Neil Peart on Keith Moon’s ‘Dogs Part Two’

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Scott K Fish
Neil Peart circa 1991

Neil Peart circa 1991

SKF NOTE: In 1989 I sat with Neil Peart, played him a few of my favorite drummer records without telling him anything about the song or the drummer. Our exchanges were meant for a music publication Chip Stern was creating. Here is the back story.

Caveat: In this exchange, Neil, talking about playing time, says, In the same terms that we were just discussing…. He is referring to part of our conversation about Joe Morello’s Shortin’ Bread.

Song Title: Dogs Part Two. Drummer: Keith Moon. 45 RPM: Flip side to Pinball Wizard single. (Not released on any LP) The Who. Decca 732465. Released: 1969

Scott K Fish: Do you know who that drummer is?

Neil Peart: Yup. Keith Moon. From the flip side of Call Me Lightning?

SKF: Pinball Wizard.

NP: Oh, was it?

Keith Moon

Keith Moon

SKF: Well, maybe in Canada it was released differently. I think you’re the only person I’ve run into who has heard Dogs Part Two.

NP: I told you what a big Who fan I was. When that song first started, I didn’t recognize it. It’s been probably 20 years since I’ve heard it. I thought, “Who’s around that can play like that?” I was really knocked out. Then the answer became clear. Of course. It was Keith Moon.

SKF: He wrote the song.

NP: Yeah, well…. (laughs). It’s one of the craziest songs known to man. So that doesn’t surprise me.

SKF: What can you say about that?

NP: It’s just Keith. No other superlatives apply.

SKF: If he was just hitting the scene today, do you think he could get away with playing like that? Would there be a venue for his style of playing?

NP: Yeah. He proved it later on with the Who’s Next album, for instance, where he had to play with sequencers. He was playing to true metronomic time, but he was able to average himself over it. In the same terms that we were just discussing, he could play all around that metronomic time and still be bound by it.

I think he would have adapted easily. Somehow, when he felt like being disciplined, he could be. That’s one of the misconceptions about him. If you listen to his more restrained or more controlled work — like the Tommy album — his drumming is excellent. And it’s very controlled and very sparsely distributed. His fills are all very logically placed. Being a logical sort of guy it’s one of my favorite pieces of his drumming because it all makes sense.

He has his moments of craziness. Certainly. And there are some beautifully crazy fills in some songs. But they are still in the right place. They are the right thing at the right time.

I guess Who’s Next was his zenith point; the height of his still being very vibrant and exciting, but learning to be more discriminate. So I think he would have adapted to today’s music. He would have been exciting enough to liven it all up. If he were allowed to.

Most modern sessions — they would have kicked him right out. You can’t play that fill! You can’t do that! Just shut up and play the beat! — is the unfortunate thing that might happen to a rising Keith Moon today if he got in the wrong band or didn’t have the character sense to stick to it and say, “This is the way I play. I’m going to play that way.”

If he wasn’t that stubborn and convicted of his own values, then he might get swallowed up. As many a good musician has.

— end —

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Hobbs: Freedom Attracts Young Chinese to Jazz

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Scott K Fish

Vancouver drummer finds jazz, musical freedom on rise in China
By Scott Hewitt, Columbian Arts & Features Reporter
Published: November 28, 2015, 5:56 PM

Gary_Hobbs_promo

Gary Hobbs

Things ain’t what they used to be in East Asia, and especially in urban centers such as Beijing and Hong Kong, according to jazz drummer Gary Hobbs.

You might actually hear that sly Duke Ellington standard pouring from the doorway of a nightclub or conservatory these days — in a civilization that used to consider jazz music subversive, even pornographic, and definitely anti-communist.

…Hobbs, 67, …on his fourth teaching-and-performing junket to China, Taiwan and Hong Kong in late October. The centerpiece of the trip was the third annual China Drum Summit, hosted by the Beijing Contemporary Music Academy.

Hobbs was…“totally shocked,” he said, at the masses of Chinese music students displaying real talent and fire about this essentially American art form. Hobbs…found “massive conservatories full of all these brazen virtuosos” who are practicing the instruments…like their lives depend on it.

“I’m not sure why all of a sudden jazz is cool there,” he said, “but it is urgent.”

Fun and freedom

Hobbs’s 10-day October trip was packed full of concerts, classes and one-on-one clinics where he got to be the admired master. But he felt exactly like a nervous young student upon learning that he’d be teaching alongside…Billy Cobham…. “He’s a god to me,” said Hobbs, who started practicing for four hours a day after he heard he’d be meeting Cobham.

In China, where culture was long frozen as a matter of national policy, music of all sorts is now catching up.., Hobbs said. Everybody is deep into jazz.

“They really dig it, all these skinny young kids,” Hobbs said. “They really come out and support this music.”

What’s hooked them, he said, is what they were denied before: Freedom.

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Ed Blackwell’s Paiste Profile 1975

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Ed Blackwell’s page from Paiste’s Profiles of International Drummers, Percussionists, Musicians #2. Copyright 1975.

blackwell_ed

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Gallaudet Football Team’s Talking Drum

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: I first learned about Gallaudet University from a young lady enrolled in my smoking cessation program at Sibley Memorial Hospital. Both Sibley and Gallaudet are in Washington, D.C. My quit smoking enrollee was deaf. I was amazed that she was able to take part in my class with no special assistance. She relied on her lip reading skills and, I suppose, her powers of observation.

I have forgotten her name, although I remember her. She was a Gallaudet student. I was intrigued with her stories of a University for the deaf and hard of hearing. And I invited her to become a smoking cessation class teacher. But she said no.

Fast forward to a recent sports page story about the University of Maine football team playing Gallaudet University’s football team. My girlfriend, Eileen, asks, “How do Gallaudet football players hear the calls?”

Good question. I have a new friend, Tammy, who is a former Gallaudet student. I ask her Eileen’s question. Tammy answers, “There is a large drum they bang . The players can feel the vibration of that. The coaches use sign to the players as well.” You can see the drum in use in the video below.

Another great story from Gallaudet University. Giving new meaning to the term talking drum.

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Stand-Up Drummer Inspired by Maureen Tucker

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Live and learn. Drummers playing while standing is not new. Slim Jim Phantom of Stray Cats comes to mind. What is new to me is a standing drummer first influenced by “Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Don Moye, Hal Blaine, Jo Jones, Ed Blackwell, Roy Haynes, Ringo Starr,” but didn’t find his drumming passion until he heard Maureen (Mo) Tucker with The Velvet Underground. Go Mo!

The Maureen Tucker video at the close of this post is part of longer interview available on YouTube. The still shot is of the unique drumset Victor DeLorenzo used while recording his latest album.

Showoff with Victor DeLorenzo
Confessions of a stand-up drummer
Published Nov. 27, 2015 at 10:33 a.m.

vicdrumkit

When I started to play the drum set some 40-odd years ago…all the drummers that I admired sat down behind their [drumsets] to guide and power some of the most exciting bands….

My favorites included…Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Don Moye, Hal Blaine, Jo Jones, Ed Blackwell, Roy Haynes, Ringo Starr and so many more masters of time and taste.

Then I heard the music of The Velvet Underground and the gender bending earth shattering drumming of one Maureen (Mo) Tucker! She played fierce, driving beats on a snare drum, batter side turned up bass drum, and big cymbals, usually with the aid of mallets instead of sticks. Although she used such an unorthodox setup, she played with such a conviction that never let you think that there was something lacking in the drum department.

Mo’s playing was peppered with a dramatic freedom and a primitive growl that whipped and slashed through melody and lyric. Her drums and her style gave me some things that every young drummer comes to realize sooner or later: “Economy is king, and simple is best!”

Oh, and yes … she was standing up.

I wanted to be “the Keith Moon of stand-up comedy drumming,” and then some.

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