Carlos "Patato" Valdez 1926 - 2007

Carlos “Patato” Valdéz, the legendary Cuban percussionist and master conga player, passed away at age 81 of respiratory failure in NYC on Tuesday December 4th, 2007. The date is a significant one for Cubans and for Patato in particular, as December 4th is Changó Day, Santa Barbara Day, one of the most powerful and important dieties in the Afro-Cuban religious pantheon of Santeriá. Patato was a son of changó, “hijo de changó”.

Sabian HHX Cymbals - The Modern Dark Sound

Many of today’s greatest drummers lean towards the dark end of the sonic spectrum when it comes to their cymbal sounds. It was the quest for dark, rich, subtle cymbal sounds that led the great jazz drummers into back-alley music shops from Istanbul to Brooklyn in search of the vaunted dark, rich, smoldering tone of handmade vintage Turkish cymbals. But while these older cymbals and the many modern imitations they spawned had the sought-after darkness, they lacked the definition and projection to drive the heavily rhythmic, groove-oriented styles of rock, pop, fusion, and other contemporary music.
While SABIAN’s HH series covers that vintage dark side, their HHX Series lets drummers have it both ways with a modern dark, hot, simmering tonal vocabulary that also delivers the focus and cut to project through harder-edged modern musical settings. To accomplish this, Sabian designed an innovative feature called “Tone Projection”. A unique combination of shaping, lathing, and jumbo-peen hammering, ‘Tone Projection’ enhances the lower, darker end then projects it through the music

Pandora and Last.fm

I trust you're already familiar at least one of these online music services, pandora.com and lastfm.com - if not, you've got a treat in store for you. They're both web music streaming services that offer a superb way to listen to your favorite style of music and discover new artists. Pandora was the first one I got turned onto - you simply enter one of your favorite artists and pandora constructs a "radio station" around your choice, selecting songs by the artist you entered and ones that share the same characteristics. I have 10 or so radio stations on my list, and the database includes a respectable selection of even out-of-the-mainstream world stuff that I like, such as Japanese and Brazilian pop and glitch. I've created a mix called Drum Thunder Radio, "seeded" with my favorite drummers: Williams, Cobham, White, Chambers, etc. There are some gaps, but Pandora seems to be working to fill them, constantly enlarging their database. Lately Pandora has been featured in the Doonesbury cartoon strip, with soldiers in the Iraq war making "battle mixes".
Last.fm is similar, except it takes a more extroverted, social networking approach, and it scans the resident music player on your computer in order to tailor its playlist to styles that you like. I know that at least Pandora has endured legal challenges by the recording industry. I don't really see why—you cannot permanently download songs, and if anything they might stimulate the listener to go out and purchase some of the music that's discovered. Anyway, check 'em out.