Stewart Copeland’s statements about jazz came up on line recently, and I was curious about that, so I dug around and found some things. He dubiously claims to have a jazz background, but as we’ll […]
Category: rants
My objections to drumming videos
Posting this instead of the bilious, totally unproductive anti-YouTube drumming video rant I was working on, entitled Satan’s Vomitorium. Don’t worry, it wasn’t any good, or even finished— you’re not missing anything. See this post […]
Too perfect
Perfect and boring For a long time I thought robotic perfection was basically impossible to achieve for people not practicing massive hours… so you may as well just try your best to achieve it. Lately, […]
On Stanley Spector
In the spirit of that recent quasi-paranoid rant, here’s something I wrote some years ago and never posted. Any time I think I’m getting too dogmatic in my writing, I look up the following personality. […]
False prodigies
My apologies for the many wordy posts lately. I don’t want to be a words/opinions guy. I’m working on a lot of outside stuff, so I have to post what I have, and that happens […]
Everything you know about drumming is wrong
Sometimes I get really cranky about drumming conversations on the internet. My paranoid tone here is half in jest. Tune in to the Firesign Theater recording on the left for more laffs. BELIEVE IT NOW: […]
Izquierdadiddles
Tenue des baguettes I’ve got 6 hours of driving to do a 90 minute gig today, gang, so I’m going to leave you with this: I spend a good part of my life singing stickings […]
Tom tom sizes rated!
The genesis of this post. Let’s do something dumb: critically assess the full range of tom tom sizes for goodness and badness. Reward the good, denigrate the bad, punish the weak and strange: 6″: A […]
Ornamentation overdose
This has been going on a long time. Another entry in the ongoing real-world musical saga I call “Music didn’t suddenly get good when a lot of people learned how to play fast.” Let’s reminisce […]
The demon-haunted world: jazz snobs
Here’s a desperation special. When I can’t write much, I pull something not-that-great out of the drafts folder, like this: a few snippets of people battering their insecurities into submission by attacking a mythical demon, […]
We get mentioned on YouTube sort of
Hey, it looks like one of my posts was a catalyst for a video by a semi well-known opaquely-named YouTuber. He has been the victim of some kind of smear campaign to make his videos […]
What’s with resting the sticks on the drum?
Item just in from the pet peeve department: there’s an extremely slovenly practice, apparently done by half the drummers in the world: resting the sticks on the drum head before playing. I have students who […]