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Always been fascinated by the Surfaris record 'Wipeout', which is a lovely piece of work where the drums and surfer guitar alternate the lead instrument on the record. It was a 'B' side to the 'A' side of a recording of 'Surfer Joe' and just keeps resurfacing every decade in some film soundtrack or other. Apparently it was only recorded in 1963 when the Surfaris had finished the 'A' side and the recording studio asked them what was going to be the 'B' side for the single release.

The opening sound is a surf board being broken and it is the band's manager that is recorded as saying 'Wipe out' at the start. The drums are kind of fascinating because they wouldn't have had a wide array of drum arrangements available to them. Apparently the drummer Ron Wilson just used breaks from a Scottish marching band style that he liked.

Four different drummers' take on it ...



The original...



The Ventures covered it and used two drum kits which doesn't really work for me as the style is changed and I don't think the arrangement works. Also the guitar isn't as piercing but that could be the difference between a Les Paul guitar and a Fender or some other guitar in the 70s I reckon...

www.youtube.com

The Ventures - Wipe Out

Wipe Out Guest / Max Weinberg
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
It's hard to knock Max Weinberg. Deadly. I mean, holding down the drum-seat for Bruce for how many decades? He's the Boss, but Max is the battery under the chassis holding it all up. His chops are outstanding, his presentation is immaculate, and his back-beat as distinctive as Charlie Watts was/is. Having the Max Weinberg Orchestra heading up the theme of the Conan O'Brien Show as well as the incidentals and backing for any guests was the perfect perch for Max to sit on while Bruce was off the circuit re-imagining the dream. And when Bruce was ready, Max was straight back into the fold.

Every drummer in The States dreams of that chair. It's the highest perch there is for any player, nailing down the Boss's tracks for the masses.

But Bruce can be a bit of a slave-driver, as you can hear in the intro of this one.

If that were me, I'd have fucked a well-aimed stick at the back of his head:



Great track, I love the album version the most but this is kind of cool in that Bruce was facing an audience for the first time after a few years off the circuits. As you can see, he blew the tempo and had to try to settle into a slightly slower version as a result of ignoring Max's click-intro.
 
Springsteen is such a fascinating character and writer. The stadium rocker stuff is just American muscle-car translated to music and the drumming and bass is just straight out of a Detroit V8 engine... I still think that Nebraska is such a weird album and the other side of the American coin, the long lonely roads and stripped back ballad style songs, a paen to the mid-west emptiness. It is as far away from the Detroit and busy city V8 overpower of the work either side of it.

The drums and bass are just like those massively thumping pistons on the stadium stuff though. Still think I prefer the Nebraska strip-back though, just marginally... overall the music has the schizophrenic extroverted thump of an adrenaline V8 and then there is the quiet of the horizon to horizon emptiness in Nebraska that keeps coming to mind with Bruce. I think he nails both sides.
 
I loved a recent little story about Bruce: in some town he played (can't recall the name - let's just say it's Nebraska) he met some kid who asked him for his autograph. Bruce signed whatever he was given and was saying goodbye to the kid as he was going for lunch. The kid ends up joining him and he had a nice meal after which the kid invited Bruce home to meet his Mammy.

So Bruce agrees: they take a cab and head off to the kid's house in the suburbs.

He meets the Mammy, they get to talking and the hours pass by quickly.

So she asks him if he's hungry and he says yes, so she fries some eggs and makes some toast and they have a nice supper.

He thanks them and then heads off back to his hotel.

Now, every time he plays in Nebraska, he goes over to their house for eggs and toast and a chat.

And he's been doing it for over twenty years.

Cool guy, our Bruce.
 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
Springsteen is such a fascinating character and writer. The stadium rocker stuff is just American muscle-car translated to music and the drumming and bass is just straight out of a Detroit V8 engine... I still think that Nebraska is such a weird album and the other side of the American coin, the long lonely roads and stripped back ballad style songs, a paen to the mid-west emptiness. It is as far away from the Detroit and busy city V8 overpower of the work either side of it.

The drums and bass are just like those massively thumping pistons on the stadium stuff though. Still think I prefer the Nebraska strip-back though, just marginally... overall the music has the schizophrenic extroverted thump of an adrenaline V8 and then there is the quiet of the horizon to horizon emptiness in Nebraska that keeps coming to mind with Bruce. I think he nails both sides.
Click to expand...

Excellent analogy.

I suppose if I was a car I'd be a VW Beetle: they're the only cars my Old Man ever drove, and he went through three of them in his lifetime. I still remember the smell inside, the faux leather and breathable fabric, the simple dashboard, the steering wheel and the wrap he added to it. The engine out back and the boot up front, usually stuffed with his golf clubs and carrier. One time he sent me out to collect something but when I opened the boot, he had three turkeys he won at the Christmas pitch and putt for the bus driver's club.

He decided to cement in half the garden for a driveway to park the car safely. He didn't mix the cement properly and the whole thing kept cracking and breaking. It was also sloped down towards the kerb, which he filled with a forty-five degree pile of cement so the car could get over the hump of the kerb: he should have asked permission because the council came around (someone reported us) and smashed it to pieces because it was stopping the flow of rain water down the very slight incline of the street causing some problems including a huge pool of water we'd hop in to with our wellies on.

Shortly after, I was at home one evening and we heard a loud skid from a fast car and then a crack followed by a massive thump: some joyriders stole a car and drove it all over the estate at high speed, the cops chasing them. They were driving down my street and they spotted another cop car approaching them from the front, so they did a handbrake turn - leaving a streak of tyre stain that was almost three-sixty, then smashed the arse of the car into the pillar the Old Man built to hang the garage gates on. It was lying on the other side of the garden, wrecked. The gates looked like a recently swatted fly. Fucked.

The council came back, smashed up the concrete he added to the kerb, then smashed up the concrete in the garden and relaid it along with two standard pillars drilled and ready for the gates to be rehung - free of charge. I could never figure out if he did that deliberately to get to council to build us a proper parking space, and every time I asked him, he'd just wink at me and laugh.

Point: the kids who robbed the car that hit the gates were eventually chased down and caught: they averaged around fourteen years old and the driver was said to be using three telephone directories to sit on so that he could see over the dashboard. His name was Joyce, David. Another was later thrown from a car he stole while driving by his own house showing off. He hit a concrete lamppost and apparently was decapitated and his head went through the windscreen and rolled around the street like a bloody football. His family members saw his head lying on the kerb, blood all over it. He was around fifteen, a right little gouger.

No idea what car he was driving.

And now, some music:

 
Never ceases to amaze me how ignorant some bloggers are about the simplest of things. Recently, one Australian half-wit said - after listening to a few things I played on - that there were no fancy fills. No fat flams on the toms à la Bonham or Peart. Which is true: I don't do that shit. They did though. That's the difference. It's a subtle thing, but real musicians know what it means.

I'm a groover - not a soloist, not band leader à la Buddy Rich doing awesome drum solos every sixteen bars, but the guy who nails it down and keeps it in check from start to finish. I'm not there to play solos for ten minutes before hitting the bridge into the C part, you fucking twats. I'm there to connect all of the written pieces together without getting in their way or diminishing them so I can show off some chops. Fuck chops - that was another age, and not one we'll be returning to any time soon. Music aficionados understand that when a player is hired in, they get handed the dots first. Then they're clued in by the few parts they're given to listen to. Often, there's fuck all else even written, there's just a hook-line in some guy's head that we have to tease out and then lay down without fucking up the spaces with fancy fills just because you'd like to play 'em.

That's what gets you fired.

What gets you hired is to make sure that after getting the dots, then talking with the artist about approximately what they're looking for, then making sure the drums are mic-ed and and tuned properly, as well as the correct drums for the style chosen and prepared. Then we get to play with the idea. Often, the singer can only la-la-la the vocal parts as the lyrics aren't even finished. Take a classic like 'Walking On The Moon' by Sting? The original lyric was 'walking round the room' and based on a bossa-nova type feel written for guitar. Copeland listened to the idea, bounced a few ideas back, saw what worked and what didn't, and then set about writing his own parts. he basically shifted everything he was playing one bar to the left: that turned a bossa-nova into a one-drop neo-reggae style which had its merits. So he added a touch of echo to create single repeats of his hats and cross-sticks. He placed the kick drum strokes on the two and four, and made as much 'space' as he could while still using lots of signature little flourishes on both the hats and the snare.

Result?

Excellent and still quite minimal drum track laid leaving all the room in the universe for more parts.

Or try things this way; this is a section from a documentary about Steely Dan (one of the music business's toughest calls to get) and their hired players who are generally sent out onto the studio floor with fuck all but a la-la-la melody and two piano chords. From there they have to play on the fly, and no fucking either. Get in, get your shit down, get the fuck out - we'll thank you later IF your parts are used at all. Either way, we get paid the session fee.

But we can be sure we won't be getting the call if the last session we played we also over-played and frustrated the writer and/or producer by acting the idiot rock star. WE WILL get the call if we show up on time, prepared, with the right tools for the job - and the ability to use things we're given specifically to use. We'll gain favour by NOT playing a drum solo to start the song, another before the first bridge, and then two more over the outro.

Drum solos for 'rock stars' died after the night John Henry Bonham played his one with his bare hands for twenty-odd minutes that night in Madison Square Gardens which was committed to vinyl in 73/74. Why bother? Nobody fucking cares. Why dump shit on them they don't want? Twenty minutes of drums? In a two hour gig? Would you ever fuck off? If you want to hear drum solos, go to a jazz club. If you want to hear records that feature drums, drums, drums, percussion, and one bassist? Learn how to play drums and go fuck yourself.

Here's a few renowned session players discussing one of my favourite albums ever by Steely Dan, Aja.

Ten minutes of your life - but you'll learn why drum solos in three minute songs aren't taken at all seriously.

 
www.thejournal.ie

Here are the nominations for the best Irish album of 2023

The winners will be announced on 7 March on RTÉ 2FM.
www.thejournal.ie www.thejournal.ie

For the life of me I can't believe that Mik didn't walk away with every fucking award they've got.

This is a fucking masterpiece - best thing I've heard out of Ireland in years and years.



I suppose he'll have to break big in the UK before Dublin or Ireland takes him seriously.

His last project was Republic Of Loose, another fucking diamond machine.

Ireland's such a sad little bitch.
 
This one's for all you lurkers out there today.

Don't waste your life away trailing around after mine - get some:

 
Rent free too, Free and Clean - you cheap-assed dirty cunt-licker.

I bet your whole face smells of your Ma's gash.

How long dead is she now?

That makes you HOW old?

And at that age you're STILL licking the little roundy bastard's hole for him?

My, my: how sad.

Seeya.

 


That one's for Declan's Missus - better known as The Happy Hippo.

Talk about roomy?

You could park a fleet of fire trucks up that chuff and still have room to house a few Mexican illegals.
 
Pass the vomit bucket.

I bet if you study that video close enough, you'll see Declan somewhere in a kilt wandering around with a tin whistle hanging off his bottom lip and a beer stain down the front of his fake polyester Aran sweater.

This one:

 
Gotta love these guys. Lewis Cole turned his house into a recording/performance studio using pretty much every available space the best he can, including the laundry room, kitchen, hallway, stairs, and the orchestra in his lounge. Contra bass players out on the veranda and Genevieve on the landing. Sometimes a tight budget can bring out the most imaginative results when one's pressed for time.

Once it's down on disc, you can do anything you like with it when mixing, but Cole and Genevieve do it the toughest way: make the performance itself the main mix. They do more or less the same thing for live shows. Must be a blast working like that.

Knower: 'It's All Nothing Until It's Everything' (from the album: 'You Can Park Your Car On My Face'.

 
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