Whats on your turntable tonight?

I left out one detail of Levon's remarkable playing in "Chest Fever". By not crashing on the downbeat (the 1) that introduces the next bar of the song, Levon has actually changed the construction of the song---from a bar-to-bar construct to a larger, longer viewpoint, that of the whole bridge. Very few drummers think in those terms, that of the construction of the song, and how their playing affects, determines even, that.

When a drummer emphasizes the "1" (by crashing on a cymbal as Keith Moon always does, or, as does John Bonham in so many LZ songs, by "burying" the bass drum beater into the bd head, preventing the head from ringing by not letting the beater bounce off the head), he does two things: First is bring the song to a screeching halt---stopping and starting again every four beats, back-and-forth. That creates a secondary effect, that of breaking up the song into little pieces---a bunch of 4-beat bars--- rather than the natural flow of the songwriter's chord progression, the whole song section (whether verse, chorus, or bridge/middle 8) as one. It is that kind of "small" playing that I find so common, so tedious, so pedestrian. Okay, I'm an elitist!

tostadosunidos---It was in ’69 I saw and heard Dewey live. Buffalo Springfield in parenthesis was to identify Dewey as the drummer in that group, not to say I saw them in ’69. The group in ’69 was named The New Buffalo, and Dewey was the only remaining original member. Neil Young was working on his first album, Stephen Stills on the first C,S,& Nash, and Richie Furay was starting Poco (along with late-Buffalo Springfield bassist Jim Messina).

In The New Buffalo playing bass and singing harmony was Randy Fuller, Bobby’s brother. My teen combo got the gig opening for them at a local San Jose High School, with the proviso Dewey---who traveled with only a snare drum, bass drum pedal, and stick bag---could use my drumset. Oh, okay ;-).

For an excellent example of playing in the less-is-more style, give a listen to Levon Helm in "Chest Fever" on Music From Big Pink. Hear how in the bridge he switches from playing the snare drum backbeat on 2 and 4 (in the verses) to playing all four beats on the snare drum? At least, that’s what you THINK he’s doing; listen again, and you’ll notice that by playing the 1, 2, and 3 on snare, he has lead you to assume he will also play the 4 (as Charlie Watts does all throughout "Satisfaction). He instead rests (doesn’t play) the fourth beat on snare drum, playing his bass drum on that beat instead. It sounds SO cool! Most drummers would play the 4 on snare drum, then crash a cymbal on the downbeat (the 1 of the next bar), which results in the release of tension, ala Keith Moon. Levon, by instead leaving out the 4 on snare and not crashing on the 1, CREATES tension. Brilliant! Music From Big Pink is full of that kind of playing---very, very rare in Rock ’n’ Roll. That’s why everyone from Ringo, to Jim Keltner, to Richie Hayward (Little feat), to songwriters like Nick Lowe and John Hiatt, consider Levon amongst the handful of best drummers in R & R’s history.

Yes, shadorne, Joe Cocker---I knew I was leaving out somebody! You possess musical wisdom to an unusual degree, my man, and your words, with which I agree 100%, were a pleasure to read. "Playing for the song" is the musicianship I crave, listen for in others, and employ myself. It sounds unimpressive to many, not "obvious" enough---too subtle. It takes a certain level of maturity and self-confidence to play with taste and economy (as your "it can be frightening to leave space" line acknowledges), and is what separates the men from the boys.

I first witnessed it in a drummer when I saw and heard Dewey Martin (Buffalo Springfield) live in 1969. Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, and Ginger Baker were my standard at the time, and it was a shock to learn there was another, very different, approach to playing drums. I had to learn how to play all over again, this time with a completely different objective---musicality, not empty virtuosity and self-congratulatory displays of pointless technique.

I loved Procol Harum's first three albums at the time of their release, and still do. Then organist Matthew Fisher left the group, and their style and sound changed dramatically. The fourth album---Home---was not at all to my liking, Robin Trower’s rather clichéd white-boy Blues style of guitar playing coming far too center stage for me. I saw them live in 1970, and they struck me as just another British Blues-Rock band, a genre I find dreadfully boring. It was a shame, because the Matthew Fisher-era PH was a unique, magnificently Baroque-ish musical group. I wrote PH off, never desiring to hear another of their albums.

Had Trower left by the time of Grand Hotel? I’ll look it up. Perhaps his departure for a solo career returned PH to their former glory. Art Dudley often mentions Grand Hotel in his reviews, and now with reubent’s endorsement---my musical taste aligns with his---I believe I need to hear the album.