for disco periods or whatnot. Didn't work necessarily, but yes, matter of fact, I believe at one point we were gonna sample it. Wait just give me one second please. Yeah. Ah, yes, I have a group chat with Harry Wagner of Universal Eric Leads who played with Prince Shout out to Pittsburgh Allan leads, Eric's brother and James Brown's former tour manager and Prince's former tent tour manager Krista McBride, and myself like our ongoing almost fifteen year group chat could be a book, but literally the discussion of the Sex Machine Today album needs to be studied. But yes, deep in it is such a I don't know, it's like Showgirls, Like it's so horrible that I love it. It's so genuinely horrible that I love it and respect it as actual art. And now I'm trapped in a place where I'm listening, like I'll DJ Life Changing James Brown for my DJ sets, but when I just want to listen and have a good laugh, usually when the roots are going to work, Like when we're you know, landing in the airport in a new town, we got drive an hour or two a festival whatever, we are listening to horrible James Brown only, And I highly recommend that which begs it.

00:04:00
Speaker 2: His own question in those situations, because you've spoken a lot on the podcast of Tarik listening to Rocky and listening to you know, a different thing. Who controls the os? Is it rotate?

00:04:13
Speaker 1: We're still maintaining the Gryffindor Slytherin method. You know, Team Gryffindor is geeky, nerdy, meditative, silent. Slytherin is weedy, smoky, drinky, loud music gotta get amp like you know, like it's a soccer game or a football game, that sort of thing. So yeah, there's two vehicles, and I well, you know, Tarika's impeccable taste as well. But yeah, if Tarika has a smoke, then the guys roll with him. But I have the tunes, so half the cats roll with me.

00:04:53
Speaker 2: Three more questions. Hey questo, this is Nico from Spain. Question for your weekly mail Bag episode. I love the show and your work all around. You're my hero.

00:05:02
Speaker 1: Wow.

00:05:03
Speaker 2: Than do you have any advice for finding instrumentalists, singers, rappers to collaborate with online? It feels very hard to find people unless I'm living in New York, for example, And it seems impossible to ever make something work online, either because of mistrust on reliability or lack of response. It's hard to get out there in person if you're not geographically situated.

00:05:24
Speaker 1: Any tips. You know, every movement starts with the seed, and you know my answer to that, My answer to that situation was busking. Yeah, I mean we busked because you know, a cute girl had approached us mistakenly thinking that we were someone else, and we were like, hey, we can get more girls phone numbers if you know, if we become the person that they thought we were. And you know, a girl thought I was a busker. I know that I pulled a community together by playing on the streets. And I'm you know, I'm not a goose gander person. I'm not saying that, Well, what works for me works for you. And definitely had tok and I grown up in an era twenty five years later where the internet could actually help us get our point across, we would have definitely taken advantage of it. But I will say, I mean, one is just depending on your will to really really make this happen. Busking is how I drew people in when that ran out free food like the you know, as glorious as we make the Black Lily story sound. And you know, oh man, there was a time when you know where Jill Scott and Ndre and most Deaf and Beanie Siegell and you know, the ten year old Jasmine Sullivan or like in a mirror's living room and like, yes, of course in retrospect, I could make it sound like really really amazing, But on the real motherfuckers heard there was free food at quest Love's house, and it was like grab a plate and let's go, oh, what are these instruments doing here? Oh we got oh, okay, put the bag down, put take the code off, put the plate down. Free food is how I got people. But you know, I would say that start one at a time. There has to be like minded person that you know, either local record stores. I know record stores are still a thing. You know, there's there's ways to find out where music, Where music is, you will find musicians.

00:07:38
Speaker 2: And Nico listened to the Foreign Exchange episode of Questlove Supreme, Fonte and Nicolay breakdown their oceans across a journey on meeting online exactly. Amri says, you mentioned record stores. A Mario says, what's good, Emir Love the new edition and the show opening up Q and A, the rise of listening bars, hi fi systems and all of that is becoming the new aesthetic for spaces. How do you feel about it? And he also says, shout out to Rich Mendinas Dante's Hi Fi in Miami.

00:08:05
Speaker 1: Yes, I recently fell into that rabbit hole. Kind of a pleasant shocker. The go to promoter in Tokyo, Japan if you were an artist in the late eighties, all the way up, I mean even until now, He'll still take us there Yuji son. I didn't realize that Yugi had permanently moved back to New York City and just opened up a spot in New York City called All Blues, and it's one of the most unique things I've seen. They kind of have a scheduled thing where it's like Thursday nights they're going to play you know, this live jazz album from the New four Jazz Festival nineteen sixty six or whatever. I do like the idea of us getting acclimated with the record again. However, on the other side of that coin, I am not a part of this new renaissance of you know, it's and it remains to be seen. I'm not saying it's it's performative. I don't collect records to brag about what I have, and I believe that you know, there's this this this movement to vinyl. It's kind of a let me. I'm taking my ball and going home, which I guess is sort of like, well, you know, I'm a real DJ. I use vinyl, I now to do this, and we now live in a time where yeah, like people are button pressing and you know, making millions of dollars this button pressing and whatnot. But sound quality wise, I'm sorry, I like I like well eqed loud, louder sounding. I've been to these forty five parties where the fidelity is not that good, Like if it if it's a spot like the uh New York's like Paradise Garage, Like the people that built Paradise Garage built up their spots around New York that I've I've DJ'ed in, and they know how to tune, like tone the room, they know what's right speakers to use. Yes, if it's the case where I'm spending vinyl in a place that was built by engineers that know what they're doing, I'd be with it. But just spending forty five for the sake of like I got this and you don't. I mean, it's it's cute, but to me, that's that's novelty. Like there's so much creativity that we've yet to explore. Kind of in this in this serato age that we're in, that is up my game. So I don't I don't want to go back, but yes I do like the idea, like my my date nights are way better now, you know. That's I'm a I'm a vinyl bar person now, so who knows, maybe I'll open my own one day.

00:10:52
Speaker 2: So last question, and it's right on subject with this, Jitny Music asks, what's your favorite snare drum and why? And what's your favorite recorded snare drum sound? Ever, if you know such a thing.

00:11:04
Speaker 1: What's my favorite snare drum and why? You know? I will say that every time I hit the Steve Gretch. I've told this story a trillion times before. Steve Farona, the Average White Band is my idol. When Average White Band was on Soul Train, I was absolutely transfixed on what I was seeing and I just kept staring at the drummer and was like, That's what I want to do when I grow up. And somehow, through a friendship with fern Once, I eventually met him via Pete and Palladino when we were on the Voodoo tour. Yeah, Steve was really beautiful and giving me something that I don't feel like I truly deserve and the fact that you know that one snare drum from those average white band albums like between nineteen seventy five and nineteen eighty one, like he only used one drum, and he that's a historic drum, like when you're listening to Microphone Theme by Eric ban rock Kim, like I have the schoolboy crush drum, so literally to just sit with that drum, and I used that a lot on this Roots album. It's also I played it on the Elvis Costello Wise Up Ghost album. To me, that's that's the amazing drum. So recently I just inherited drummer Buddy Williams, who has played on Grover Washington Junior's stuff like mostly a jazz cat ROBERTA Flack, which is kind of how I think he, you know, got in tuned into Vandros's world because they both played with ROBERTA Flack, but he was also part of the Saturn Out Live band. So the drum that Buddy Williams used on vandross Never Too Much album just got that and wow, it's amazing. Also shout out to the elusive John McClain, who you know, the offer still stands to this day that I want you to come on QLs. John McClain is pretty much you know, he ruled the eighties with an iron fist of I mean he's responsible for Janet and Jam and Lewis getting together and you know Atlantic Star's successful period for as the band turns and on. But yeah, John McClain, out of nowhere, he does this to people. He sent me John Robinson's snare drum from nineteen seventy eight. I am led to believe that this is the same John Robinson snare drum that he used on his time with Rufus. I think John Robinson joined Rufus during the master Jam period. So you love what you feel? And are you househeads that know any love or disco heads? And of course John Robinson was the drummer on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall album. So yeah, maybe like twice a year, I'll just do the rock with you role just for the hell of it. But those are You have three notable snare drums that I own that pretty much I use on all my recorded material. I am currently trying to negotiate and I say that it's so weird now every drum I've played on in my career is now being sold back to me for astronomical I'll go on these auctions and it'll be like, this is what Quest Love played on Things Fall Apart? Like literally, I had to buy the studio drum set that I drummed on between Do You Want More and Things Fall Apart? I recent only got that set. Also, Jerome Bigfoot Brailey of a Parliament Funkadelic the drums that he used on the Pfunk Earth tour, just got those and currently trying to get my Voodoo drum kit, which I'm certain now if I don't get it now then they'll just charge me one hundred thousand dollars for it because it is what it is. So yep, those are my drums, all right, y'all. This is you know, letters to the Quest Loft Show again, if you have any letters, slide into our dms, not my dms, but the QLs. First of all, follow QLs on all the socials please and also subscribe and like on YouTube. That is the fuel to r fire. If you like these episodes and whatnot. Look it just takes a second. Please like and subscribe. With trying to build a nation of informed music heads here. Yeah, shout out to Britton cousin Jake for holding down the fort and our our fan at iHeart and the q LS squad still love there and yeah, thank you. I like doing this. Give me more questions, all right, question them show. It's a production of iHeart Radio