Quiet Please

Music, music everywhere... or, more often than not, non-music. Every supermarket, every bar, every elevator hits you with horrible, homogenous non-music. To the point where one can be desperate for silence.

Naively, I thought there would be silence on offer in the serious sheet-music store that I had to visit yesterday to stock up on drum-teaching material. But no, not only were we being force-fed aural pollution, but it was so loud that the helpful assistant who was ordering some books for me couldn't hear what I was saying. And I couldn't hear what she was saying.

I think we were both close to giving up when the store manager saw the problem and turned down the noise. The episode reminded me of a great book by Mat Callahan (www.matcallahan.com) called The Trouble With Music, in which he persuasively documents the rise of non-music and offers a manifesto for the future of real music. It should be stocked in all music stores...

Animal Versus Animal

As I was saying yesterday, there's a bit of Animal in every drummer. And I've just been reminded that there was no clearer evidence of that when the late and possibly greatest Buddy Rich took on the mighty Muppet in a TV drum battle.

If you want to know who won, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erE8WTngaAY. If you want a clue, there's a story that Buddy, who was not averse to drum battles with anyone, once agreed to take on a less confident drummer who begged him to "go easy" on him.

Buddy promised he would sit back and take it steady to make the contest look more even. The other guy went first and played so well that the audience clapped their approval. Then Buddy played and wiped the floor with his opponent. Afterwards the loser said to Buddy, "But you promised... " And Buddy said, "I know. But I just couldn't let you get more applause than me."

There was a lot of Animal in Buddy.

An Image Problem?

My good friend and chronicler of the Swinging Eighties David Johnson (shapersofthe80s.com) has suggested that I might consider this picture as a more appropriate image for my blog. I'm certainly an Animal-lover and would put the percussive Muppet up there with Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, Jon Hiseman, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey and Tony Williams.

But it was another world-class drummer, the great John Marshall (drummerworld.com/drummers/John_Marshall.html), who told me that Animal's drumming was actually performed by Ronnie Verrell, a formidable jazz musician who played with the orchestras of Ted Heath, Syd Lawrence and Jack Parnell.

Almost every drummer worth their sticks has a bit of Animal inside them. But they also want to be taken seriously, you know. So I may not be changing the picture just yet...

Looking For The Break

A friend who is a published author has offered to put in a word for me with his agent about my novel, Like A Flower. That is, if I send him the first chapter and he likes it. This is a bit like playing a tricky drum break at a gig and knowing that there is a great drummer sitting in the audience: ie worrying.

Oh well, I'd better give Chapter One a quick going over, mail it off and see what happens. As with writing, as with music, the creative process seems to account for about 20 per cent of what you do. The other 80 per cent of the time is spent trying to persuade someone to let you do it.

If this particular agent isn't interested, I have other authors' agents and publishing contacts to pursue. Not because I am particularly well connected in the publishing field, but because so many journalists I know have been kind and helpful in pointing me in the right directions. There's a home waiting for Like A Flower. I just have to find it.

When Rosie Met Gary

So many journalists seem to be musicians too. While attending yet another farewell party in Wapping last night, I reconnected with Rosie Brown, an ex-Sunday Times journalist but, more importantly, a great and original singer-songwriter with three albums to her credit, whom I've seen playing at Ronnie Scott's to a packed house (www.rosiebrown.com).

I was able to introduce Rosie to Sunday Times journalist Gary Cansell, also a great songwriter and leader of the amazing London band Hero & Leander (www.myspace.com/heroandleanderuk), now in the process of being signed to a German label to produce a series of albums.

Perhaps realising that in the greyness of the newspaper office, the colours of music are always waiting to be expressed, News International recently introduced a "music at work" scheme so that journalists could have lunchtime music lessons. But with the latest redundancies, some of these classes are much depleted. So the cutbacks have not been good for journalism — or for music.

To Solo Or Not To Solo

The Shark Dentists' guitarist, Russ Payne (www.russpayneguitar.co.uk), asked me the other night if I'd be interested in introducing a drum solo into the act. I told him I've never been that keen, because the very idea is kind of scary. The only time I remember playing one was at a particularly rowdy Sky Pirates gig in London where the management cut off the electricity and I was left with the stage to myself. Because I had no idea it was going to happen, it was fun.

The day after Russ made his suggestion, I played a jazz gig with Funky Johnny P's Quintet, where once more a solo was suddenly thrust upon me without warning. I just about got away with it, but it wasn't great.

Suddenly everybody wants me to play a drum solo. Everyone, that is, except Mez, the Sharks' bass player. Drum solos, he says, have no place in the modern age. That's not what the jazzers think. But then Mez doesn't have a lot of time for jazz either...

Now I'm A Mail Man

Last week I left The Sunday Times. This week I've signed up with the Daily Mail. Well, sort of. The Mail is doing a promotion this Saturday (January 28) to encourage readers to start learning a musical instrument. It means they'll be able to get a free introductory lesson with musicians who belong to MusicTeachers.co.uk — who include me.

So, yes, I'm working for the Daily Mail, but the Daily Mail could be drumming up some drum teaching work for me in return.

If you have a problem with buying the Daily Mail, you could just get in touch with me direct and pay for your drum lessons. They're £29 an hour — but the first one will be half-price for anyone mentioning this blog.

Sharks And Flowers

Let's keep this brief, as John Mellencamp said in his wonderful song called If I Die Sudden... I'll be writing about the life of a musician and the life of a writer. The main band I play with is an electric blues/rock trio called Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk). Almost everywhere we play, someone always asks (a) why we are called the Shark Dentists and (b) whether we are all dentists. The answers are: (a) no one can really remember any more (although we think that when the band started in 2007 the idea was that we wanted to sound as if we did something dangerous), and (b) no.

My main writing project at the moment is finding a publisher for a novel called Like A Flower... which is about life, death, love and gardening... and involves a few things that are more dangerous than shark dentistry...