Why can't England produce competent drummers?

Initial exceptions considered: Phil Selway of Radiohead and the dude from Mogwai.

You got me on the Mogwai. Of COURSE they would not be English.

And there is NOTHING wrong with playing with brushes, muthafuckas.

Brushes have their uses, but using them for playing lazy shufflebeats on half-assed MOR probably isn't a good one. I'm not even sure they really used brushes, I just remember seeing the guy using them on one of the videos. And maybe if the guitarist stopped trying to play and chew gum at the same time his parts would be more interesting. Maybe.

why waste energy playing drums when machines do it bettah?

what does thermodynamics know? thermodynamics says maxwell's demon does no work!! well if that's so where can i contact him/her to help with archiving ILM hmmmm?

Why can't England produce competent physicists? And Newton doesn't count; we're talking the last hundred years or so. Chadwick doesn't count either since the neutron is the saddest subatomic particle.

why misdirect energy being a physicist when you can be a physicist machine?

taking sides: let there be drums vs a brief history of time

No no, THIS explains why there are no competent English drummers!

And one of these drummers doesn't break a sweat playing super hard during an hour and a half long set. What the hell?

I like drummers that have style and I don't mind if they sound flawed - Danny from Supergrass was very good in that respect. American drummers are technically way superior but they often seem to lack individuality. I think modern recording techniques have stifled drummers - click tracks and 'loop mentality', pro-tools comping of the 'best' few bars etc.

No. I'm not saying click tracks should never be used. In fact they're obviously necessary a lot of the time, but I personally like that effect where you hear the tempo speeding up or slowing down. It's a very emotional effect. Of course you can programme the click track to do that but it's nice when you hear it coming from the drummer's own inadvertent excitement at what he's doing.

Cautiously considering the Stereolab dude. What a pitiful turnout on this thread. I GUESS KRIS WAS RIGHT.

I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but surely anyone who has heard a good drummer play would have difficulty with this statement.

For good English drummers, I nominate Eddie Prevost and Paul Lytton.

i am always serious: everything i say on this thread is a. serious, b. true...

Well, yes and no. Presumably, the drummers are also listening. But the part of the sentence I have trouble with is the part about machines doing it better. I was just saying that for me personally, in addition to the excitement that they generate in a live setting, I've never heard a drum machine pull off the sorts of things I've heard great drummers (e.g., Han Bennink, Joey Baron, Kenny Wollesen, Jim Black) do.

It seems that brit music culture does background good technique/recognisable "signature" playing styles in favour of what exactly? I don't know. It's all a bit sad. It's probably why we haven't come up with a really good hard rock band in how many years?

Could it be that, in their artforms, the English typically value innovation more than technical skill? It might also explain their sporting performance. On the one hand, they invented cricket and soccer, and on the other hand the rest of the world beats them at both.

Incidentally, which country invented the modern drum kit with the kick, snare etc? And in which country was the first drum machine invented?

Anyhoo, England produced Tony Oxley = Winnar!

But...in the main my drum heroes are not flashy, but those who can lay the right groove for the rest of the band to get on with it.

you are kidding, surely. this is rock n roll we're talking about isn't it? surely the exact reverse is the truth

Also I like it when the drummer from Arctic Monkeys sings on IBTYLGOTD - hell he's singing and drumming at the same time - how about that for competence?

Do you have a short cut key for posting that or do your fingers do it on autopilot?

Haha, have you not come across Geir before?

no but i'm new round these parts. thought he was a wind up merchant, but had to check.

John Maher & Pete De Freitas!

Joe Dilworth (Th Faith Healers, Stereolab)
Colm O' Ciosoig (ex My Bloody Valentine)

i just stumbled upon your review of the bloc party full-length, and while i don't really agree with your contention that "silent alarm" is things like 'a good album' or 'enjoyable to listen to,' calling their drummer good is one of the only things i've ever read on pitchfork that's just downright wrong. you might as well have said "pablo honey is the best radiohead album:" sure, you might be right in the sense that it's your opinion, but you're really just wrong.

a lot of what the drummer, whose name i never bothered to look up, does throughout the album is the drumming equivalent of metal riffing: kinda impressive to listen to, but if you have any skill at all it only takes a couple hours of practice to learn how to do it. it's not like he's alone - the same can be said of ringo's solo on "the end," or any song john bonham ever played on - but every time i listen to this album, all i can think is "wow, i could do a better job than he did."

perhaps if you're not a drummer none of this matters to you. but i am, and it's ruined the album for me in much the same way lecter mispronouncing "chianti" ruined "silence of the lambs." it's little things, like the way he switches from straight-eights on the hi-hat into upbeats when there was really no reason to or the way his break in "banquet" sounds too much like a break and not enough like a fill or the way he plays a ham-fisted tom fill at all the wrong times and never a smooth one at the right times. most of the time it's not even what he's playing that drives me crazy; it's what he's not playing, and what he could (and should) be playing, that kill me. a record that's apparently so finely-crafted deserves drum parts that fit with the songs better than these.

for a point of contrast, listen to "for crying out loud" from meat loaf's "bat out of hell" - that's a song where the drumming is so crisp and spectacular and just absolutely immense that you can't imagine it any other way. the song itself is pure schmaltz, but i'm hard pressed to think of a better example of the epic tom fill that bloc party's drummer seems to be striving for but missing, and worse yet, misplacing.

One from the Paul Ferguson school...

England doesn't really produce bands that rock anymore though...or not many.

http://www.charlottefield.com

The real star of that album is the Line 6 DL-4 pedal anyway.

Is it "technically proficient or brilliant, liked by other drummers and named as an example in drum class" ?

Or is it "may not be completely able to keep time or stop showboating (Meg White, Bloc Party dude respectively) but works perfectly and defines the sound of his/her band, which would sound completely different and probably very boring with anyone else on the drums" ?

Incidentally you can listen to a whole load of drummers drumming here...
http://www.drummerworld.com/drummersolo.html
...some of them ( a few) are even English (having said what i said above even I find the 10 minute Bonham solo here somewhat wearing).

Talking of English - isn't Ginger Baker English? I think he'd count as competent. The more I think about this thread the more I think it was just a wind-up and why I am even bothering...

it's ruined the album for me in much the same way lecter mispronouncing "chianti" ruined "silence of the lambs."

commenting about how England had failed to produce any really good drummers in years, which has a noticeable effect on the music they put out.

Ah yes, good one. I don't know whether he's technically good or not, but I don't really give a shit about that. For a long time, Broadcast were all about the drummer for me, the only thing I'd *really* be listening to, and I sort of absorbed the rest of it all by default.

Also, the drummer from Genesis.

haha yeah what was that dude's name again? didn't he have a small solo career in the 80s?