r.i.p. j.c.b.

jimmy carl black, "the indian of the group," is with the great spirit now. you can help his family by buying stuff from here. maybe this year, instead of watching baby snakes with the cats for the festival of gluttony, we'll watch 200 motels instead.







i once interviewed jcb for a webzine not long after he'd been through fort worth with a blues band and played at the pig and whistle downtown (the current embargo location), where he got stiffed for money. coincidentally, i'd recently played the same dump, also with a blues band, and had the same experience, so it felt like we had a bond of some sort. jcb was, first and foremost, a texas shuffle drummer, and when zappa wanted the mothers of invention to get more musically complex, he started hiring other drummers (billy mundi, ex-cleveland symphony percussionist art tripp), but the _aura_ of fz's early work (up until he started employing jazz musicians ca. '72) had a lot to do with the personalities of cats like jcb, roy estrada, and motorhead sherwood. the zappa family trust is getting ready to do the deluxe reish treatment on we're only in it for the money, fz's masterpiece that contains jcb's immortal line. it'd be nice if gail could see her way to kicking some dough the black family's way.