Tag Archives: bands

The Drummer’s Job???

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Came across this post on a Yahoo group about drumming. Being first and foremost a drummer, it reminded me of a few bands I’ve been in:

The job of the drummer is:
To show up before anyone else, since it will take longer to load in the drums.
To stay later than anyone else, since it will take longer to load out the drums.
To be the only one in the band who has any idea what bar of the song the band is in at any given time.
To hit the crash in the right spot so the singer knows when to come in.
To play the right fill to remind the guitar player it’s time to go to the chorus.
To play the right fill to remind bass player where the bridge is.
To play the right fill so the entire band knows the bridge is over.
To play an obvious “end the song here” fill so the guitar player doesn’t turn your 3 minute song into an extended 10 minute guitar solo showcase.
To remind the band it’s your band too.

At long last, here are my Nickel Creek concert photos

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Three points to make here:

1. Nickel Creek is a-frikkin-mazing. Sean, Sara, and Chris are true masters of their instruments: six-string, fiddle, and mandolin. I almost can’t imagine what they’ll be turning out in another ten years.
2. If you’ve never seen them live, please do. It’s really a cool experience. I saw them at the Odeon with my wife summer before last. It was really a blast.
3. If you never get the chance, you always come back here and check out my Nickel Creek photos.

The Princeton Laptop Orchestra Debut Concert

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The Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or Plork, as they’ve come to be known, is a group of 15 Princetonian students who sit on stage in the auditorium and play music on their instrument of choice–a laptop computer equipped with music programming tools such as Princeton’s own audio language, called Chuck.  The pieces they play range from the mundane to the quizzical.  Of course, if a little Internet exposure isn’t enough, you can experience the Plork live performance for yourself at the university’s Richmond Auditorium on April 4.

Chris Layton interviewed in Classic Drummer

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I was just watching a Stevie Ray Vaughan DVD with my wife the other day and I kept thinking, man is his drummer good. The guy just sits in the groove throughout all of those jams Stevie used to rip. Amazing stuff. Anyhoo, Chris is interviewed in the newest issue of Class Drummer Magazine.

Also, check out the  Classic Drummer blog, where the eds of the mag have posted their thoughts about the Queen and Paul Rodgers concert they recently saw.

Check it out!

Is Clean Hip-hop an Oxymoron?

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I’ll be the first to extol the creative virtues of hip-hop artists–especially veterans that have an unchallenged style and history of thought-provoking beats, sounds, and grooves.  I’m talking about guys like the Roots and the Beastie Boys.  They’ve churned out unique-sounding records (tough to do in any genre, but especially in rap) and turned in memorable rap singles. They’ve even taken an artful recording pastime and made it worth experiencing on the live stage.

But why are hip-hop artists, generally speaking, so nasty in their tone and speech? My kids can’t listen to this stuff, and since I have a rule that I’ll only listen to what I would let my kids listen to (call it parent-kid solidarity, I guess), it seems this stuff will forever be relegated to the “no-no section” of my iTunes library.  And it’s a shame really. The beats are inspiring, and hip-hop grooves tend to be good background noise for the kind of work I do. Though some folks coexisting in my habitat don’t always appreciate the swearing, pimp talk, and chronic use of chronic.

So what’s the deal? Apparently, I’m not the only one that would like to hear more clean hip hop, but, unless you count those goofy, cleaned-up CD collections of edited hip hop music (like the NOW anthologies) and Christian hip-hop producers like John Reuben and Toby Mac (which tend not to have the same production sound as “real” hip-hop), there isn’t really much to choose from.

Geddy Lee’s Fender Jazz Bass

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Geddy Lee’s Fender Jazz Bass

Rush fans have long been obsessed with the bass habits of the band’s front man, Geddy Lee. His aggressive (and often trebly) playing style make him the ideal power-trio bass man, but it’s Rush’s sense of humor that appeals to less gear-obsessed fans. Check out this snippet from a recent Fender interview:

FN: How important has Rush’s sense of humor been to its longevity?
GL: Well, I would think that—from an insider’s point of view—it’s extremely important from a not-so-overt point of view, in the sense that I think the basis of our friendship is the sense of humor that we share, and the way that we’re able to deal with all the various aspects of the music business and the interpersonal stuff.

And that’s always been the case, and it’s always been a means of us bonding with each other on a personal level. And it’s always crept into our music, but for many, many years we were accused of being deadly serious and humorless.

FN: But that’s clearly not the case. You guys are a riot.
GL: I guess you can look at our music and see what you want to see in it. I know our hardcore fans have always detected it, although as we get older—and maybe this is just another sign of senility (grins)—our sense of humor has become a bit more obvious.

FN: You have two clothes dryers and a snack machine behind you onstage in lieu of amps, a concert intro film starring Jerry Stiller, a website feature called Big Al’s Tiki Bar, and an animated mid-concert episode of That Darn Dragon starring bobble-head versions of yourselves. That is not deadly serious.
GL: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I look at it like, when you come to a Rush show, it’s over three hours long, and, you know, you need comic relief. Every form of entertainment can use a little comic relief. So we try to throw some of that in there to make people walk away with smiles on their faces.

Clearly, for a guy who has played a Rick, a Steinberger, and a handful of different makes, the Fender seems to be the quintessential “Geddy bass”. Indeed, Fender produced a limited Geddy edition of the axe just a few years back.

Bluegrass growing among younger audiences

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Bluegrass isn’t just for nursing homes and church events anymore, or so says an article at redandblack.com:

“The younger crowd is starting to get turned on towards it,” said banjo player John Nipper. Nipper said a younger crowd is beginning to get into bluegrass because of its high energy. Rich Mullinax, upright bass player for 16 Tons and the Blackmon Brothers, said comedy is a tradition in bluegrass music and early bluegrass players were expected to be comedians as well. As bluegrass has developed over the years, comedy has had less and less of a significant presence. “I think there isn’t enough comedy in bluegrass,” Mullinax said.

As for me, I can vouch. I love the raw, torn-down, back-to-basics rusticness of  traditional 3 and 4-piece bluegrass, but I especially enjoy progressive, technical bluegrass from the likes of Bela Fleck and Nickel Creek, pictured above.  Here’s the article about how bluegrass is appealing to a younger audience.

Coldplay: love ‘em or hate ‘em

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(Do these guys need to shave?)

Coldplay’s followers are a quiet bunch. They aren’t constantly looking for other fans of their band, like Rush fans. They don’t tend to be musical elilitists, either. But Coldplay fans have one thing in common: they are far more numerous than just about any other mainstream rock act out there today. Why is this? I’ll give you three good reasons.

1. Their songs are simple. Simple songs, simple beats, simple melodies keep the foot tapping.

2. They aren’t offensive to most. Relatively mild, Coldplay doesn’t cuss every other word and doesn’t write about such deeply endearing topics as “pimpin”.

3. Coldplay’s records are well-produced. One need only listen to the lead singer perform live to understand what I’m getting at here.

Now, here’s somebody who disagrees with me in an obscene, hyper-intellectual rant at the radio synth blog.