Posts from — September 2008

This weekend the All Tomorrow’s Parties Fest begins and lasts until Sunday the 21st. The lineup is pretty outstanding and features, among other things, the first performance by My Bloody Valentine in the US in 16 years!

The full lineup can be viewed at the festival’s official site. A large number of great drummers will be at the festival as there are so many amazing bands playing. Among the band’s I’d love to see are…

OM, Polvo, Shellac, MBV, Low, Tortoise, Bardo Pond, The Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr, Mogwai, And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and Bob Mould.

It’s a shame ATP doesn’t get as much press as other festivals, but then again it is not really on the level of Coachella or others like it. All Tomorrow’s Parties is currently SOLD OUT, so if you really want to go and you didn’t get a ticket, either pawn your drum set off or check out eBay. Wish I was going…

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl spoke to the BBC regarding the band taking an extended hiatus.

Grohl said ” “We’ve never really taken a long break, I think it’s time,”.

The former Nirvana drummer continued: “After doing Wembley [the band played Wembley Stadium on June 6 and 7] we shouldn’t come back there for 10 years because we’ve played to everybody.

“We’re over in the UK every year, every summer, so I think it’s time to take a break and come back over when people really miss us.”

This is sad news for Foo Fighters fans but at the same time the band’s return will probably be well publicized. It also makes sense for the band to go on hiatus at this point in time, considering Dave Grohl and his wife are raising their first child.

Source.

Most drummers know John Blackwell, you’ve either heard or seen him as Prince’s drummer or you’ve seen his instructional videos. Not only is he an amazing player, who combines the best aspects of rock, R&B, hip-hop and funk, but he is also an expert stick-twirler and showman.

“Hudson Music announces the latest addition to its Master Series of drum instruction DVDs — John Blackwell: Master Series.”

“The three-hour DVD is divided into two main sections. In the first section, Blackwell performs with an all-star band and then explains and demonstrates the drum parts. Not only does the master drummer discuss the way the song and groove evolved along with the specific techniques that are involved in the performance, he demonstrates the patterns at normal and slow speeds to provide students with a deeper, fuller understanding of the parts and their musical context.”

If you haven’t yet checked out Blackwell’s drumming I highly recommend doing so online. If you are impressed by what you see his DVD’s are a worthwhile purchase, or at the very least, early ideas for your Christmas list.

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This morning I came across a great article over at Wired.com about the current stage show on Nine Inch Nails latest tour. It is one of the most high-tech setups that has ever toured, features multiple moving “stealth screens” as well as interactive lights and video the band members can actually control on the fly.

“With the song “Only,” for instance, the front, convex screen starts out as solid static. On Reznor’s side of the display, a laser above him detects whenever he crosses a vertical plane paralleling the screen. On the floor, a piece of tape and two tiny LED lights let him know exactly where that plane is.

As Reznor intersects that plane with his hand or body, the laser tracks his X and Y coordinates. The “brain” box then tells the particles to spread out to a predetermined dispersal pattern. Reznor says: “Then it follows me around. If I leave the plane, it fills back in. If I push through, it comes back out.”

Proving that he is the ultimate professional once again, Josh Freese doesn’t just pound out beats on his DW drums, he is turning off and on a drum grid sequencer. “We recreated a grid drum sequencer,” he says. “[Drummer Josh Freese] is actually touching and turning them on and off. But he’s not really touching the screen. He’s crossing the same laser on the back screen, which gets calibrated at sound check.”

These are just a few aspects of the band’s current stage setup, the article is fairly long and well worth the read.

Source.

Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” album hit stores Friday and a lot of buzz is still swirling around about it. I came across something I think a lot of drummers will be interested in.

Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame, as well as Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, interviewed Metallica about their new album “Death Magnetic” and some of the songs were broadcast for the first time during the event. Luckily, it is on YouTube currently and features info about the band’s songwriting process and the general theme of the album.

Let it be known that Dave Grohl should seriously consider getting his own radio show. He is a pretty funny guy, as most people know, but he is pretty hilarious asking Metallica all kinds of questions. You can tell these guys have a mutual respect for one another and Dave Grohl even states that he has been a hardcore Metallica fan since 1984.

Next weekend marks the annual Modern Drummer Festival, which is a two-day event produced by Modern Drummer Magazine. The festival, which features many of today’s top drumming talents as well as seasoned professionals, is the “longest-running, and largest live drumming event in the world.” The event prides itself on mixing education with entertainment, offering attractions such as drum clinics and concerts. The festival lineup includes 25 year-old Thomas Pridgen of The Mars Volta, who is the youngest featured performer at the Modern Drummer Festival.

Tickets are still available for the event which takes place from 1:00-7:30 Saturday, September 20 and Sunday, September 21, 2008 at the State University of New York.

More information about the festival can be found here. More details about each of the performers can be found here.

It was reported earlier this year that the drummer of the Strokes, Fabrizio Moretti, had joined up with his girlfriend, Binki Shapiro and singer/songwriter Rodrigo Amarante to form a band called Little Joy. Their album, will be released November 4th on Rough Trade Records, also home to such acts as Arcade Fire, Low and Jenny Lewis.

Check out this interview for interesting tidbits (like how they named their band after a bar down the street from me in Echo Park).

Little Joy will begin a tour this fall, performing with acts such Devendra Banhart and Gregory Rogove’s Megapuss, who Moretti will also be drumming for on tour.

Little Joy Tracklist:
01 The Next Time Around
02 Brand New Start
03 Play the Part
04 No One’s Better Sake
05 Unattainable
06 Shoulder to Shoulder
07 With Strangers
08 Keep Me in Mind
09 How to Hang a Warhol
10 Don’t Watch Me Dancing
11 Evaporar

Little Joy Tour Dates (w/Megapuss):
09-24 San Diego, CA - Casbah
09-25 Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour
09-26-27 Big Sur, CA - Festival in the Forest
09-28 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
09-30 Seattle, WA - Neumos
10-01 Portland, OR - Doug Fir

I know it’s a little early to start thinking about Halloween costumes but lately I’ve seen a ton of stores and websites advertising Slipknot masks, its really kind of comical. If your kid or you yourself want to dress up as Joey Jordison for Halloween they now make a mask modeled after the one he wears.

It’s a little bit lame for adults, but I am sure the band is seeing a pretty penny from having people license the right to use Slipknot’s trademark masks. I’m also sure that a lot of people will want them this year, as the band’s latest release “All Hope Is Gone” debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart last week.

A week ago, Lars Ulrich commented on Metallica’s long-anticipated new album, Death Magnetic, being released early via a French record store and leaking to the internet within hours. This week, he gives a little more in an exclusive interview with the drum magazine, Rhythm, which you can read in its entirety in the October 2008 issue. However, in the meantime, (or for those of us who know we are too lazy to ever pick up a real-life magazine) Music Rader gives us a few interesting tidbits to read. Ulrich speaks about working with producer Rick Rubin and how “his whole thing was: ‘We’re not going into the studio until the songs are written. We’re not recording until you can play these songs with your fuckin’ hands tied behind your backs, upside-down, while you’re sleeping…So the studio is not a place of creativity, it’s a place of execution.”

Wow that’s a novel idea, isn’t it? Wish more bands would stick to that philosophy.

I can’t honestly say I’ve heard the new album yet, but something else I think I will appreciate on the new record is that the drums don’t have too many effects. Ulrich mentions that Rubin “likes stuff to be in your face and to sound as organic and natural as possible” and I agree. I want to be able to sit down with the record and feel like the drummer is sitting across from me…a feeling I get when I listen to my 180g copy of In Utero (thanks to Steve Albini). I just find it surprising that someone who has also worked the Dixie Chicks and Justin Timberlake doesn’t want “big fat samples on them and all that shit.” But hopefully Mr. Rubin knows what he’s doing when it comes to saving careers, even if Pitchfork doesn’t seem to think so. After all, if he can do it for Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, why not Metallica?

Good luck, boys. I’m waiting till Friday to grab your album.

Usually I’m really on top of reporting leaks, especially for big name bands. This time however I’m a few days late, not just because I didn’t know but because I don’t really care that much. Maybe my mind will change once I get to listen to the whole album, but after hearing “Cyanide” and new single “The Day That Never Comes” I just wasn’t really that psyched to hear the rest of the album.

While I cannot legally link to the leaked album, I can direct you to Stereogum’s post about the leak which includes several youtube links compiled in one place.

From what I’ve heard so far, Lars Tama drums are sounding pretty good, as is his drumming…it is the weak and recycled songwriting that ruins the album for me, even though there are some killer riffs. Check out “Unforgiven III” to see what I mean.