Is There a Drummer in the House: Should Drummers Be Allowed From Behind Their Kits?

 Posted by
Jan 042013
 

A little after the 23-minute mark of our recent Most Polite Performance in Rock post drummer Bev Bevan comes out from behind his drumkit to the fore of the stage to announce something to the audience. Some may see this as a generous form of “giving the drummer some.” I can’t stand when bands let drummers leave their kit to have a word with the audience. A drummer’s got all the power, dignity, and status one musician can ask for on his or her throne. (And remember: no other musician gets to play on a THRONE.) They need to maintain their special place in the order of a band. I get similarly annoying seeing Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban sitting courtside in a long-sleeve t-shirt (or worse) at one of his team’s games. It goes beyond former Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner‘s Man of the People move of sitting in a field-level box for his team’s games. Turner still looked like he could buy everyone in the stadium: fans as well as players. Cuban’s behavior is beneath the class and pomp and circumstance I expect from a multi-millionaire sports franchise owner, and likewise a showboating drummer who rushes to the front of the stage is doing a disservice to the hard-earned privileges of fellow drummers.

I saw a band last month that let the drummer come out from behind his kit practically every other song to lead cheers for the audience. Many in the audience seemed delighted by his clowning, but I bet most of you here would agree that multiple trips to the fore of the stage are too many for any drummer. How do you feel about the drummer making even one appearance from behind his kit? Most importantly, how do the drummers in the house feel about this practice?

I look forward to your thoughts.

Should drummers be allowed from behind their kits?

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Excluding Records Featuring Members of The Beatles, What’s the Best Single Recording Birthday Boy George Martin Has Produced?

 Posted by
Jan 032013
 

George and America Do Ringo

This post’s title pretty much asks all I want to ask: Excluding Beatles records, solo Beatles records, and for the sake of argument pre-Beatles records (eg, Goon Squad recordings), what’s the best single recording birthday boy George Martin, who turned 87 today, has produced? It doesn’t need to be an entire album; it can be a single song.

Is it Cheap Trick‘s “Dream Police” (the song) All Shook Up? Is it something by America? Is it Stackridge‘s “Pinafore Days”? Unless something is slipping my mind it may be—I can’t believe I’m typing this—Jeff Beck‘s groundbreaking fusion album, Blow by Blow.

Regardless of the seemingly tremendous gap between his work with the Beatles and any other record he produced after them, Happy Birthday! Your value as the Fifth Beatle far outweighed your contributions as the Fourth American.

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The Mellencamp Factor: the Artist or Band With the Greatest Number of Name Changes

 Posted by
Jan 032013
 

All of these Cougar/Mellencamps is not like the other

In order to put as much distance as possible between our terrifyingly brilliant hive of Rock know-it-all brains and Mod’s latest, most incomprehensible post about Fonzie’s light blue windbreaker, I suggest we put the power of the RTH Hive to work on a project that’s really worthy of our unique skill set: determining, once and for all, which artist or band went through the greatest number of name changes over its history. Lurker Sgtpeppermintpatty suggested this thread idea when he said he was having trouble determining an answer to this question on his own. Stroking his beard thoughtfully, the Sergeant looked across the office divider that separates us and wondered aloud: “The way I see it, it’s a tie between John Cougar Mellencamp and Jefferson Airplane. Both went through three name changes.”

In a flash, I leapt across the office wall and grabbed him by the lapels. I slapped his cheek, as if to wake him from a deep sleep, and screamed, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! Johnny Cougar has had FOUR names over his career!” I grabbed a handful of his hair and steadied myself to bash his forehead into his computer monitor — you know, to teach him a lesson about accuracy in rock trivia. It was then that I stopped, frozen. Frozen with shame. Frozen with confusion. I stopped myself because I had to admit: *I* didn’t know who really held the coveted band/artist name change title.

I released the Sarge from my kung-fu grip, and leaned back against the fabric wall that separates our workstations. Hands trembling, I fished in my breast pocket for a cigarette. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead and I felt vaguely sick. A hypocrite — that’s what I was. A know-nothing, an idiot. I had to make good on this situation. But I needed rules. It wouldn’t be good enough just to pick a band that had 15 different incarnations as unrecorded teenagers before hitting it big. No, rule number one had to be: your names don’t get counted when you’re not recording for a label you don’t own. Wiping the blood from his upper lip and spitting out busted teeth like corn niblets, SPP suggested that there’d have to be a maximal mathematical band member change percentage to ensure the band’s name wasn’t changing because the band itself really had changed. We decided on a maximal band member change percentage per name change of 25%.

With these rules in hand, we felt prepared to face this question head-on. But we still need your help. So pitch in. Muck in. Do your part. Help us unravel this mystery. Please.

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

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What’s the Fonzie’s Light Blue Windbreaker of Rock?

 Posted by
Jan 012013
 

Fonzie’s blue windbreaker.

Townspeople of a certain age knows that Fonzie was coolest in his early appearances on Happy Days, when he wore the light blue windbreaker, not the leather jacket. What’s the Fonzie’s Light Blue Windbreaker of Rock, that is, the early, underrated, almost-forgotten stylistic mark (musical or otherwise) that is actually much cooler than what an artist would be known for?

 

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Not-So-Insta-Reviews: Alabama Shakes and Tame Impala

 Posted by
Jan 012013
 

In past years you could count on me for my patented Insta-Reviews, frequently real-time reviews of the latest releases that I happened to pick up. The past year was not such a year. I was busy. I was bored. Late in the year I did pick up a couple of albums that inspired me to jot down my impressions: Alabama Shakes’ Boys & Girls and Tame Impala’s Lonerism.

ALABAMA SHAKES
Boys & Girls
(ATO)
After months of avoidance as my generation of relatively hip, middle-aged mouthbreathers raved over the debut album by Alabama Shakes I found myself confronted late one night with a performance by the band on PBS. I allowed myself to watch for a minute, thinking I’d chuckle the righteous chuckle of the dismissive rock snob and then move on. But I was wrong. Rather than the mix of college-boy hoodoo, jive, hokum, and beer commercial bluesology that I expected, Alabama Shakes simply hunkered down on some elemental soul music chord progressions and then drove them the fuck home with some Clash-worthy forearm rock and singer Brittany Howard’s Joe Cocker-esque histrionics. Any time I felt ready to reach into my deep bag of hang-ups I was thwarted. A song and a half into their performance I ceased attempting to find fault. Spittle had accumulated on my lips. The band’s charms are presented without distraction on Boys & Girls. The performances are warm and direct. Howard’s got killer pipes, a term that usually induces a cringe but applies here. The slow burn of “Hold On” doesn’t take long to explode. “Hang Loose,” my favorite song of the year, mixes a “Chain of Fools”-style intro and hippie ethos. The cynic in me still ponders whether the band is an indie-rock flipside to Sam Phillips’ ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel…” dream, but hell, this album is the answers to my prayers.

TAME IMPALA
Lonerism
(Modular)

Australian band Tame Impala’s 2010 debut album, Innerspeaker, mined the best bits of the Nazz’ “Open My Eyes,” leaving out the flowery middle eight section. The stomping fuzz riffs drilled straight into my brain. I dug that feeling. The band’s follow-up, Lonerism, attempts to stretch from its third-generation psychedelia with a gentler, lyrical approach. This approach works best on songs like “Be Above It,” “Mind Mischief,” and “Keep on Lying,” which sound like the sylvan folk of Midlake as produced by the Chemical Brothers. Other times, as on “Apocalypse Dream” and “Music to Walk Home By,” I feel like I’m listening to one of those George Harrison-Jeff Lynne collaborations from the 1980s, the ones I’d spin a couple of times, decide were “better than Gone Troppo,” and never spin again. This aspect of Tame Impala’s growth is not as satisfying as having my brain drilled by the best bits of a Nazz song. Where does one go after the first rush of psychedelia? Tame Impala attempts to move into the light, but sometimes it “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” as the band’s take on the Verve is entitled. When in doubt, when the band makes its third album, may I suggest a little skull-piercing fuzz guitar?

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