And what’s the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?
(You only have to punch the machine ONCE to make it keep time correctly.)
There you go. Drummer’s always laugh at that. They realize they’re a different breed.
Excellent followup.
If we’re making drummer jokes, I’m reminded of Al Murray interviewing McFly. He made them name tags so he could keep track of them.
[QUOTE=Al Murray the Pub Landlord]
We’ve got Danny, Tom… drums and bass.
[/QUOTE]
And referred to them throughout as such.
Worst performance by a drummer I ever saw was Queens of the Stone Age at Hyde Park in 2007. Not helped by a poor sound mix, there were too many places where he went into full amphetamine mode and drowned out the rest of the band. Technically he was very proficient, but the end result was not good.
As much as I enjoy a good drummer joke, the reality is this: it’s very hard to become an excellent drummer, but very EASY to become a bad drummer.
I don’t play any musical instrument at all. Hence, if I wanted to become a member of a rock group, I’d be starting from scratch. I don’t read music and have NO experience as a musician.
Now, it would take me months of lessons and practice just to become a bad guitarist. Similarly, it would take me months to become a bad bassist or a bad keyboard player.
On the other hand, I could become a bad drummer almost immediately. Just buy a kit, learn a handful of basic beats, and voila! I’m a drummer. Sure, I suck, but so what? I’m all set to do a lousy job playing for a lousy band! It would be a long, long time before I was ready to become a lousy rhythm guitarist for a lousy band!
Rutsey was certainly a competent drummer, and wasn’t replaced in favor of a better drummer. The official line is that his diabetes would have made extended touring very hard on his health. Last year’s Rush documentary, “Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage”, also had some comments from the band’s manager that John was a bit too fond of drink and the “rock & roll lifestyle”, and that played a large part in his dismissal. Though I got the impression that the dismissal was more out of genuine concern for his health (he was Geddy and Alex’s good friend, after all) than concern that he would drag the band down. His removal was essentially by mutual agreement, and they didn’t even hold auditions for a replacement until after John was gone, so it wasn’t like they heard Peart and said, “Let’s ditch John for this guy”. Finding Peart was a lucky, happy accident.
How good was Mason in his heyday? The director of Live at Pompeii clearly thought that he WAS the band. Fictitious Sports was a damn fine album. And (the sadly out of print) Something There included Michael Mantler, Carla Bley, Mike Stern, Steve Swallow, and Michael Gibbs – not exactly a B-list lineup.
I got the impression that Rutsey was ALEX’s friend more than Geddy’s.
Alex continued to socialize with Rutsey after the split, while Geddy didn’t. Of course, by the time Rutsey died, neither Alex nor Geddy had seen him in years.
Likely true, but the bands bios and stories they tell on themselves make the origins of Rush itself more Alex than Geddy. Alex had a band and continually borrowed Geddy’s bass amp for gigs. One day it was Alex inviting Geddy to play instead of just borrowing the gear and that’s when the came together.
So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Alex was the social ‘center’ of the band in the very early days.
Source: One of the tourbooks. Maybe ‘Signals’ or ‘GUP’. Anyway, it was Geddy who told the story on himself.
The way I’ve heard it is, “What do you call an annoying groupie who hangs around with musicians?”
Are you kidding?! The drums were the best part of “Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)”, and that’s saying a lot; it was a superb album.
I never much liked Ginger Baker. He is supposed to be great, but everything I heard of him sounded awful.
And to wax all serious for a second: there’s one absolutely inviolable rule of bands. If your drummer sucks, your band sucks. No exceptions. The metronome is THE most important part of any band. Without it, you’re sunk.
And no, I’m not a drummer. 
I just have much, much experience with sub-par drummers. They’ll kill a band faster than a meddling girlfriend.
Mick Fleetwood wasn’t really all that hot as a drummer.
Check out “Sunrise on the Sufferbus”, by Masters of Reality.
I’m going to have to listen to this again. I love The Kinks in general and this album in particular, but nothing about the drumming has ever really caught my attention, in a good or a bad way.
I probably need to clarify this a bit for non-drummers. When I wrote “Okay at playing time…”, I meant “playing on time”, meaning simple beats dead on with the music being played. Nothing fancy, just keeping up with the metronome or the 4/4 beat.
I have tried to play with a click-track (a sound only I can hear over headphones), but it only works for me when I’m practicing solo. It gets in my way when playing live with a band.
The sentence in my original post read like he was good when he needed to play, but not good at solos. Pardon me for the mistake.
Thanks and great thread, bup!
Quasi
I got you all beat, the drummer from The Gnats, I forget his name…;).
By coincidence, 3/4 of “The Monkees” will be “playing” here in August (some nostalgia thing.
Michael Nesmith was smart enough to stay away!
Actually, the Monkees were not too bad…no worse than a lot of 1960’s Pop grops.
I agree. I’m not a drummer (although I like to dick around on the drums), but my ears always gravitate to the drums, especially in live performances. The drums (and bass) really are the glue that holds the band together. Without a good drummer, the music is going to suffer. I’ve had the pleasure of playing with some truly excellent drummers and some mediocre ones. It’s incredible how much a good drummer makes you play and feel the music better. I really hate, hate playing with subpar drummers.
Oh, that’s selling them shorts. The Monkees albums were full of wonderful pop gems. I’d say their recorded output ranks very favorably with the typical 1960s top 40 music.