Continuum of Drummers

When I was in college, exploring the vast resources that America's higher education system has to offer, I took classes in percussion. While I learned the finer points of all sorts of percussive instruments - from the marimba to the timpani to the wood blocks - drum set technique was at the heart of the course. My professor, a Ph.D. in percussion, so you know he knows his stuff, once told me his theory for classifying the different styles of rock drummers. This theory has had a major impact on how I view the art of drumming, and I've taken it upon myself to expand on it over time. Here's the basic theory as it was presented to me all those years ago.

The two most basic styles are represented on the one hand by John Bonham, who embodied the epic "Rock God" during his years with Led Zeppelin. No other drummer played with such power and ferocity as Bonzo - he was known for setting aside his sticks for a portion of his lengthy drum solos and wailing on his kit with his bare hands - while still maintaining a distinct bluesy style and feel for the groove. Sadly, his musical genius was fueled by raging alcoholism, which led to his untimely death at the age of 32. His stylistic polar opposite is technical wizard Bill Bruford, who made his bones with the popular progressive rock group Yes, before moving on to the more experimental King Crimson. His lightning fast, complicated, yet light drum parts are no less impressive than Bonham's, but they fit a completely different style of music. Bruford was extremely adaptable - in an interview about his work with King Crimson, described the philosophy of the band thus: "Whatever you do before you joined King Crimson, would you please not do it when you're in the band." Just look at the wall of strange percussion instruments behind him in the picture below.

There's one drummer who represents the synthesis of those two styles, somehow combining the best of both without sacrificing either the virtuosity of Bruford or the Rock Godliness of Bonham: Neil Peart of Rush. Dubbed "The Professor" by his fellow bandmates, Peart is unquestionably the most talented and accomplished drummer out there (at least in my opinion) and has been for the past 40 years. Pratt (as he's also known) is so dedicated to perfecting his art, that halfway through his career he completely revamped his style while studying with jazz guru Freddie Gruber, even though he was already considered one of the best in the business. Here's the marathon 8-minute solo that started my love affair with Rush and with drums in general. Finally, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, is The Who's late Keith Moon, who, in the words of my professor, "got so stoned that he forgot how to drum." Moon the Loon's questionable lifestyle choices aside - like Bonham, he also died at 32 - his signature wild and fast style has earned him the reputation as one of the best rock drummers of all time.

Below is a visual representation of where these Big Four drummers would appear on a continuum of styles, with eight more of my favorite drummers included where I feel they would best fit.

Click image for full-size version.

Going clockwise around the inner circle first, we have David Garibaldi of Tower of Power, the only one of the drummers on this list I've personally met (re: shook hands with). As a funk/soul band, ToP is more known for its horn section, led by Mimi Castillo and Doc Kupka, but as my drum professor explained to me, their rhythm section is just as top notch, and Garibaldi's funky riffs are as important to their unique sound as they are hard to get out of your head. Mitch Mitchell has his roots in jazz drumming, which is evident in his work with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. His skill and liveliness perfectly complement the untamed psychadelia of the group's eponymous frontman (who, again in my opinion, is the best rock guitarist of all time, all due respect to fans of Eric Clapton).

Dave Grohl started out in the grunge scene with Nirvana, but then traded in his sticks for a guitar and a microphone for his own band the Foo Fighters (even though he also played the drums via overdubbing on some of their early albums). More than any other drummer on this list, Grohl lends his caffeine-influenced wild style to multiple acts, including work with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Tenacious D, and the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures (for which he's drumming in the above picture). Then of course there's Lars Ulrich, who this generation sadly may know more for his public objections to Napster than for his drumming, which truly defines the metal genre. From this Danish wunderkind's lightning fast double bass drum work (never replaced with electronic sounds in post) to the coins he attaches to his bass drum heads to give them that signature clicking sound, nobody does it better. Case in point: check out this live drum battle with Metallica frontman and co-founder James Hetfield.

Now let's go counter clockwise through the outer circle, whose placing I'll readily admit gets a little hazy. Famous Canadian group The Band would never have been able to master its American folk sound without drummer/vocalist Levon Helm. The only drummer I know of whose drum parts alone can make you cry, Levon's soulful stylings continued to win him Grammy's until his death in 2012 from throat cancer. Despite Ringo Starr's lack of extreme chops - when asked if he thought Ringo was the best drummer in the world, John Lennon responded, "He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles" - I can't in good conscience make a list of my favorite drummers without including the Liverpudlian sensation. He was, however, a quirky and innovative drummer, and an integral part of the Beatles - do you think they could have had all that success without Ringo's perfectly executed eighth-note fills?

Jim Eno is the one drummer on this list of whom I'm least sure of his placement, but after seeing Spoon play live, I have no qualms about his inclusion. Some drummers look as if they're off in their own world, concentrating on their own complex riffs or just keeping time until it's time for their solo. But when I saw him, Eno looked very much like a quarterback, extremely connected to every other member of the band (he wasn't wearing his trademark shades, as this show was indoors and at night) and looking as though he had control over where the music was going - which is understandable given that he's also a founding member of the group and a record producer in his own right. Dominic Howard might be the least-known drummer on this list, but I've always enjoyed his work with Muse, even into their later period, as their music got ever more whiny and entitled. Plus, I thought it would be cool to include a lefty on this list.

So there you have it, a visual representation of some of my favorite drummers and the (rough) musical categories that they fall into. I hope this clears up some of the confusion surrounding the drumming community, and that it leads you all to explore the works of these artists further.

Beyond Fantasy Football

6:49 pm, BAL - 28, NE - 13, FINAL

And a Cary Williams interception in the New England end zone secures it for the Ravens! The clock runs down, the players and press mob the field. A ruggedly handsome John Harbaugh embraces a classlessly hobo-esque Bill Belichick. Tom Brady mopes off the field... right into the arms of his supermodel wife. And it's officially a Harbaugh Bowl! Brother vs. Brother in the biggest sporting event of the year! Just a bye-week to go and then we head to the Superdome for a little piece of history!


6:32 pm, BAL - 28, NE - 13

I wonder if a defender has ever broken his hand tipping a pass thrown by an NFL quarterback from just a couple feet away. I don't think that happened to Darnell McPhee when he tipped Tom Brady's pass right into the hands of the Ravens secondary, but it would have been worth it for the turnover. Six and a half minutes to go. I wonder how many minutes Falco can burn during this drive.


6:14pm, BAL - 28, NE - 13

I learned this year that the flag of Maryland, the only US state flag based on English heraldry, contains the heraldic banner of George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore. It was adopted by Maryland in 1904. It is also the same flag that Anquan Boldin found in the stands, held by a stray Ravens fan, after catching his second touchdown pass in as many Ravens possessions. 11+ minutes left in the game, Patriots two scores behind.


6:09 pm, BAL - 21, NE - 13

I learned this year that a "play action fake" is when the quarterback fakes a handoff and then throws a pass. That's what happened on the play which Anquan Boldin caught for a touchdown. Now it's still a one-score game, if New England scores (goffabid) and then goes for 2.

I knew this before, but the previous play confirmed that if an offensive player lowers his head first before getting destroyed by a defender, there's much less chance of that defender getting called for anything. That's what happened when Stevan Ridley was demolished by Bernard Pollard to force the first turnover of the game. Let's see if the birds can make it a two-score game...


5:46pm, BAL - 14, NE - 13

Look at Dennis Pitta get DECAPITATED on a "clean hit" as soon as he comes down with a pass in the red zone... and is there a call? Helmet-to-helmet? Unnecessary roughness? I was surprised that he had the strength to get back on the field for the next play - where he redeemed himself by catching an easy touchdown pass. One-point game now!


5:37pm, NE - 13, BAL - 7

There's a lot of talk about home field advantage in football. You wouldn't think it would make as much difference as, say, baseball where the dimensions of each park vary significantly. But watching this game, it seems apparent that the home team has the advantage in that the refs make LITRALLY every call in favor of the home team.

These fouls getting called against the Ravens are seriously getting absolutely ridiculous. The third personal foul against the Ravens came against a player who did nothing except run down the field next to a receiver who got tackled. And then when a Patriots D/ST player makes contact with Ed Reed after he called for a fair catch after New England's eventual punt... silence from the decrepit skeletor that passes for a referee in this game.

And it doesn't stop at personal fouls: apparently defenders are allowed to dive in front of the receivers to trip them up without a pass interference call. There's still a lot of football left to play; which is undoubtedly going to result in about 34 more penalties called against the Ravens. Let's hope they can supplement the blatant favoritism with a few more points.


5:11 pm, NE - 13, BAL - 7

A pair of touchdowns marked the second quarter: one an amazing running move by Ray Rice, and one a 3rd down catch by Wes Welker. Just when the Baltimore defense makes you think they've made a great goal line stand with two stops in a row, a couple dudes get confused on their coverage, and New England's lead stands at 3. With less than half a minute left in the half, the Pats are trying to pad that lead.

The next play: Brady is forced to scramble, and in trying to slide his way to safety, he does his best Ty Cobb impression and puts his spikes up right into Ed Reed... and yet doesn't get called for a foul. Personal Fouls now stand at 2-0 in favor of the Ravens. There's John Harbaugh pleading his case on the sidelines - you can read his lips as he shouts to the ref, "He kicked him!" Of course that's nothing compared to his brother's meltdown earlier today. It would be great to see them play against each other in this year's Super Bowl.

And in the final seconds, Brady's poor time management forces them to kick a field goal rather than having one or two attempts to score a touchdown, and it's a 6-point game. Let's hope that Ray Lewis gets a few more awesome tackles to justify his out of control emotions in what could be, but hopefully isn't, his last entrance.

4:27 pm, NE - 3, BAL - 0

This year was my first year as an aspiring football fan. I've followed baseball for so long (my time as a fan officially hit puberty this year - it's been 13 seasons since I started obsessively following the sport) that I felt I had some bandwidth to expand into new sporting frontiers. However, I made the mistake of using Fantasy Football as my gateway into the NFL, which had the consequence that once my team was knocked out of the playoffs - despite having the best record in the regular season - I checked out of the sport.

This was a selfish mistake, since the end of this season and the playoffs have been extremely exciting for the team I have adopted as my own, the Baltimore Ravens. After placing first in the AFC North, they first took care of their longtime rival Indianapolis (nee Baltimore) Colts, finally giving me occasion to wear my "Beat Indy" shirt (with Johnny Unitas's 19 on the back) and have it make sense. Then came a five-hour marathon matchup against the number one seeded Denver Broncos, who lined up behind longtime Colts signal-caller Peyton Manning, new neck and all. And now, as I type, they're down 3-0 in a rematch of last year's AFC Championship matchup against the New England Patriots.

As we head into the second quarter, I'm going to try to get a better handle on the inner workings of how a football game plays out on TV by live-blogging a game for the first time ever. So far nothing that interesting has happened except for a personal foul call against an extremely emotional Ray Lewis in the final AFC Championship game of his career - the 13-time Pro-Bowler announced his retirement shortly before the playoffs. Now let's see what happens as the Ravens drive it past midfield for the first time in the game...

The Dark Knight Rises LEGO - The Bat vs. Bane: Tumbler Chase

The holiday season is the time for toy companies to let it all hang out and put their most impressive wares on display in hope that excited children will convince their parents to buy them. Which is why it's curious that LEGO's new set based on this summer's blockbuster hit The Dark Knight Rises wasn't available until January. Luckily for us AFOLs (Adult Fans Of LEGO) the season of treating yourself is year-round. So yesterday I went to my local LEGO store, redeemed by $5 credit for being a member of the VIP club, and purchased The Bat vs. Bane: Tumbler Chase.

"We take Gotham from the corrupt... and
give it back to you... the people."

The set itself is a good example of the excellence that modern LEGO products generally exhibit. It's got two vehicles: a camo Tumbler that pales in comparison to the discontinued set from 2008, and the movie's unimaginatively-titled The Bat, from which I later cannibalized many of the core pieces in order to make a black version of the Tumbler... but not before re-creating select scenes from the movies (pictured). The Tumbler's coolest feature is a bank of concealed missiles, but in a triumph of convenience over authenticity, they gave it a front central axle - the two front wheels in the actual movie version were somewhat illogically free-standing. It's also got precious little headroom - I had to alter the design a bit for the black version in order to accomodate Batman's headgear. The Bat, despite its scaled-down size, surprisingly had room for two LEGO minifigs inside. I was however confused at the maneuverability of the front propeller-thingies. With three separate ball and socket joints, they appear more like robot arms than... come to think of it, what are those things there for in the first place?

But it's the TDKR-inspired minifigs that really give the set its personality. They brought back the movie-themed Batman from the aforementioned 2008 set, and it's always nice to add another Batman cape to my collection - this new one brings my total to three black, one blue. I don't know why the prepackaged Bane figure is wearing a solitary Michael Jackson glove, but I replaced his torso with a furry jacket reminiscent of the one he wears in the film. I also took Commissioner Gordon's head off the SWAT uniform, put it on Bruce Wayne's suit from last year's Batcave set, and gave him gray hair so that he better resembles the character from the 1992 Animated Series.

"My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange minifigs."

To complete the experience, I of course put on my copy of TDKR on BluRay while building. Seeing the film for the third time, the first from the comfort of my own home, I was inspired to make a list of the things that bothered me about it. Not that I didn't like the movie as a whole; it just left a lot to be desired in the whole logic/creating a compelling version of the Batman universe departments. Since, according to Jim Gordon, we shouldn't believe in coincidence, there must be some cosmic significance behind the fact that this video from CinemaSins came out the very same day. They mention four of my biggest grievances among their 73 movie sins, so I won't waste precious space on the blogosphere except to innumerate them:

Sin #8: How does Officer Blake figure out Batman's secret identity just by looking at him? Even Dick Grayson had to be told, and he lived in Wayne Manor for gosh knows how many months before becoming Robin.

Sin #14: Alfred's false exposition about Bane. The folks at CinemaSins were confused that Alfred even knew all that information to begin with  but I don't think it's unreasonable that he could come up with it given a couple hours on the Batcomputer. What upsets me is that everything he says turns out to be a lie. And it's the worst kind of lie that can be told in a movie based on a previously established and well-loved canon: information that is true in ALL OTHER VERSIONS OF THE STORY, but which is revealed to be nothing but a red-herring in this universe.

It only comes in black if you make a few custom modifications...

Sin #23: The stock market fraud that leaves Bruce Wayne penniless. While examining the evidence, Lucius Fox remarks, "Long term we may be able to prove fraud." Meanwhile, short term, what in the name of Dow Jones are the police and the SEC doing with the VIDEO FOOTAGE of Bane breaking in and HACKING INTO THE ONLINE TRADING DESK??? I doubt they could have confused the masked mercenary for Bruce Wayne inputting his actual thumbprint...

Sin #64: Bane and Talia's backstory reveal. I haven't actually read any of the Batman comics, but isn't Batman supposed to meet and bond with Talia before he even meets Ra's al Ghul and finds out she's his daughter? Even if you want to keep it so he trained with Ra's and the League of Shadows (or Society of Shadows or League of Assassins, depending on your continuity), you can still have him meet Talia as an ally without knowing her connection to Ra's. It's similar to what happened with Venom in Spiderman 3: wasting one of the deepest and most influential characters by relegating her to the last 30 seconds of the movie.

The Bane voice takes up three sins (#1, #25, #42), and while its campy indecipherable tone definitely goes a long way in dragging down the credibility of this movie, I don't even know if he's the worst offender in the unable-to-be-understood department. Of course there's the famous bat-voice, and Marion Cotillard's accent shouldn't win any prizes for clarity. But I think Commissioner Gordon might take the cake with his emotionally guttural raspy growl. Effective thought it may be, it's inexcusable that a character who's not wearing a mask should have a three-minute scene of dialogue where the only words you can understand are "filth" and "friend like I did."

Front-mounted propellers or Robo-arms? YOU DECIDE!

But my number one biggest objection to the movie has to do with Bruce Wayne's pathetic obsession with Rachel. Let's start at the beginning: Why does Bruce Wayne become Batman? Because he saw his parents gunned down before his eyes at a young age, an experience that profoundly changed him, inspiring a near superhuman level of focus and drive that allowed him to become a powerful crime fighter. This experience so fundamentally changes his character that it comes to to define him more than the name and fortune he was born into. Over the course of the first two movies, Bruce falls in love with a girl who ends up dying tragically. And in the third one he gets so broken up about this that he becomes too depressed to be Batman anymore.

So let me get this straight: His heartbreak over losing the girl he likes weighs more heavily on his soul than the loss of his parents? How can this character use one instance of tragedy as an inciting incident to inspire him to greatness, but gets completely flatlined by another similar tragedy? Keeping with the pattern of his origin story, shouldn't Rachel's death have caused him to become some sort of Mega-Ultra-Batman, rather than leave him depressed and useless for the first hour and a half of the movie? This inconsistency immediately cheapens Christopher Nolan's version of the character.

You may read this and think I'm a new-Batman-hater. I'm not, I'm really not. We fanboys have the tendency to scrutinize most vehemently the things we love best, and my nitpicking of this particular movie is really just an affirmation of how devoted I am to any version of Batman that might come to be. Including LEGO Batman in the upcoming movie (voiced by Will Arnett, I'm told, which I'm extremely eager to hear). However, my custom LEGO Batman minifig remains free from all reproach as the most genuine and pure Batman ever to grace the toy shelf. Here's hoping they'll make a movie version that approaches his awesomeness one day...

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!