He goes to the beach, he hears the drums, he eats lunch, he hears drums...

February 20, 2004 4:54 AM

DRUMMERWORLD: The DrumSolo Collection - from Steve Gadd to Dave Weckl. [via codemode.org]
posted by soundofsuburbia (6 comments total)

Fun sampling ensues. Thanks!
posted by hackly_fracture at 6:17 AM on February 20, 2004

This is an incredible site. But let it be said, that the drum solo and bass solo have done more to destroy jazz and rock music than and anything you can name, including drugs and bad managers. In a jazz concert, the cycle of piano solo (applause), sax solo (applause), bass solo (applause), drum solo (applause) was -- by the mid-1950s -- the most tedious ritual since the pre-Vatican II High Requiem Mass. It's a pleasure to listen to versatile melodic instruments like the piano, sax or trumpet, but don't take my money and expect me to sit through a drum solo and a bass solo in every stinkin' song, and then add insult to injury by expecting me to applaud. The hideous staleness of it all has driven people away from jazz in droves. In rock music, anyone who lived through the late 1960s and 70s can tell you how -- under the inspiration of Ginger Baker -- nearly every rock concert in the world eventually degenerated into a drum solo that went on forever, and more or less drove the entire culture into the arms of disco. Let it be carved over the doorway of every school of music: Drums are a background instrument that should stay in the background, and maybe, just maybe, for one brief moment in a drummer's career, he (or she, if the group happens to be the Honeycombs) may come forward and do a brief, self-effacing, thirty-second solo before a small audience composed of friends and family, and then get back into mix and forever hold his or her peace. Drummers, being non-musicians can, of course, be forgiven their tastelessness in inflicting their drum solos on the world, but bassists should know better. What's the difference between drummers and bass players? Bass players know they're doing wrong when they play a solo. You can see it in their eyes, the guilty conscience. Drummers have no more sense of right and wrong than your cat, when it knocks over a plant.
posted by Faze at 6:53 AM on February 20, 2004

Nice find, SOS. Good to see 'Pretty' Purdie on the list.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Elvin Jones and Ginger Baker have a live "drum battle" once? That I'd love to hear.
posted by jonmc at 7:05 AM on February 20, 2004

Faze : I'd agree that drummers are background musicians, but they are musicians, nonetheless. Stuart Copland made a career of being a background musican, and a great one.

Stuart Copland :

At one drum conference, the drummer that was supposed to do a clinic ended up having a delayed plane. They asked Stuart to give a clinic. He insisted that he didn't do clinics. Finally, after much begging, he finally said he would.

Typically when drummers start a clinic, they do a blazing drum solo to show off their chops. So when Mr. Copland announced that he was going to play the most difficult thing there is for a drummer to do, everyone was speechless. A Stuart Copland drum clinic, with this amazing claim. A huge crowd stared at the set and waited with anticipation.

He then proceeded to play a straight beat (4 hi-hat ticks, the kick on the 1, and the snare on the 3)...

.. for 15 minutes...

Never once adding a fill.

THAT is great drumming.
posted by psychotic_venom at 9:24 AM on February 20, 2004

Right on, Faze. Right up to the point where you started to get silly.

And, please, let us all bow down to Hal Blaine.
posted by fletchmuy at 9:28 AM on February 20, 2004

And to Peter Erskine!
posted by Songdog at 12:44 PM on February 20, 2004