Here’s a video my brother mentioned to me— Charlie Watts hanging out with Stan Levey and Jim Keltner back in 2003. Levey was one of Watts’s heroes. Lots of chit chat about Charlie Parker— we […]
Month: August 2021
Half time country rock with Reed
This swingy country, folky, gospel type of half time feel groove is all over the music of the late 60s/early 70s. You Can’t Always Get What You Want, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, for […]
Ba-dum tss
This is not a follow up to my death post. You’d have to have some kind of sick mind to post this and immediately die. It would be funny, but… no. Come on. Let’s talk […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Bozzio auditions for Zappa
I had to fly myself down to LA just to audition like the rank and file rest of the people that auditioned for Frank. It was scary, you know, it was ridiculous. I walked in, […]
More reality
Well, you can’t say this hasn’t been an eventful couple of years. I’ve always been a basically healthy guy, and, having no health insurance for most of my life, I’m not in the habit of […]
Three practice rhythms inverted
This is a page I wanted when I was practicing yesterday— whatever I was doing was hard enough that I wanted to see these written out, all together. They’re simple, so they’re good starting independence […]
Cymbalistic: 16″ Holy Grail thin/med. thin crashes
CYMBALISTIC: Someone was looking for a 16″ crash, so I went over to Cymbal & Gong HQ in southeast Portland and played some nice 16″ Holy Grail crashes. Check them out: The 949 gram cymbal I […]
Delecluse patterns on the drum set
A rare-ish book outside of conservatory percussion circles, that is worth having in your permanent library, is Methode de Caisse-Claire by Jacques Delecluse. It’s an odd-sized book, so to print pages for my students I […]
Billy Elgart
Here’s a nice, short profile on avant-garde drummer Billy Elgart, I only ever knew from a couple of 60s Paul Bley records— it turns out he’s been thriving living and teaching in Germany all this […]
A 60s band: Love – Four Sail
Hey, let’s talk about a group John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions) told me about: Love, an LA psychedelic band from the 60s, with some prog-y elements— he suggested I check out their album Four Sail. […]
Transcription: Philly Joe Jones – Stablemates – intro
A little drum solo intro played by Philly Joe Jones on Stablesmates, from Milt Jackson’s record Bags Meets Wes!. It’s 16 bars long, even though there are no 16 bar phrases in the tune— the […]
Louis Bellson reading text in 4/4
Here are CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER! we spend a lot of time with the book Syncopation, and not so much with its more expansive, more serious-seeming companion, Louis Bellson’s Modern Reading Text in 4/4. I use […]