Damn, I love this thread. Gimme more fill-filled songs! The Ian Pace and Rey Washam cites get gold stars from me!
Hehehe, Primus songs are all a fill-o-rama. My fave is the opening roll (and pretty much every other fill in) Tommy The Cat
From around the same time, The River by NOMEANSNO. Through the last half, he fills all over the place without it actually becoming showy. He’s all over the kit, but works it into the song. Pure joy.
Another from the same era that I think of when I think of fills is Trip Away from Jane’s Addiction’s first record. The intro is huge, every run through the chorus you get a new fill, and he goes pretty wild in the outro from the bridge and solo.
And yet a third is Not You Again by Dinosaur Jr. Murph stubbed his toe on that one.
And this is kind of cheating, but it’s my new love from my drive into work this morning. La Palma by Ezequiel Peña is gorgeous (seriously, this song made me shout with joy while on my way to work), and the drum parts are ALL fills, but I think everyone is playing a single drum. So, it kind of doesn’t count. But dammit, it sounds amazing.
I recognize the Zappa fill you referred to as coming close to the end of Afterglow. The one I meant is the very last fill in the song that takes two drummers.
I like how the common reggae song has an opening fill with a crisp roll on the timbale and then (usually) into splash cymbal hit. Here, Elvis Costello’s drummer throws a floor tom into the mix, and later plays a fine fill.
Bowie’s “Young Americans”, along with the opening fill, have a few classicones.
Speaking of triplet fills, Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” is chock full of triplet fill goodness.
Kurt Dahle (formerly) of the New Pornographers is one of my favorite contemporary drummers. He’s got some wonderful sequence of fills in the pre-chorus of “Electric Version”.
(might have to crank up the volume to hear these ones) In “Day Tripper” Ringo plays a nice floor tom fill before every verse, and closes out with a buncha fills.
Before Kieth Emerson was in ELP, he was in a very cool band called The Nice*, whose drummer, Brian Davison, was a total cracker of a player, doing some fine crescendoing snare rolls in the cover of Bernstien’s “America” here and here
In the second fill, a couple things: the song was performed as what they viewed as a protest to America’s increasingly violent foreign policy, especially IRT Viet Nam (and even more so - their gun laws), prompting their burning of the American Flag onstage at The Royal Albert Hall (with the US Ambassador in the audience! :eek:), which resulted in being banned from there, and also gave inspiration for the kid’s comment “America is pregnant with promise and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable”, appearing near the end of that second fill.
And right after the kid’s comment, the snare roll sounds almost like it’s played on an unclamped snare*, giving it more of a timbale sound.
*According to wiki, they reunited for a four-date reuinion tour in '02! I would’ve paid handsomely to see that.
**Almost some very prophetic resonance, there.
***That’s always always fuckin bugged me how I never knew exactly what to call those squiggly wires under the snare. Sure, they’re snares, but when someone says “snare”, people (or google) think it’s the snare drum, and the only way to bring up a google images page of those thingies is if you look for “replacement snares”, but it doesn’t feel right calling them that.
Oh well…I’ll still carry on.
When I think of great drumming, the first song that comes to mind is Zappa’s Camarillo Brillo. The drummer was a guy named Ralph Humphrey. He doesn’t even have a wiki page.
Ringo.
Lots of good fills and turnarounds in A Day in the Life. I know you think you know it but please listen again for the fills: The Beatles - A Day In The Life - YouTube
I’m partial to Rush’s best show-offy song, Malignant Narcissism. Here. Neil and Geddy start trading fills around 1:45, but give the whole thing a listen, it’s only a 2:25 long.
Charles Connor’s iconic intro to Little Richard’s "Keep a Knockin’’ was monstrous for its time, and reproduced lovingly by John Bonham years later almost note for note on LZ’s “Rock and Roll.”
To be fair, he’s a very well-known and sought-after session musician and teacher. He’s had a fantastic and lauded career, playing with some of the most talented artists and composers of the 20th century. And he continues to be active and influential after something like 60 years in the business.
I was starting to link fills, and after the third one (in only the first 20 seconds) I realised - ok, wait a minute - how about I listen to this song in its entirety, first, to get an idea of how much linking was ahead, and discovered a bunch more in the next twenty seconds, so, I’ll just go with, yeah, there’s fills in that song.
