THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Is Ringo a Good Drummer?
I offer this for your amusement:
2 comments:
Maury
said...
This is a very interesting question at least to me: What makes a good pop musician or group that can grab generations other than their own? I mean independent of classic songs that can be covered by others.To answer the thread question first: yes Ringo was an excellent rock drummer as was Charlie Watts for the Rolling Stones. Clem Burke was excellent in Blondie. Ginger Baker, Spencer Dryden, Mitch Mitchell, Bill Kreutzman/Mickey Hart are all excellent. Only a few of these could paradiddle etc so it is not technical excellence but creativity which unites these drummers. They could come up with appropriate and sometimes very novel drum patterns as rhythmic backdrop to a given song.
More generally I think it is rhythmic deftness which separates out those pop rock or blues groups that last vs those that fade. I came to that conclusion wondering why I could listen to the old Gus Cannon and the Jugstompers Jugband music when I don't really care for the genre and the songs are obviously fairly simplistic. But listening to the very subtle slightly arrhythmic interplay between the banjo, guitar and harmonica is what keeps me listening.Their employment as a dance band obviously provided the motivation to pay attention to that aspect of the music. So Iwould strongly recommend aspiring pop groups to constantly play for dances.
My mother, an old time fiddler, played for dances her whole life and she certainly had that rhythmic feel.
It took me quite a while to really appreciate Ringo, but one day I realized that, from Rubber Soul on, he virtually reinvented drumming for each and every song. Paul is playing the drums on Back in the USSR and to me it really seems workaday without the special gift that Ringo brought.
2 comments:
This is a very interesting question at least to me: What makes a good pop musician or group that can grab generations other than their own? I mean independent of classic songs that can be covered by others.To answer the thread question first: yes Ringo was an excellent rock drummer as was Charlie Watts for the Rolling Stones. Clem Burke was excellent in Blondie. Ginger Baker, Spencer Dryden, Mitch Mitchell, Bill Kreutzman/Mickey Hart are all excellent. Only a few of these could paradiddle etc so it is not technical excellence but creativity which unites these drummers. They could come up with appropriate and sometimes very novel drum patterns as rhythmic backdrop to a given song.
More generally I think it is rhythmic deftness which separates out those pop rock or blues groups that last vs those that fade. I came to that conclusion wondering why I could listen to the old Gus Cannon and the Jugstompers Jugband music when I don't really care for the genre and the songs are obviously fairly simplistic. But listening to the very subtle slightly arrhythmic interplay between the banjo, guitar and harmonica is what keeps me listening.Their employment as a dance band obviously provided the motivation to pay attention to that aspect of the music. So Iwould strongly recommend aspiring pop groups to constantly play for dances.
My mother, an old time fiddler, played for dances her whole life and she certainly had that rhythmic feel.
It took me quite a while to really appreciate Ringo, but one day I realized that, from Rubber Soul on, he virtually reinvented drumming for each and every song. Paul is playing the drums on Back in the USSR and to me it really seems workaday without the special gift that Ringo brought.
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