An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Play Time

 

A drum break in Athens

All this odysseying can leave little time for music practice... and – pandemic permitting – I have to play some jazz when I get back to the UK.

So I was fortunate to discover Artworks Studios at Elliniko in southern Athens, not far from where I have been staying.

It had an excellent set of Gabriel drums which I was able to put to good use for a couple of three-hour sessions that helped stop me feeling so rusty.

I have no hesitation in recommending this excellent place.

The masked drummer

Porn Again

We've all done it. Drummers, that is. All looked longingly at those beautiful kits – often the ones that we can't quite afford and that we wouldn't have room to store anyway.

I already have the perfect kit for me: a DW Collector's Series in pure white (well, almost, give or take a few scrapes and scratches from gigging).

So why – when Wembley Music Centre emails me with pictures of all the latest DW kits to arrive at its London store – do I sit and start salivating over them? This is drum pornography, of course. We just like looking at pictures of these wonderful objects, even though we can't have them, and, in truth, we don't need them.

But if you're interested in percussion pornography, check out DW drum kits at the Wembley Music Centre. And if you actually want to own one of these great kits, hand-made in California, you'd better get on it. Prices for British buyers can only go up, thanks to all those good folk who voted for Brexit.

When Two Become One

I don't know Joel Rothman. But I do like him. He's produced a wealth of drumming tuition books over the years, and I regret that I have only just discovered him.

I'm currently working my way through one of his Duet Yourself books – a series of etudes that can be played by two drummers, but which actually make more sense as duets between your hands and your feet.

He delights in playing with odd time signatures and moving from one to another – something that resonates with my own modest attempts in this field with my Moving Target piece – and some of his etudes are just beautifully written as well as mathematically pleasing.

Apparently, he has also spent time as a comedian – which may or may not explain one of his other tuition titles: 'Hardest Drum Book Ever Written – Five Way Coordination With Four Limbs'.

Ok, Joel, I'll get to that at some point...

Footes Steps

I've been working fairly regularly at a magazine in central London... and getting behind with drum practice.

If only it were possible to use the lunch hour for playing drums, I thought, as I took a walk down Tottenham Court Road. For no real reason, my footsteps took me down Store Street... where I found not only a music store, but one with a drum rehearsal room in the basement.

Footes, as with most music shops, is staffed by friendly, helpful people, and I immediately felt like I'd found a welcoming oasis in the heart of the city.

Needless to say, I booked in for the next lunch hour... and will continue to do so when I'm in the area.

The Footes room is quiet, fairly well soundproofed and has a nice Natal kit. You don't even have to bring cymbals or sticks. And just an hour concentrates the drumming mind wonderfully...

Love Over Gold

I've been away... for a long time... I'm back. And I'm still playing drums. In fact, thanks to the musicians I play with, I suspect that I'm generally drumming my best so far.

I'm lucky too to have the trusty DW kit which has now many times over repaid the major investment that it represented. No, I'm not going to say how much it cost...

Some drummers are not so reticent about mentioning the value of their gear.

Mick Fleetwood (above) - a seriously under-rated drummer who has always been a master timekeeper and band-driver - also plays DW drums. But they sound as though they are a tad more expensive than mine.

"All of my drum kits are coated in 18-carat gold," he explained in a recent interview. And he has a new kit made up by DW every time he tours. The end result, apparently, is a warehouse full of gold-plated drums and stands.

Much as I love Fleetwood's playing, I find it difficult to get my head round the need for such excess.

Why so many kits? And why the gold?

One perfect Collector's Series DW kit is enough for a lifetime, I reckon. 

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Back To Baker

The recent post on Ginger Baker had so many views that I'm offloading a bit more of my debt to (and blame on) the man...

“Am I to blame if people try to emulate my life and die?” That’s Ginger Baker’s quote. Of course.

I’ve certainly tried, Ginger. And it certainly feels as if it's come close to killing me. 

But it’s been worth it. For the odd flash when the drums roll just as they’re supposed to. When they chase down the triplets on the lead guitar runs. When they kick in hard with the bass - or skip around it to beat it to the punch. And that’s mostly down to you, Ginger.

But at the end of the day, emulating you maybe, I seem to have lost far too many people along the way. And, less importantly, like you, I’ve lost more money than I care to try to count up. 

I shouldn’t have done it. But then we don’t have a choice in these things, do we? 

Are we to blame if you live your life as you’ve lived it and you die in pain and penury?

Don’t worry. There’s more than a few drummers right behind you.

Heavy Metal

I've been away. I'm back.

Drums can be heavy.

I still haven't quite recovered from trying to lift John Marshall's Sonor bass drum [see previous post], a piece of German engineering that even Keith Moon would have found difficult to kick over or explode.

Drum hardware can be even heavier. That's all the stands, the pedals, the shiny bits and pieces...

Last night a young drummer and I were putting up an old Premier kit for a music workshop at an arts centre off London's Brick Lane and were searching for the... well, neither of us knew what to call it... apart from "the thing that goes into the bass drum to hold the tom-toms".

The "post" is what I decided to call it... but we still couldn't find it for some time. When we did, it was huge and had not only attachments for two toms but also a central extension for holding a cymbal... right in front of the drummer's face and in between the two drums. Something that would only appeal to a drummer who preferred not to be identified... and who didn't mind playing a roll across the toms with an obstacle that would be near-impossible to avoid.

We finally found all the kit bits in the arts centre's music cupboard and got everything up and playing.

But the most important item of equipment for the drummer? It hardly weighs a thing. And it has to be the sticks... of which more soon...

Bearable Lightness

Last night I picked up a whole drum kit in one go, put it in the back of the car and went to a rehearsal. Then, all I had to do was carry it into the studio, put it down and, after attaching some cymbals, I was ready to go.

The Traps A400 portable kit is remarkable in several ways: it really is portable; most of its drums are shell-less; the snare and bass drums are only an inch or two deep; and the whole thing (including pedals and stands) costs just under £300.

Oh, and it sounds really good and it's far louder than you think it's going to be. The bass drum and snare enable you to produce a powerful groove, and while the shell-less tom toms may not resonate quite as much as you would like, they still produce satisfying, thwacky sounds.

It's perfect for rehearsals and may even work on small, quiet gigs. It has to be played to be believed. There is so much "innovation" in the drum world that has little point apart from selling new product that the arrival of the Traps portable kit has to be hailed as a genuine breakthrough.

Rage Against The Machine

Has anybody out there tried playing hip-hop drum grooves? I thought they might be easy, but after two nights trying to pin one of them down, I can testify that they really are not.

Today I've seen a website where you can buy all the pre-recorded machine-generated grooves you want, so why bother playing them anyway? One groove-buying producer's testimonial says that his client was so impressed with the results that they thought he'd used a top session musician... Amazing...

So would you like to climb Everest? Or would you like to buy a fake picture of yourself at the top of Everest?

Back to the kit...

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...

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...