The Meters - Look-Ka Py Py

When I started this blog I posted on a slew of message boards looking for submissions and I got the standard fare. John Bonham, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, etc... While those guys are all great, they were not really what I was looking for. Then someone mentioned Zigaboo Modeliste. This was the kind of thing I was looking for. Every drummer knows who Keith Moon and John Bonham are, but does every drummer know who Zigaboo Modeliste is?

No.

Hell, I didn't, but shortly after getting this record I realized that I DID know Modeliste (or at least, his playing). He is one of the most sampled drummers in history and I am pretty sure that I have heard every song on this record in some form being sampled by hip hop artists and DJ's.

Zigaboo's (I love typing that name) style is loose, laid back and funky. Really funky. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and 311 today, which would be a shame (if there was such a thing as a sarcasm font, it would be applied here). Certain drummers play ahead of the beat to give songs this forward momentum, but I find that Modeliste plays slightly behind the beat, giving the songs this lazy, smooth feel, like your walking down the street without a care in the world. Whenever I listen to this record I feel like I am in a Mario Van Peebles blaxploitation film from the seventies.

Modeliste is an expert at layering his patterns with high hat trills, well placed snare hits and smooth cymbal work. His patterns rarely change during songs but he builds on them so that things don't get tedious. He is like Questlove from the sixties.

Even if he's not as known as Bonham and Moon, he has probably been heard just as much. Now I can finally put a name to the samples I keep hearing (which I am sure will make me a hit at parties).

Deerhoof - Freind Opportunity

When it comes to using your instrument in a creative way, drummers get the short end of the stick. Guitar Players, bassists, keyboardists, anyone with an electric instrument can just add on a pedal, or tweak their amp or guitar, or use different set-ups to get as many different sounds as they want. For drummers, unless you have serious cash to fork over for an electronic kit, you are pretty much stuck with a snare, kick drum, a couple toms and some cymbals. There is no real way to get around it, drummers have been stuck with the same set-up (pretty much) since the thirties.

Thankfully there are STILL drummers that find ways to play in an original, interesting way, and Greg Saulnier is one of those guys. Whether he is recording with a full kit or playing live with a stripped down kit (when I saw them he used a kick, snare and one cymbal) Greg plays drums in a way that is as much classically orchestrated as it is off the cuff and improvised. His snare work is fairly unique, he seems to throw in trills and rolls in places that don't seem to fit. He knows when to lay off and let John Dietrich (Deerhoof's equally talented guitar player) take the helm, and he knows when to play multi layered patterns over standard riffs (like in the album opener, The Perfect Me) giving them this jarring sense of rhythm.

On every Deerhoof record Greg pulls off many styles, on Friend Opportunity he does everything from psych drumming (Cast Off Crown) to straight rock (+81), to jazz fusion (The Galaxist), to sort of kraut rock inspired minimalist beats (Believe E.S.P.). It's refreshing to hear someone who melds every school of drumming there is, modern and historical. He is one of the most important drummers of my generation, and I wonder in ten or fifteen years what he will be capable of.

I heard on his new record he took two ride cymbals and made them into hi-hats. That's a step towards genius.

Audio/Visual Evidence: The Perfect Me, +81, Believe E.S.P.

Rush - Hemispheres

When I was younger, roughly 13 years old, I bought a lot of albums. I was a completest, even at a young age if I liked a band I had to own EVERY possible thing they had. This is why I own 17 Bon Jovi Albums, every Yes album, and, after hearing YYZ on the radio one night, every Rush album. Now, years later, Hemispheres is the only album I can actually listen to all the way through. I didn't lose my appreciation for them as musicians, or become a naysayer (I'll always defend Rush), it just got to a point where I realized that while it's technically great music and they were a very important band, most of it is pretty fucking cheesy. It's OK, you can admit it. I did. Hemispheres was my favorite then and, since it's the only one I can still stomach, I guess you could say that it's still my favorite Rush album.

But that's not why it's here.

La Villa Strangiato has one of the best Neil Peart moments ever recorded. The band begins trading short solos (like jazz musicians) and Peart uses his space to to really showcase his smooth hi hats and thundering drum rolls. He always wrote impressive and interesting drum parts even with the workload he had within this band (at this point Peart wrote all the lyrics on top of his drum parts)

But that's not why this album is here either.

It's here because of one thing, and one thing only.

Woodblock solo.

In the middle of The Trees Peart uses not one but FOUR woodblocks in an attempt to sonically represent the sounds of trees fighting against each other. It's fairly simple, just a few sixteenth notes played in straight rhythm, but I am sure that thousands of Peart fans rushed (no pun intended) to their local instrument store to buy themselves a stand full of wood blocks upon hearing that song for the first time. I don't even own a single woodblock let alone many woodblocks that would require the use of a stand (thanks Waynes World). This would go on to create a seperation in drummers for years to follow (as well as raise LP, the main percussion supplier's, stock). From this moment on you were either a woodblock enthusiast, which evolved into cowbell, chime and eventually Octoban enthusiast, or you were a drummer who kept his kit simple (either by choice or by lack of finances). It is an important shift in the attitudes of drummers, and it happened with this record. Of course I am just making all of this stuff up, but at least it gives you something to think about.

Like I said earlier, if you want to break it down, using a series of woodblocks to mimic the sounds a forest of Maple trees would make as they battle the oppressive Oak trees is completely fucking cheesy, but Rush fans don't care. Neil Peart will always be a god to them (and frankly, to me too) regardless of the cheese moments Rush has.

I guess I just can't not think about it.

Audio/Visual evidence: La Villa Strangiato, The Trees

Vanilla Fudge - Vanilla Fudge

Psychedelic drumming is a completely different concept to master, you have to be able to stretch time within time, songs have to surge like waves with quick rises and falls, and it all has to maintain this ethereal quality about it. Psych drummers have to play in a spastic and energetic way, but at half the tempos of most rock songs. Carmine Appice was the master of this.

Vanilla Fudge stripped down seven popular songs to their very core (among them, Eleanor Rigby and Ticket to Ride by the Beatles, and Keep Me Hanging On by the Supremes), rebuilding them as these massive epic masterpieces with swirling melodies and explosions of vocals. Behind it all Carmine's drums have this massive quality to them, like he is playing 30 inch kick drums and 40 inch cymbals.

Appice gets a lot of praise for his playing on Keeps Me Hanging On, but I have always preferred the last track, Eleanor Rigby. After a small intro, he begins playing these scattered 8 stroke snare rolls (mixed in stereo, swirling around the speakers). His tempo builds ever so slightly until slowly he has worked up to lightning fast rolls. it sets the tone. It just sounds so damn fierce and improvised. It very well could be, there are even a few stick clicks (hey, nobody's perfect) but he never loses focus and as the song picks up at the end he echoes those rolls with the entire kit. He really had an understanding of melody and foreshadowing. Along with everything going on with his drumming, he finds time to twirl his stick at every possible moment he can. It's like his sticks are bolted to the inside of his hand and they just spin on an axis.

Appice went on to play for all sorts of people, from Rod Stewart to Paul Stanley, and he also wrote one of Rod's biggest hits, Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?. After Vanilla Fudge folded he quickly became a seasoned professional session musician. He has always maintained a smooth feel with his dynamics, and I like to think this record is where he learned how to do that.

Audio/Visual Evidence: Keep Me Hanging On

Indie Spotlight : Jon Epworth & The Improvements - Wet on Wet

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this. I don't think anyone will argue with me that Mike Belyea is an important Maritime drummer. I don't even think they will argue that this record is great, but I am sure they will wonder why I didn't post a record that contained some of Mike's extremely impressive drumming with his Saint John semi-prog rock band, Ermine. The truth is, Mike is an awesome all around drummer and I love his playing with Ermine, but my issue is this.

Of course Mike Belyea is awesome at playing prog rock drums. He's from Saint John NB! Prog rock is to Saint John what milk is to cows. It's inside you, and there's nothing you can do, you just have to let it out once in a while or you'll die. When Mike was recruited by Jon Epworth to play on his third record, the first to have drums by anyone but Jon (who I am sure I will get to on here, eventually), Mike was slightly out of his element, and when you take drummers outside of their comfort zones I think you get their best work. Belyea was used to playing intricate patterns that develop over a long time (most Ermine songs were between 5 and 7 minutes). Jon had an album full of 3 and a half minute rock songs already written and arranged, Mike could have easily gone in, played some straight up rock and walked out. Instead, along with the influence and background of the rest of the band (Two punks, Jon and Shane, and Jay Vautour, the most metal guy I know) they managed to make something really incredible.

This record has everything a pop record should have, catchy songs, up beat tempos and killer vocals (Jon along with playing drums and guitar, had one hell of a set of pipes). Mike manages to work within the pop confines but still remain unique and true to his style. He can rock out, like on Static Receiver, or give the drums their own voice and really play around with space, like at the start of Gone. It has as much noisy energy as any punk record, but the technical ability of a metal one. Except it's a pop record.

A really good one.

Audio/Visual Evidence: Gone (dual drum version with Loel Campbell of Wintersleep)

Elvis Costello and The Attractions - This Year's Model

I have always been fascinated by the lasting relationships some songwriters have with their musicians. Weird Al for example, has had the same band for his entire career (which is coming up on 30 years). That's pretty incredible. John Mellencamp had Kenny Aronoff (10 albums, 17 years), Bruce Springsteen had Max Weinberg (5 albums, 15 years) and Elvis Costello?

well, Elvis had Pete Thomas.

And after their first record was pretty successful, the pressure was on for #2. Second albums make or break careers, it has to be better than the first, but not TOO much better, you can't come off as too pompous or artistic, but if it's even a tiny, little bit worse than your first record, everyone will think you've lost the fire, so you have to sound like you are coming out swinging, but not too hard, enough so that the same people that loved you before stick around but all the naysayers/elitists realize that you don't suck anymore.

So that's what they did.

Pete Thomas kicks ass on this album. Right out of the gate, No Action comes on and he's all over the kit. He's playing sixteenth notes on the ride bell, swooping the toms around, rolling his snare in between bars, the guy is a fucking animal. Pete's updated version of classic 50's drumming was exactly what Costello needed. It was like Buddy Holly meets the Clash, and Pete Thomas's career was solidified from this point on. He went on to have a great studio career and play with guys like Elliot Smith and John Paul Jones and is probably living a better life than 99.87% of drummers, and he should be. I hope Pete Thomas spends his days relaxed in a mega expensive reclining chair in a giant living room with a hi fidelity record player sipping a Seabreeze listening to his own albums thinking "fuck I'm awesome".

He deserves to.

There is no way, as a drummer, you can listen to Pump It Up and not wish it was you playing that song at that moment in time. I would have loved to have seen the grin laid across Elvis Costello's face when Pete kicked that in for the first time. No wonder he kept him for nine albums.

Audio/Visual Evidence : No Action, This Years Girl, Pump it Up

Clutch - Blast Tyrant

Submitted By : Chris Smith (of Halifax horror filmscore band Bloodbath)

JP Gaster has been with Clutch from their beginnings as a semi hardcore punk and metal band (Transnational Speedway League) to a balls out stoner rock band (Pure Rock Fury, Elephant Riders*) and eventually a regular ass blues band (From Beale Street To Oblivion). Blast Tyrant, released in 2004 sits somewhere between the stoner rock phase and the blues phase, and it's a hell of a piece of work.

Does JP Gaster play any better or do anything more impressive on this album than on the others? Not really, I could have easily put Pure Rock Fury here and it would deserve just as much praise. What sets it apart is that this is the first Clutch album that really had a polished feel to it, what I love is that JP is as impressive as always, but everything just sounds better.

As far as his playing goes, JP has always been able to sit in the pocket much better than most drummers. Clutch like to sit on riffs for a long time and with the wrong drummer this can feel tedious and boring, but with JP he keeps things interesting by changing his feel ever so slightly, he'll switch to the ride bell, or spend a whole four bars playing some elaborate drum fill that always resolves at the perfect time. It sounds like he is completely comfortable all of the time.

This is also the only album I think I own that has a track with the band clearly "jamming" that doesn't suck. The bass remains pretty constant while JP and the keyboardist sort of play around with what's going on, and JP keeps it interesting enough that I don't turn it off when it comes on (it is the last track, so that can be tempting). JP is one of those rare blues drummers who keeps the cheese factor to a minimum. You don't hear the term "balls out blues drumming" very often (nor should you), but his balls are so far out on this record that they need to be coiled around his ankle to walk.

*It should be noted that Elephant Riders has quite possibly the best (and most literal) album art of the 90's. I don't know who thought of well dressed men riding elephants, waving a Clutch flag around, but I wish I had been in attendance at that board meeting.

Audio/Visual Evidence : The Mob Goes Wild, Profits of Doom, The Promoter.