I spent a lot of time listening to French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg as I was working on my album of his music a few years ago, and came to appreciate a very British, very 70’s, session drummer named Dougie Wright, who frequently recorded with him. This is the drum groove from En Melody, from Gainsbourg’s famous concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson. You get the feeling here that Serge told the band to do something très extrême, they did this in a couple of takes, and then went off to do whatever musicians did in their off time in those days. It was kind of Gainsbourg’s style to do these things almost as if he couldn’t be bothered, and the entire album is under 28 minutes long.
As it says, the circled bass drum notes are optional— his most frequent variations in the groove are to play or omit those notes, especially the first one. The 16th notes are slightly swung. There are a lot of sixtuplet fills throughout the song, which no doubt use that same RRL sticking used here.
nice MV and music!