SKF NOTE: At the time of this interview, Michael Shrieve was on a mission to make music that was both true to himself and appealing to the masses.

Could a hit pop record do that? Shrieve believed the answer was “yes.” I wasn’t so sure. And my strong sense was, despite what Shrieve said, he wasn’t so sure either.

He always seemed much more at home outside of pop music.

This two-part interview starts in Part 1 with Michael Shrieve’s quick “no” response to my question, “Do you ever think about playing drums (or drum solos) with the fluidity of a saxophone player?”

But then Shrieve tells us how he does approach playing drums, lessons learned from drummer Pete Magadini, meeting all “his heroes.”

Then we started loosely discussing what Shrieve called “drum questions.”

Part 2 of Shrieve’s interview begins with a continuation of drum questions.

We also talk about drummers Shrieve admires, albums he listens to often, synthesizers, and his new band called Patterns.

Shrieve was with his band, Novo Combo, when I first interviewed him for Modern Drummer. He left that band before MD published his story.

To keep Shrieve’s MD feature current, he and I sat down again for an updater interview, mostly to talk about Shrieve’s new band called Patterns, which was also short-lived.

Instead, Shrieve’s next two album releases – circa 1983-84 – were the excellent “In Suspect Terrain” and “Transfer Station Blue.”

These albums are Michael Shrieve music. They fit comfortably into no category. So what? Both albums are full of intriguing music.

This recording has a few spots or glitches where moments of our conversation were cut. None of the glitches break the flow of the conversation. Again, I thank my friend, Jason J. Carey, for his great work in cleaning up this sound file.

My Shrieve interview came out – finally – in the July 1983 Modern Drummer.

Shrieve has gone on to record a long discography of albums as leader and sideman. Check out Shrieve’s artist page on Bandcamp.