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SHITTY SOUND = INNOVATION ?
Scott Hansen also wrote:
"pps-the other funny story i remember about live bands and sound in the
60's, this lady i used to work for 20 yrs ago, saw the beatles on their
1st american tour (she was older than i, and was an early teen when they
came). she saw them in big football stadium, she said the place was
filled w/ teen girls, you couldn't hear a thing (the vox amps not loud
enough!) and all she remembered from the concert was some girl behind
her was so excited and crazy when they came on, she leaped over a couple
of rows of girls to get closer and broke her leg. guess that was the
beatlemania hysteria....."
RINGO STARR
Yeah, it's cool that you mention that. Ringo Starr, it is shocking
for some people to learn, came up with a very unusual way of doing
fills (think all the fills
in Abbey Road) that was so influential that the Los Angeles mafia of
drummers in the 70's (Jim Gordon, Russ Kunkel and others including the
80's studio drum legends)
based their playing off his approach. If you know the record 'Sweet
Baby James' , which was James Taylor's breakthrough commercial success
in 1971 imagine all the drum fills in 'Fire and Rain'. These are the
types of fills that Ringo innovated. They were very syncopated with a
lot of space inbetween strokes and they frequently
occurred at unusual places in the song form (not always right before the
chorus or bridge as is typical)
Ringo was, however, not a very technically adept drummer. He could
only roll with the left hand leading as an example which is ass
backwards viz a vis most
of the right handed rock and roll drumming that has occurred over the
years.
In an interview one time, he was asked how he developed such an
idiosyncratic approach to filling and he replied that
when the Beatles toured the last time, that the PA was so terrible (and
the drums WEREN'T miced in Shea Stadium if you can believe that)
and the screaming so loud that the Beatles had a horrible time
performing because they just couldn't even hear themselves play.
He said the screaming was so ubiquitous that it would go on the whole
time they would be playing.
Occasionally, however, the screaming would subside a little and he said
he would just play a tom fill whenever that happened JUST TO BE ABLE
TO HEAR HIMSELF PLAY.
It was completely random.
SHITTY SOUND = INNOVATION
lol!
I love it.
MAX ROACH
Another story of bad sound causing innovation was the famed modern jazz
drummer/innovator Max Roach who was
credited with freeing the modern jazz drummer from the hegemony of
having to play quite quarter notes along with the walking bass line.
I forget which record it was off the top of my head, but on one record
the bass drum was suddenly just punctuating periodically and
not playing time as everyone had always done since the invention of jazz
drumming.
When asked about that, he said that doing the sessions, someone
accidentally kicked over the bass drum microphone and noone noticed
till the end of the session. Because the kicks were always played
really softly (but definitely audibly) the only kick drums you heard
were when he would accent a particular phrase. Well the overheads
only picked up the bombs, leaving the quarter note ride inaudible.
The takes were so good that they decided not to retrack and the shit hit
the fan as conservative jazz fans lambasted him for this
daring new style and all the young drummers worshipped at his feet for
liberating them from the tyranny of always playing quarter notes.
SHITTY SOUND = INNOVATION
<mutters as he wanders off contemplating how to turn horrible over
subwoofed PA systems into some kind of innovation>