Random Musical Notes

I spent some time watching a concert last night so I have a series of music based commentary to share. If you don't like it, click on "like" and you won't get any more posts like this until I feel like I want to write more. You're in my house; take off your shoes.

There are 2 kinds of rock and roll drummers: beaters and bangers. I'm a banger and proud of it. While I know a little of the technical stuff, I play be listening and doing, and I build myself on unpolished, innate sense, blundering ahead by feeling my way there. I can't do fancy but I can do earnest. No beater I, even though, as I figure it, almost 100% of professional, famous, "good" and lusted after rock drummers are beaters and I respect that. It makes sense that bangers are the amateurs and I'm ok with that. My future was never written amidst the stars.

But beaters play at being bangers because they know that bangers have more fun. When Hollywood wants to present the stereotypical rock drummer, does it go for the guy who can cold read a chart during a commercial session and one-take it flawlessly? Or one who eats metronomes for breakfast and works on rudiments as foreplay? No. Hollywood calls Animal.

So I'll never do the work to cross over to Beater-ville, and I'll never have a past to be ashamed of, or to be ashamed of missing.

Questions for discussion:

Is Meg White a banger or a beater?

Is Paul McCartney the most successful banger of all time? This leads to a tangential point: is there a distinction between bangers and beaters in all areas? The person who doesn't have to work at anything to be a natural but will never be as good as the guy who builds skills by the book in order to be great. Or the person who reaches "great" by divine gift and is still making it up as he goes along (a rare commodity who makes gold without knowing a bit of chemistry).

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I get told that I was an old man even when I was younger. This might be true -- I'll have to check the kinetoscope. Some people, it seems, were never young. They might have been less chronologically advanced, but they were still old souls. I see this in musicians especially.

Eddie Vedder, Neil Young, the members of The Band, John Fogerty, Keith Richards were all born wizened, wrinkled and jaded. They, even as children were a ragged blend of angry, cynical and aloof.

But others, like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney will never be old regardless of what any piece of paper proclaims. They will always have the twinkle in the eye of a 17 year old boy who is just discovering joy and anger, greed and celebration in the same moment and who still see the world with an innocence and excitement that has lost since passed away in others. They have found a way to be their youth, not reminisce about it.

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I just now realized how totally bass forward CCR's music is. The bass lines themselves are smart, flirty, insistent and incredibly solid, and the production refuses to let the bass melt into the music bed or be a supporting, background player. The bass is pushed up until it leads, growling like a horn, melodizing like a guitar, driving like a drum. I watched a 1970 concert film (Royal Albert Hall) and I have to say that they are TIGHT and their balance and mix are spot on.