Drums

  

I
bought a drum kit the year before last. 
I’ve always wanted one, and never took the plunge.  I should specify that this isn’t a full
acoustic set, but an amplified electric, which takes up less space, and can be
played through headsets, so you’re the only one who hears it, and you don’t
drive everybody else nuts.  I got
strong-armed into taking up clarinet, for band, when I was thirteen or
thereabouts, and mercifully got shut of it when I shipped off for boarding
school a couple of years later – the clarinet didn’t follow.   That’s when I started listening to jazz, too,
and fell for the more muscular woodwinds, alto and tenor sax, Cannonball
Adderley and John Coltrane and Stan Getz.  
Keyboard guys, McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans on piano, Jimmy Smith on the
organ.   And always, the percussive,
insistent drive of the drummers.

Joe
Morello, behind the Brubeck quarter. 
Sly, syncopated, disciplined. 
Elvin Jones, the power behind Coltrane and his quartet, savage and propulsive, predatory, leaning into it, ever
on the attack.  Bobby Moses, loose-limbed
and mischievous, often in counterpoint or reflection, his drum fills an echo
and a riff off Gary Burton’s blur of mallet strokes on vibes – and aren’t vibes
themselves considered a  percussion
instrument?

The
word timpani derives from the Greek, to hit ,
and drums are hit with sticks, mallets, brushes, or bare hands.   There’s something clearly elemental about
drums, every culture has them, and they’re clearly physical, badda- boom .

They
make noise.  They’re fun . 

Not
too long ago, I got turned on to a drum documentary, Count Me In (in fact, it’s what inspired me to finally buy myself
my own drum set).   It’s hugely
entertaining, if only for the enthusiasm and high spirits of everybody involved
in making it, but it interleaves a lot of archival footage, so you get Joe
Morello and Elvin Jones, along with Art Blakey, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and Max
Roach – and then you get Ringo Starr
and Ginger Baker and Charlie Watts and Keith Moon and John Bonham, among
others, for show and tell  about
influences and so forth.   It’s
mesmerizing.   There’s a terrific moment
with Emily Dolan Davies where she talks about how physically cathartic it is,
how liberating , to just smash the
skins.   And there you have it.   It’s the animal, atavistic energy.   Yes, there’s a Zen to it.   Yes, technique comes with practice, just like
anything.   But the BAM BAM BAM.   It’s primal, and boy, is it satisfying!

I
don’t take a break from my desk and sit down at the drums to be contemplative,
in other words.   I don’t use it to work
out my aggressions, either.   I do it to
get lost, in rhythm, in patterns, in sound.  
I like the tom-toms better than the snare, for one thing, and you can
change the sound mix, and customize your kit, marimbas and cowbells.   I’ll never have the frontal attack of Elvin
Jones, or the crisp delivery of Joe Morello, or for sheer exuberance, Jeff
Porcaro’s half-time shuffle on Rosanna ,
but I play along.   And in truth, it can
be relaxing or strenuous, depending on whether you’re at the top of your lungs,
in your headsets.

Count Me In is
available on Netflix

Dave
Brubeck Quartet, live, Take Five

     (Joe Morello)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw

Coltrane,
My Favorite Things

     (Elvin Jones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqpriUFsMQQ&list=RDmWEvjzbTLR4&index=8

Toto, Rosanna

     (Jeff Porcaro)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM