Some Songs Considered

“Blue Monday (Single Edit)” – New Order
(Words/music: Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, available on Power, Corruption, & Lies (U.S.), Qwest 1983 / “FAC SEVENTY THREE” 12”, Factory 1983)

I don’t know for sure, but I probably hated drum machines at one point in my life.  If nothing else, as a flesh-and-blood teenage drummer, I’m sure I hated the idea of a machine giving a song a pulse.  I’ve long since warmed to drum machines (and would love to own one, to be perfectly honest), and the first step toward this must have been “Blue Monday.”  I have strong memories attached toward replicating the opening drum sequence (kids – it’s a good practice warm up if you move that rhythm around the kit!) and reluctantly tolerating Orgy’s late-90s take on the song because “Blue Monday” is too good of a song to let a little Nu-Metal ruin it.  Without a doubt, it led me to the Substance collection out of the used bin, which led me deeper down the New Order / Joy Division rabbit hole. 

With no disrespect intended toward the rest of the song (I happen to love Bernard Sumner’s deadpan articulation, and the song is far more melodic than I often remember), the drum machine seizes the spotlight.  The signature fill belongs in the Drum Fill Hall of Fame (let’s talk about that another time, shall we?) and remains as memorable as any other licks – guitars and synths included – of the era.  The payoff of this fill is in its quickness – it’s quickened pace makes it feel even faster than its two bars – and the rapid return back to the song’s groove.  Where others (“In the Air Tonight” immediately comes to mind) might work better in isolation, the “Blue Monday” fill works well with its surrounding material.  For example, this summer I heard a DJ repeat this drum fill over (at least) sixteen bars without building up to anything substantial.  It was too much work with too little payoff – all he had to do was drop the needle on the fill and let the rest of “Blue Monday” spin itself and the crowd was his.

EDIT: In a reblog, morgenstern shares this interesting tidbit: 

In a recent interview Bernard Sumner stated it was a moog source on bass and a SCI Prophet V on top. Synth purists shake their head at the source, but it was a sign of the times. Personally i think the combination of moog bass and prophet leads is just perfect.

More on New Order: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Generals and Majors” – XTC 
(Words/music: Colin Moulding, available on Black Sea, Geffen 1980) 

I played the drums for a long time, and while I was pretty good, I was never great.  I spent so much of my focus staying on the beat that I never really earned a love for the off beats.  Yes, the most important part of a drummer’s job in most cases is to keep time, but so much goes on off the beat.  Whether it’s the way that the snare hits sit “in the pocket” slightly late to make the groove seem a little wider or the way a stick on the cymbal a split second before a downbeat accelerates the pulse, the much of the art of drumming occurs outside of the beat. 

So in “Generals and Majors,” a song with many wonderful parts (the whistling, the decrescendoing breakdown), the hi-hat on the upbeats grabs my attention more than anything else.  Even if the bass drum and snare make a louder and more noticeable sound, the quick flick of Terry Chambers’ wrists on the hi-hat sound light and playful.  They also create the illusion of a quickening pace; the beat remains solid throughout the entire song, but the portions with these upbeats somehow feel quicker.  These anticipatory notes lead into the expected on-beat notes.  Chambers’ beat here isn’t particularly revolutionary, but it is well executed and gives “Generals and Majors” the extra jolt of liveliness that makes it memorable. 

More on XTC: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Everlong” – Foo Fighters
(Words: Dave Grohl, Music: Foo Fighters, available on The Colour and the Shape, Capital 1997) 

Saying that Dave Grohl was the reason I started playing the drums would be false, but it’s not out of line to suggest that I might not have stuck with them without him.  Grohl was to me what Bonham was to a previous generation.  At first, before learning form, I emulated his power, later returning to admire the technique behind the bombast.  Back in February I wrote about coming home from school and bashing along with the mid-tempo songs on Nevermind, but it was the quicker, nimbler Foo Fighters songs I looked up to from the beginning.  “Everlong” stands out in particular, in part because it was the first song that made me listen to the radio for hours in order to hear it.  At the end of 2009, I could listen to a new song through a variety of channels before purchasing the album, but in 1997, I stayed glued to the radio hoping to hear those muted notes segueing out of a Smash Mouth song.

Part of this obsession grew out of my admiration for Grohl’s drumming.  Sure, it was Taylor Hawkins wearing the dress behind the drum kit in the video, but Grohl played most of the drum tracks on the album, including “Everlong.”  I remember putting on my headphones, turning the anti-shock skip protection on my discman on, and trying vainly to play those sixteenth note fills.  I don’t have a precise body count, but I attribute at least two bloody knuckles, half a dozen broken sticks, and one cracked ride cymbal to “Everlong” alone (and far more sticks and the rest of my started set of cymbals to the Grohl school of bashery).  This became my goal – I wanted to grow beyond playing like Grohl in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video and into the more technically proficient (yet aggressively fueled) playing that “Everlong” represented.  Through about half a decade of drum lessons, I improved yet never could nail every single fill in “Everlong” – in fact, I got just good enough to fake my way through the song.  Maybe I took Grohl’s ode to infatuation to heart, or maybe I just felt the exact same way about “Everlong,” but anything less than a full speed, fully embellished version felt like an incomplete tribute.  Rather than regret this, I look back at a time where I put everything I had into emulating something I loved and smile.

(For what it’s worth, I’m confident that with ten minutes of warmup and a couple Tylenol, I could probably “fake” my way through “Everlong” today, rust be damned!)

More on Foo Fighters: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“When I Go Deaf” – Low
(Words/music: Mimi Parker, Zak Sally, and Alan Sparhawk, available on The Great Destroyer, Sub Pop 2005)

Even though I haven’t touched drums in an embarrassingly long time, I still consider myself a drummer.  I started playing the drums sixteen years ago, and for many of those years (the first eleven, we’ll say), it was a bit part of my personality.  These days, mostly due to time and logistics (as a drum set takes up a lot of room and creates a lot of noise), I call myself a “lapsed drummer” in the way that non-practicing Catholics still identify with their religion; I grew up playing the drums, and in many ways they shaped who I am today.  Thankfully, in high school, I started wearing ear protection (learning to play the drums by listening to Dave Grohl might not be good for the ear canal) while practicing, otherwise I’d have some serious hearing loss.  While my most recent hearing test turned out fine, I still fear that I’ve chipped away at my ability to hear higher frequencies, so the lingering fear of going deaf sits in the back of my brain.  

“When I Go Deaf” is less about actual deafness than it is about the burden of creativity.  Alan Sparhawk greets the eventual loss of hearing as a freeing moment releasing him from, among other things, the need to fight with his lover and the relentless songwriting process.  It’s interesting because it goes beyond the “I’d die if I went deaf because I couldn’t listen to music anymore” stock answer that so many of us throw out casually.  Instead, Sparhawk focuses in on these “freedoms” in a slightly ironic way.  He focuses in on the ways that words hurt relationships – lies, arguments, etc – but doesn’t note how words probably brought his narrator and his lover together in the first place.  Sure, we say things (intentionally and unintentionally) that hurt those that we love, but we often overlook the power of communication to bring two individuals together in the first place.

However, the fourth verse is the most interesting one to me.  On the surface, it seems like the narrator is complaining about having to be a songwriter.  Instead of taking this as a “pressures of being famous” song (as Low never really earned a high enough profile to warrant that type of song), I see two possible readings to this line.  On one hand, the freedom from having to scratch out couplets comes from a dedication to express the idea in one’s head as accurately and completely as possible.  In a way, if the medium was unavailable, the narrator no longer has to spend hours or days carefully crafting a song in order for it to match the idea in his head.  Alternately, this (along with the previous verse) could be freeing in that it forces the narrator out of a rut.  If all he has known was writing songs, he might slip into this medium automatically without having to consider if it’s the best way to express the idea.  If he goes deaf and can’t write songs, he’s free to express himself in other ways that aren’t necessarily constrained by rhyme schemes or song structures.  In either case, the bottled up idea no longer controls the artist.

Sonically, “When I Go Deaf” is gorgeous, as it builds from the slow strums and flawless harmonies to the sonic blast at the end of the song.  It’s an odd aesthetic choice for a band so associated with producing quiet, fragile arrangements, and this deliberate choice suggests one final blowout before the silence rolls in.  I know that if I eventually go deaf, I’d love for my final moments of hearing to be similarly grand.

More on Low: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm