{"id":10643,"date":"2011-12-05T10:25:38","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T15:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=10643"},"modified":"2011-12-05T10:25:38","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T15:25:38","slug":"stop-dicking-around-with-junkyard-percussion-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/stop-dicking-around-with-junkyard-percussion-already\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Dicking Around With Junkyard Percussion, Already!"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JlE1C8_DtSo?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Do I blame this <strong>Florence + The Machine<\/strong> cover of <strong>Buddy Holly<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Not Fade Away&#8221; on <strong>Tom Waits <\/strong>and his percussion and production crew from the early 1980s?\u00a0I think so, and it&#8217;s time musicians stop dicking around with junkyard percussion, already!<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Although Waits&#8217; junkyard style of hoboism, which began with <em>Swordfishtrombones<\/em>, first helped me like Waits, whose original skid-row hobo schtick initially annoyed me,\u00a0I quickly tired of the junkyard percussion style of percussionist <strong>Michael Blair<\/strong>. Not only did the style of percussion lead to increasingly tedious results, but the precious way every coffee can timbale and hubcap cymbal would be documented by engineers on albums spinning off from Waits&#8217; works, like <strong>Elvis Costello<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Spike<\/em>, flew in the face of rock &#8216;n roll&#8217;s true objectives.<\/p>\n<p>The drums in a rock &#8216;n roll song are supposed to move the song along. We laud drummers for their abilities to &#8220;drive&#8221; a song, &#8220;support&#8221; a song, and so forth. Most of us who manage to maintain some awareness of our nether regions don&#8217;t want the distraction of imagining the drummer as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hubermarionettes.com\/bjm\/bjminterview.html\" target=\"_blank\">some marionette from <em>Being John Malkovich<\/em><\/a>: &#8220;Aren&#8217;t you astonished by the wonders of my junkyard drum kit? Here, listen for the sound of me clicking an oil can during the middle eight!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Drummers should play drums. Their drums should drive and support the songs, not prop up spotty songwriting with some percussive freak show. Until further notice I hereby call a moratorium on junkyard percussion. Thank you.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rvQVN3PdDao?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do I blame this Florence + The Machine cover of Buddy Holly&#8216;s &#8220;Not Fade Away&#8221; on Tom Waits and his percussion and production crew from the early 1980s?\u00a0I think so, and it&#8217;s time musicians stop dicking around with junkyard percussion, already!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[10,164,462,327],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}