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Drum solo it to death

It’s the Fourth of July and I’m sitting here thinking about drum solos. Makes sense, right? Fireworks go boom. Drum goes boom boom.

Actually, what got me interested in this was yesterday I was playing Derek and the Dominos In Concert. Now their sole studio album is one of my favorite all time records. This concert album is missing Duane Allman and in need of some editing but it is good to hear Eric Clapton blaze away. And Bobby Whitlock always made it fun with his back up vocal shouts and keyboards.

So side two, record 1, has two songs on it. (Dead giveaway it’s a live album). The songs Let it Rain and Presence of the Lord. Now, these are fine fine songs can be played on low volume or high, so I turned it up. I’m moving along, listening to guitar solos and vocal harmonies with Bonnie Bramlett when suddenly Jim Gordon launches into a drum solo halfway through a 20-minute Let It Rain.

And after a few minutes I wasn’t digging it.

They needed to stop the solo, dip back into the lyrics and melody and end it quietly. (eventually, Clapton pulls Gordon out of the drum banging showcase with some stinging guitar fills before moving back to the song. And I was happy again.)

When it started, I thought to myself ‘Don’t drum solo this.”

Now I think I’ve invented a new catch phrase like ‘woke’ or ‘the big lie.’ Here’s the usage: Biden is on TV talking to the American People, And he’s talking and talking. You shout at the TV: “Biden, don’t drum solo this.

In fact you can shout this at any politician who goes on for more than 45 seconds.

Your spouse is giving you a piece of mind about failing to take out a particularly large and stinky bag of garbage so the collectors can haul it away. Now we’ll have to wait until Monday she says. Do you know how much that is going to smell. As she continues, you politely say: Hey I get it. No need to drum solo this. Meaning no need to go on and on.

‘To drum solo something helps one avoid the violent cliche’s: Don’t beat it to death or don’t beat a dead horse.

I am hereby formally announcing claim to this new verb I’ve created. Use it freely just remember where you heard it first.

Now I was going to give you top drum solos or best drummers but I’m out of my field in this, even though my brother played drums in a band. At the risk of drum soloing myself I’m going to list a few good, technically adept drum solos as praised by rock fans. And then introduce you to a drum solo that I actually think works — even though neither the band nor the drummer ever really made it big.

John Bonham, Led Zeppelin (Moby Dick). Sure it’s good but I could have gone to the kitchen, fixed myself a turkey sandwich, let the dog in and called my Mom and JB would still be hitting the drums.

Ginger Baker, The mad wild genius with Cream. Clapton scowled at Baker taking so much time on a drum solo, then Baker would scowl when Clapton guitar soloed. See GB here.

Keith Moon The Who, also wild. Also crazy. But not Ginger Baker crazy.

Neil Peart, Rush, The guy has more drums than Rush has signature changes.

Phil Collins, Genesis; (‘In the Air Tonight’ opening as solo artist.) And like Collins, anyone who can drum and sing lead vocals gets my attention like the Band’s drummer Levon Helm.

Ron Wilson, Sufaris, iconic drum solo in Wipeout.

Charlie Watts, Stones. (Honky Tonk opening).

Karen Carpenter, the smooth voiced singer played drums since childhood. She played in concert and on records.

Grand Funk (opening to We’re an American Band.)

There’s hundreds of good drummers out there so I won’t drum solo this. But I will leave you with one as I promised to see if you think it is any good. The group is called the Illusion.

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Bobby Sherman — 109

ALBUM: With Love, Bobby

MVC RATING: 2.5

Yes, I have Bobby Sherman, teen idol. I bought this out of pure nostalgia. One of his biggest hits was ‘Julie, Do Ya Love Me.’ My brother and I would torment my sister, Julie, by singing along extra loud and pointing our fingers at her when it came over the radio.

Bobby Sherman was in all the Teen Beat magazines which I would sometimes buy for a quarter or two. And he became a star of a television show called ‘Here Come the Brides.’ He also made appearances on many other TV shows including Laugh In, the FBI, the Partridge Family. and Frasier. He was No. 8 in a Time Magazine list of all time greatest TV teen idols

Sherman’s story takes an interesting turn when he becomes an EMT and a deputy sheriff in California, according to Wikipedia.

It was his appearance in the TV drama, ‘Emergency’ that steered him down the path to being an emergency medical technician. He was eventually promoted to Captain with the LAPD and was a medical training officer who instructed thousands of police academy recruits in first aid and CPR, Wikipedia reports.

He was named LAPD’s Reserve Officer of the Year in 1999.

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The Stooges — 110

ALBUM: Funhouse (1970 RE: 1985)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$$$

Not a record I listen to much. It’s loud (except for Dirt) and Iggy and his gang of Stooges sometimes sounds like the worst garage band in the world.

But this was the first layer of punk music. The kind of music that got more ‘turn-that-shit-offs’ until Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music several years later.

I bumped it up a notch on the rating scale because of its historical significance. The band was shooting for that 2.5 but I’m not giving it to them. Iggy Pop was an underground legend. You think the Rolling Stones played sloppy? You think the Stones had a wiry, spindly lead singer with a mouth that covered half his face?

The difference: the Stones worked hard to make songs that made money. They could still be outrageous but not at the expense of their songs which sold millions not thousands.

The Stooges sold practically nothing when they first released Fun House. Over the years it has gained cult status for presaging punk rock years before Johnny Rotten.

The godfather of critics, Robert Christgau, gave this album an ‘A-‘ in his ‘Consumer Reports.”

But in the same review. Christgau wrote:

“It always interests me intellectually, though–with its repetiveness beyond the call of incompetence and its solitary new-thing saxophone, this is genuinely “avant-garde” rock. The proof is the old avant-garde fallacy of “L.A. Blues”–trying to make art about chaos by reproducing same.”

By the way, I remember exactly where I bought this. It would have been about 1985 in Oklahoma City. The Birmingham News sent me up there as part of an investigative project I was working on about small plane crashes. The trip was fruitful in that I talked a lawyer representing some of the plane crash victims into letting me hole up in his basement going over (paper) documents. I gleaned enough to show there was a link between a type of autopilot that was malfunctioning. Amid scouring NTSB and FAA reports, I had time to pop into a record store and here I am writing about it.

Now that’s avant garde.

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Sweethearts of the Radio — 111

ALBUM: Sweethearts of the Radio (1986).

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

This is a country album by two sisters — Janis Oliver and Kristine Arnold. Janis was once married to country all-star guitar player and performer Vince Gill.

Her name, I suppose, would then be Janis Oliver Gill or Janis Gill Oliver. What’s my point? My full name is Michael Gill Oliver. Coincidence?

I think so.

Nonetheless, they go by ‘Sweethearts of the Radio.’ I just go by Sweetheart.

As for the music, I find it pleasant. There’s some country ballads, some neo-traditional country buck dance material, there’s some sweet vocal harmonization from the sisters.

Pleasant, impeccably produced, and not one that finds its way on my turntable much. Maybe it will now, but my sudden urge is to find the Byrd’s album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. That 50-year-old album is a classic.

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Summer Means Fun — 112

ALBUM: Summer Means Fun (1982, 2 records)

MVC Rating: 3.5/$$

Well it is summer, and here’s a summer album. The compilation is full of songs that you thought the Beach Boys did. And in many cases they did — just not here. For example, ‘Help Me Rhonda’ a song written by and performed by the Beach Boys and is represented here by a version from Johnny Rivers.

This ‘Hot Rod and Surf’ music on this album has lots of covers from lots of bands you probably never heard of:

Besides the Hot Doggers, there’s the Rip Chords (with 9 songs on the album), and Jan and Dean who have an obscure original called “Like Summer Rain.

The liner notes offer the key:

“The majority of the material comes from the very creative minds of two legendary California rockers named Bruce Johnston (who later joined the Beach Boys and was a long time member), and Terry Melcher (producer for the Byrds and Paul Revere and the Raiders).

So, many are covers but they are well done by a couple of guys close to the originals.

Melcher has been credited with helping to shape the sound of 1960s surf music in California, according to several sources cited by Wikipedia.

The music sound is swell but after listening to four album sides, they start sounding alike. In fact, in some cases I think they just change the chorus a bit and — voila — another song. Some, like ‘Hey Little Cobra,’ are unabashedly formulaic.

Later in his career, Johnston wrote ‘I Write the Songs,’ a monster hit for Barry Manilow.

Among the artists and the songs: Bruce & Terry on the title song ‘Summer Means Fun; The Hot Doggers, Surfing Safari; The RIp-Chords, ‘Hey Little Cobra.’ and Flash Cadilac and the Continental Kids, ‘Pipeline; and the ‘ Hot-Doggers, ‘Beach Girl.’

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The Spencer Davis Group — 113

ALBUM: The Spencer Davis Group (Golden Archive Series compilation)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$

‘I’m a Man,’ the tune is a 2 minute and 40-second blast of rock and roll. “I’m a maaaan yes I am, yes I am … ‘

It’s from 1967!! And it still sounds fresh, timeless.

And the very next song the 1965 “Keep on Running’ has a Steven Tyler-styled scream in it. Though the scream was short, it was effective and made me wonder if now’ 50-plus years or more years removed from this would teens today believe it’s a song that came out before their parents were born.

Oh, there were plenty other hard rocking and rolling bands out there at this time: Beatles, Who, Rolling Stones, Kinks. (Just to name the obvious British ones. The Brits were ahead of the curve on incorporating American blues music into rock and pop. And the Spencer Davis Group were ahead of many of their contemporary British blues rockers. At least on some songs such as ‘Gimme Some Lovin,’ ‘ and “I’m a Man.’

Steve Winwood was a co-founding member of the band. He went on to form the groups Traffic and Blind Faith.

Spencer Davis says in the liner notes: ‘I love that original Spencer Davis Group … I think it would have been great to tour the United States because, and I’m sticking my neck out here, I think Steve never sounded as good with Traffic, Blind Faith or Air Force as he did with this band.”

The other album I’m throwing in here is ‘It’s Been So Long,’ from Spencer Davis’ short-lived collaboration with guitarist Peter Jameson in the early 1970s.

The Jameson-Davis collaboration did have one very positive result, an acoustic album which is wonderful and a myvinylcountdown Blue Plate Special.

You can get this album incredibly cheap (I got mine for 50 cents). I later ordered a new copy for under $5. When I first bought this album I couldn’t find any listings for it — but since then I’ve seen a number of listings on Discogs, at cheap prices.

I don’t know how this album got overlooked — it is very melodic English folk-influenced music. I have listed it on my list of most underrated albums that I own.

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Cat Stevens/Yusuf — 115, 114

ALBUMS: Catch Bull at Four (1972); Teaser and the Firecat (1971)

MVC RATING: Bull: 4.0/$$$; Teaser 4.0/$$$$

It wasn’t until Cat Stevens accumulated a bunch of songs that I grew to appreciate him. WIth one exception — ‘Wild World.’ That song hooked me from the beginning.

‘Father and Son’ not far behind.

Both songs are on Tea for Tillerman. an album I don’t have. The radio was where I picked up on that song. The truth is, even though I have two of Cat Stevens biggest selling albums, I didn’t listen to them much because the hits were all over the radio, and I never spent the time to explore the songs that weren’t so famous.

Catch Bull at Four, for example has no hits and is a good album. Surprisingly, Catch Bull was one of his biggest hit albums. But Teaser was the breakthrough album for Stevens. It had Peace Train and the gorgeous ‘Morning has Broken,’ a song found in many Christian church hymnals. (Although he popularized the song, Stevens did not write Morning has Broken.)

When I did try out the albums I found some to be erratic. Several songs, I thought, were meandering and oblique (House of the Freezing Steel, for example.) It wasn’t until I got a greatest hits collection on CD that included all in one place “Wild World,” “Peace Train,” Father and Son,” “The First Cut is the Deepest,” “Morning has Broken,” and ‘Moonshadow,’ among others — that I paid attention. His voice and unusual vocal style grew on me.

In the late 1990s after several life-changing events, including nearly dying of tuberculosis, Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam and converted to Islam. For years he wouldn’t play his old music or even any secular music. As Yusuf he eventually came back to playing his old songs about 2006 — as well as new ones. I have listened to the Roadsinger one of his first Yusuf secular albums. and though he’s singing in his old familiar voice, the songs are more spiritual and it doesn’t have any potential classic singles on it like his older albums — but certainly worth exploring if you are a big Cat Stevens/Yusuf fan.

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Addendum and update: ‘How I stopped my horrific hallucinations’

As I continue living with this disease, Lewy body dementia, I have some post-game analysis on one of the most terrifying stories I’ve written about all this.

The post, which is on this blog, is headlined ‘How I stopped the horrific hallucinations that threatened my family, my sanity and my life.’

I am writing to add some nuance to the declaration in that story that I took one wonder pill — primavanserin — and ‘poof’ the ‘hallucinations went away.

That’s an oversimplification and I am tweaking the post a bit to better reflect reality, and you know how much I appreciate reality.

I do believe in the ‘wonder’ drug, primavanserin (Nuplazid), and that it was instrumental in helping me climb out of my hallucinations and back into reality. But the issuance of that new medication was part of a total review and adjustment of all my medications.

We went to several doctors where I received prescriptions for a medley of medicines. I do remember believing that I could use the carbodopa/levadopa on a sort of use as needed situation which led to me overmedicating myself, I suspect.

Carbodopa/levadopa treated the Parkinsonian effects of my Lewy body dementia, enabling me to write, walk easier and rid myself of that horrible, hard-to-describe feeling inside. I now think the increased use of that carbadopa/levadopa coupled with doses of anti-anxiety medication, an antidepressant and seriquol sent me into a psychosis, driven by my Lewy body dementia, where I was immersed in an alternate reality.

Once dropped into this state of unreality I had a hard time communicating to my caregivers what I felt was going on.

We sought opinions from several doctors and settled on a plan from Dr. Kasia Rothenberg, MD, PhD, at the Cleveland Clinic. She added the Nuplazid, and cut back on doses of just about everything else I was taking.

I found it interesting that as my medications were re-configured, my hallucinations built a story around it.

In these latter stages of hallucinations, I had gained control again of my house and delivered a dramatic speech to my nemesis, Red John, and his family telling them they had to leave my house.

And I haven’t had the hallucinations since. Well, I should qualify that. I still see Red John and other cohorts in various patterns, in crumpled bed sheets,, in the windblown movement of trees and bushes. Red John is sometimes smiling like we were old buddies, other times the look will be menacing but I can make it go away by looking away. These glimpses are a far cry from the immersion into another world that I went through last summer. Thank God.

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Mason Ruffner — 116

ALBUM: Gypsy Blood (1987)

MVC RATING: 4.0/$$$

Straight ahead rock guitarist singer-songwriter who has a mountain in Birmingham, AL, named after him. No, no scrap that last one about the mountain. Turns out that was named after a geologist named Ruffner in the 1880s.

Mason Ruffner sounds a little like Tom Petty and his guitar playing a little like Petty’s Heartbraker bandmate Mike Campbell. Add a pinch of New Orleans and Boston bluesman George Thorogood and you’ve got Ruffner.

Ruffner is a more than accomplished musician and is in my estimation underrated. “Gypsy” is the guitar -driven hit here. “Baby I don’t Care No More,’ is a rollicking piano guitar piece that sounds like it’s coming straight out of a New Orleans bar. Wikipedia points out that he played with Bob Dylan and Dylan mentioned him in Dylan’s memoirs

“Ruffner played in Bourbon Street clubs like the Old Absinthe Bar. He was a regional star, had a high pompadour, a gold tooth smile with a tiny guitar inlaid,” Dylan wrote in Chronicles: Volume One.

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Roxy Music — 117

ALBUMS: Avalon (1982); MUSIQUE: The High Road (1983)

MVC Ratings : Avalon 4.5/$$$$; Musique 4.5 $$$

Over the years I’ve tallked to a lot of people about music. I’ve argued over albums that are underrated or overrated. I’ve talked about sound quality, which musicians are best at their instruments, and so on and on. It beats talking about the weather.

A lot of music lovers in my particular demographic i.e. balding older white males with mediocre dance moves, like or love Roxy Music. That may be a statement that is hard for me to explain. But, especially in Roxy’s later years( I mean early 80s), the group displayed a smooth sound with excellent instrumentals and a lead singer in Bryan Ferry who was the definition of smooth.

The High Road, a live EP from ’83, has two of the best rock covers I’ve heard: Jealous Guy (where they re-work the Lennon song;) and Like a Hurricane, Neil Young’s windy love song. This album is an EP with four song. But you get the two aforementioned songs on one side with about 15 minutes of music.

Avalon is a full length album.’ More than This’ was a No. 1 single in the UK, but surprisingly never cracked the top 100 here in the US. The title song and ‘Take a Chance on Me’ are a few other highlights. If you like the sound I’d buy both albums. I have an anthology of all their work on CD, and it is good but does not have these albums on it, instead focusing on older material like ‘(Do) The Strand.’ Now, one of their better songs — from the album Siren — is called ‘Love is the Drug.’ I like the crunchy guitar sound in that song. Again I have that digitally.

You may also have noticed the cover of The High Road is featured (bottom right) in a collage-like display on my Home Page.

Also see Bryan Ferry.