BEWARE OF MR. BAKER

Sponsored by Austin's greatest music store, End of an Ear Records, and Austin's most essential vintage furniture and decor store, Room Service.

If you recognize the name Ginger Baker, you likely recall his involvement in the British rock supergroup Cream and/or the blues-rock band Blind Faith as the infamous drummer. However, it wasn’t until the early 1970s that Baker achieved his artistic prime.

During a concert tour to Nigeria, Baker met influential afrobeat musician Fela Kuti and in that one moment forever altered his perception of what music was, could be, and ought to affect. Baker spent six years in total living Nigeria, working closely with the father of Afrobeat as a kind of musical and spiritual cleansing – the purity of devoting yourself to music as an art form, instead of simply a means to a paycheck.

However, after Baker left Nigeria in 1976, the temptations of the modern rock world proved too seductive and Baker’s life story takes a regrettable downturn. As Baker looks back on his life in the present, though, the regrets are few. Living life in fierce, bold directions has its consequences and takes its toll.

His story is of a man who has experienced a rollercoaster of a life and has survived to share stories and pass on some laughs before everything is said and done. (Sam Prime)