| Influences | Influences? So this is where you get to find out what motivates me, right? Assuming you’re slightly interested in what floats my boat, here’s who I think has played a major part in whatever it is I’ve turned out to be at the time of writing this pointless exercise in pseudo narcissism. So, in no particular order of preference, I would say I dig…
John Henry Bonham (his son’s not bad either) ~ Jeff Porcaro (self-effacing Genius) ~ Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie (where Genius meets insanity) ~ James Jamerson & The Funk Brothers (I probably wouldn’t have been interested in Rhythm if it wasn’t for these guys) ~ Carlton Barrett (Reggae never felt better in the hands of this guy) ~ Ed Greene (The Master of one-handed 16th grooves) ~ Billy “it’s all about the music!” Ward ~ Steve Jordan (possibly the coolest drummer on the planet) ~ Stanton Moore ~ Dave Hassell (I cannot say enough good things about this guy) ~ Phil Gould (having possibly the silkiest, smoothest groove to come out the UK since Bonham & Ferrone) ~ Daniel ‘Zoro’ Donnelly (what this guy doesn’t know about old skool R&B drummers isn’t worth knowing) ~ Joseph ‘Zigaboo’ Modeliste (a second-line funk machine) ~ Nile Rogers, Bernard Edwards & Tony Thompson AKA ‘Chic’ (kept me funkified right through the late 70’s) ~ Living Colour ~ Keith York (one of the most tasteful drummers I’ve seen to come out of the North West of England) ~ Stevie Wonder (James Jamerson’s work on ‘I Was Made To Love Her’ is by far, my earliest rhythmical memory) ~ I’ve got to mention my Mum as she was responsible for allowing me to mess around and follow my hair brained dreams of stardom instead of kicking my ass and making me get a normal job. Looking back on it all, she should have kicked my ass more!
Hopefully I will have disappointed lots of drummers by not listing any of the Drumolympic, stick-twirling, back-sticking, extreme-sport nonsense athletes that exist to pollute and corrupt the psyche of the young and impressionable. This brings me conveniently onto letting you know (assuming that you’ve stayed this long and believe me, I wouldn’t have) what I despise about what exists in the world of drumming today…
As I’ve said, I have no time whatsoever for those stick-twirling, back-sticking athlete drummers who seem to think that squeezing as many notes into a bar as possible is about being a ‘great musician’. Never before, in the history of music, have there been so many misguided clones unleashed into the musician’s market place. These guys are nothing more than modern day ‘gun-slingers’. They have no regard whatsoever for music as a collective, shared experience; much preferring to steamroller every free space of the musical canvas with chops and licks they have spent refining for hours in solitary rehearsal rooms. If that’s not good enough for them, they will throw in a stick twirling display between every downbeat they can fit it to, regardless of the fact that such egotistical visual circus tricks don’t record well! These guys have yet to learn their place in the scheme of things, which is to play for the music. (Ok, if they’re playing within a minority style of music where the key to the end result is every musician treading on each others toes, then fine.) But these guys don’t stop there. No, they like to extend their pollution to every musical scenario they find themselves in, and then wonder why they aren’t getting hired for dates that the likes of Steve Jordan and John Robinson get the calls for! These are also the culprits who post videos of themselves performing drum solos onto YouTube along with listing all their ‘endorsement’ deals on their MySpace pages. As much as I detest these sorts of players; I also welcome them. For as long as they exist to serve their own fulfilment, in doing so, they make sure that there is enough work out there left for the drummers who continue to think like musicians and serve the music.
These sort of offenders are indeed, not influences.
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