Buddy, Can You Spare £63?

I love Buddy Guy. He was one of the first truly electric bluesmen that I ever listened to. He was a wild and crazy showman, as well as an amazing guitar player. He was Hendrix before Hendrix. Seeing Buddy in concert, you could see where Jimi got some of his stuff from.

Unlike most of the great bluesmen, he is still alive, still recording and still gigging. But he is as likely these days to be singing about the realities of old age as he is about love and loss.

I was overjoyed when I saw that he would be appearing in London later this year – until I found that the cost of sitting in the stalls would be £63.

I'm sorry but that's too much money. Of course, Clapton and Bonamassa have gone the same way, and it costs a fortune to see these blues masters now. But if you're a young person struggling to live in London on a meagre wage, you'd best not be a blues fan. This music is for the old and well-off.

Those who really have the blues can't afford to go to blues gigs like this.

I'm lucky. I could afford to shell out £63 to see Buddy Guy. But I won't. On principle. Someone somewhere is charging too much

Forty Second Street

A musician told me this week that he could tell whether someone was a good drummer within 40 seconds of their starting to play.

It initially seemed a slightly odd claim. But the same day I went  to see a friend give a piano recital, never having seen him play before.

I think it was not much more than five seconds, easily less than 10 seconds into Bach's Partita No 1 in B Flat Major that I realised he really could play – and it was going to be a memorable performance.

So maybe 40 seconds is more than enough to make a judgment. And, I suppose, more than enough if the music is not so good...

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...

Don't Forget The Ace Of Spades

I once auditioned for a 'classic rock' band and had to play a dozen great songs by the likes of Bon Jovi and Motley Crue. But the one that was the toughest was 'Ace of Spades' by Motorhead.

I didn't get the gig. But I genuinely don't think it was my drumming that was the problem. I was too old and didn't have enough hair to fit in with the rest of the excellent band. It was still a fantastic session, and the greatest achievement – for me anyway – was to get through the breakneck onslaught of 'Ace of Spades'.

The song will always be associated with Lemmy, whose line 'I don't want to live forever' has now been fulfilled.

'Ace of Spades' was completely over-the-top and also down-to-earth. Just like Lemmy. But above all, he always came over as completely honest – in his music and in whatever he said.

The news of Lemmy's death comes so soon after the demise of one-time Motorhead drummer Phil Taylor. These guys might have been around for a while, but they didn't get old before they died...

Stuck Outside The Forum With The Hendrix Blues Again... Slight Return

For reasons unknown to me, my post "Stuck Outside The Forum With The Hendrix Blues Again" attracted more readers than anything else on "Words And Music".

In short, it was a complaint about a Facebook group called The Real Blues Forum refusing to allow discussion about Jimi Hendrix being a blues guitarist.

Well, it's happened again. But this time the guitarist whose name cannot be mentioned is Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The latest trouble started when a hapless member of the forum posted a video of Albert King performing with Vaughan. A small discussion started about the playing styles of the two men, but was cut short by a right-thinking member of the forum pointing out that this discussion transgressed the rules. Something like: old black players ok to talk about, but modern white players (or Hendrix) not ok to talk about.

Someone then asked how on earth this video had even been posted in the first place.

When I responded by asking: "Can blue men play the whites?" - a light-hearted reference to the Bonzo Dog Band's classic enquiry - my contribution was almost immediately moderated, ie removed.

So now I've removed myself from The Real Blues Forum. It's funny that Albert King was able to bring himself to play with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rory Gallagher, and that BB King could sing the praises of Eric Clapton and Peter Green, but (predominantly white) blues purists don't seem to even want to talk about them.

Time And Motion

Phew! After three studio sessions, my Moving Target solo percussion piece is finally recorded. It should come to a YouTube near you soon.

I couldn't have done it without the aid of sound maestro Simon "Dr Scardo" Scardanelli and his technical wizardry. We managed to stick to the basics of real drum kit, real percussion instruments and real human voice, but where it was appropriate, we did use effects that you can only get in the studio.

And that included a bit of cutting and pasting – to achieve parts that I could write but found exceedingly difficult to play in one take. Mainly because I deliberately set out to create a mathematical mix of 4/4 with 7/8 and 15/8 and 6/8...

It probably sounds rather grand to say that it was inspired by the music of Steve Reich (as well as Yannis Markopoulos, Public Image Ltd, trance music, Ringo Starr and heavy rock) but it kind of was…

And why Moving Target? Because of the time signature shifts… and also because that's the best way to  survive… keep moving.

At The Double

It was sad to hear of the death of Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor – renowned for a number of things, but also for being one of the pioneers of the double bass drumming style that has become ubiquitous in the worlds of metal.

Double bass drumming may look easy - but it isn't. You're asking your left (or hi-hat) foot to do something that it isn't used to doing. And in effect you're asking your whole body to play differently.

Louie Bellson was the man who started it in jazz... and Ginger Baker was the first to bring it to rock... closely followed by Keith Moon and Jon Hiseman.

There are a small number of good books on the subject. There is an excellent primer by Joe Franco called "Double Bass Drumming". And I would also now recommend "Double Bass Drumming and Power Fills Workout" by Matt Sorum and Sam Aliano.

At first I thought this book was just about speed and flash, but it actually leads you into some really interesting experimentations with all the (often simple but still tricky) combinations of two hands and two feet playing drums.

Learning to play two bass drums takes you back to basics, not only in terms of simplicity but also because it can give you that same feeling of excitement you had when you first discovered the drums. Try it!