About four years ago, David Garibaldi released a collection of sheet music: drum transcriptions he made himself to show off his playing with Tower of Power. I really like it when drummers take a look at their own playing — it’s the best breakdown you’ll probably get of their work. I have the book myself, and it’s a great look at some very busy, dense/harmonic funk drumming. Garibaldi has some nutty drum parts.

Sometime before I got the book, I had a listen to David’s discography with TOP. I noticed a cool little moment from the first album East Bay Grease, where David exchanges 2 bars solos with guitarist Willy Fulton at the end of the track “The Price”. 

East Bay Grease is a really interesting album that sounds nothing like any other TOP record; it came out at the tail end of the James Brown era when funk sounded more like R&B and soul than the very dry, tight, Steely Dan–style playing that eventually took over the 70s. While there are a lot of fun moments on East Bay Grease, many of the tunes have a tendency to devolve into drawn–out jams. You can tell it was their first shot at a record. The big exception is the closer, “Sparkling in The Sand” — a pensive, forlorn tune driven by Skip Mesquite’s flute.

Anyhoo, there’re some neat moves on this little solo section from “The Price”: a lot of ghost notes, hi–hat barks, and nimble tom work. The most exciting fill is perhaps in the 6th line — I included the stickings so you’d know how to play it. The secret is a lefthand paradiddle-diddle starting on beat 4:

Also involving paradiddle-diddles are the 32nd notes that we see at the start of the second page:

Take note of the China cymbal; with the album being released in 1970, this is, bizarrely, one of the earliest uses of a China that I know of, outside of jazz. A fun piece of trivia to impress your friends with before they stare at you awkwardly.

Download PDF.

“The Price” on Songwhip.