7 MOGWAI Back home in Edinburgh, one of my favourite venues is the Queen’s Hall, not so much for the acoustics (iffy) or the views of the stage (even iffier), but for the quality of music it seems to attract. I’ve seen bands as different as The Residents and the Art Ensemble of Chicago … musicians as different as Dick Gaughan and Lloyd Cole, The Durutti Column and Plainsong. But the gig that stands out for me was another recent one – Mogwai. Young men with attitudinal guitars and no need to keep the noise in perspective, as there’s no singer to drown out. Their show there in 2003 was colossal, and for the first time I really felt my age. As the volume increased, I found myself at the very back of the hall, plaster falling around me. This was a really, really loud gig. Loud and great. It felt as though the whole hall might elevate, rise from its pinnings into the sky, propelled like a rocket. Which is what the best gigs should do – transport you.
9 Drummers of Note – Selected by Ben Schott
Ben Schott is the bestselling author of Schott’s Original Miscellany, and subsequent miscellanies on Food & Drink, and Sporting, Gaming, & Idling.
His drumming is mediocre at best, and he harbours ambitions to play the Hammond organ to the same standard. Below, in no particular order, are some of Schott’s drummers of note.
1 CLYDE STUBBLEFIELD Stubblefield was James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’, and as such can claim to be the most sampled drummer in the world. Alongside fellow drummers Jabo Starks and Clayton Fillyau, Stubblefield pioneered the tight, crisp and heavily syncopated snare and hi-hat riffs that defined the James Brown sound, and funk itself.
2 JAMES BLADES More a percussionist than a drummer, Blades deserves mention as the man who recorded the Morse code ‘V for Victory’ signal for the BBC during WWII. The ‘dot-dot-dot-dash’ rhythm was played on an African membrane drum with a timpani mallet and was broadcast up to 150 times a day to encourage the Resistance in Continental Europe. As if this was not enough, James Blades also recorded the famous J. Arthur Rank gong (on small Chinese tam-tam) that was mimed by the boxer Bombardier Billy Wells.
3 CHARLIE WATTS Without doubt the most dapper of drummers, Watts merits a place in any drumming line-up for his bespoke suits alone. Like (the much underestimated) Ringo Starr, the essence of Watt’s skill lies in playing just enough for the song and no more. When asked what 25 years of rock’n’roll with the Rolling Stones was like, Watts apparently replied: ‘It’s been one year drumming, and 24 years hanging around.’
4 STEVE GADD One of the most recorded drummers in history, Gadd has played with a stellar line-up of musicians from Stanley Clark to Eric Clapton. His work with Paul Simon has justly received high praise: the groove on ‘Late In The Evening’ and his fiendishly complex riff on ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’ typify his fluid and effortless style.
5 JOHN ‘STUMPY’ PEPYS Tall, geeky and bespectacled, Pepys was the first of six drummers for the band Spinal Tap. His formal technique might seem unsophisticated to modern ears, but he pioneered the simple pop sound of the early 1960s – this is best illustrated in his drumming on the 1965 ‘Thamesmen’ track ‘Gimme Some Money’. In 1969 Pepys died in a bizarre gardening accident that to this day remains a mystery.
6 KEITH MOON Setting aside Moon’s antics (both real and apocryphal) his drumming for The Who was as stylish and clever as it was violent and anarchic. Almost any Who track demonstrates the genius of Moon’s drumming – from the simple power of ‘Substitute’ to the flamboyance of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
7 RITCHIE HAYWOOD The drummer for American band Little Feat, Haywood has two apt nicknames: ‘the beat behind the Feat’ and ‘Mr Sophistifunk’. On tracks like ‘Dixie Chicken’ and ‘Sailin’ Shoes’ Haywood sits just behind the groove, seamlessly melding the styles of rock, zydeco, folk and blues.
8 RONNIE VERRELL Verrell was a stylish swing drummer who played with some of the great names of jazz, including Ted Heath, Syd Lawrence, David Lund, and Buddie Rich. More important than this, of course, is that he played Animal’s drum solo on the theme tune to The Muppet Show.
9 JON BONHAM Bonham was the typhonic drummer for ’70s rock band Led Zeppelin (a band name suggested by Keith Moon, q. v.). Alongside bass-player John Paul Jones, Bonham provided driving, relentless, and (for rock music) astonishingly complex riffs – perhaps best illustrated in ‘Fool In The Rain’. The less said about the half-hour drum solo during ‘Moby Dick’ the better.
That’s Entertainment? – 7 Perfectly Wretched Performers
1. HADJI ALI
Billed as ‘the Amazing Regurgitator’, Hadji Ali enjoyed an improbably widespread popularity at the beginning of the twentieth century as a vaudeville drawing card. His act consisted of swallowing a series of unlikely objects – watermelon seeds, imitation jewels, coins, peach pits – and then regurgitating specific items as requested by his audience. It was impressive, if tasteless, stuff – but his grand finale brought down the house every night. His assistant would set up a tiny metal castle on stage while Ali drank a gallon of water, chased down by a pint of kerosene. To the accompaniment of a protracted drumroll, he would eject the kerosene across the stage in a 6-ft arc and set the castle afire. Then, as flames shot high into the air, he would upchuck the gallon of water and extinguish the blaze.
2. THE CHERRY SISTERS
When impresario Oscar Hammerstein found himself in a financial hole, he decided to try a new approach. ‘I’ve been putting on the best talent and it hasn’t gone over,’ he told reporters. ‘I’m going to try the worst.’ On November 16, 1896, he introduced Elizabeth, Effie, Jessie and Addie Cherry to New York audiences at his Olympic Theatre. A sister act that had been treading the vaudeville boards in the Midwest for a few years, the girls strutted out onto the Olympia’s stage garbed in flaming red dresses, hats and woollen mittens. Jessie kept time on a bass drum, while her three partners did their opening number:
Cherries ripe Boom-de-ay!
Cherries red Boom-de-ay!
The Cherry Sisters
Have come to stay!
New York audiences sat transfixed, staring goggle-eyed in disbelief, but they proved more merciful than audiences in the Midwest. They refrained from pelting the girls with rubbish and overripe tomatoes at first. Eventually, the Cherry sisters had to put up a wire screen to protect themselves from the inevitable hail of missiles showered on them by their outraged audiences. In later years they denied that anything had ever been thrown at them. Said a writer in the New York Times: ‘It is sincerely hoped that nothing like them will ever be seen again.’ Another critic wrote: ‘A locksmith with a strong rasping file could earn steady wages taking the kinks out of Lizzie’s voice.’ Despite their reputation as the world’s worst act, they played consistently to standing-room-only crowds, wowing their fans with such numbers as ‘The Modern Young Man’ (a recitation), ‘I’m Out Upon the Mash, Boys’, ‘Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight’ and ‘Don’t You Remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?’
3. RONALD COATES
This nineteenth-century British eccentric may well have been the worst actor in the history of the legitimate theatre. A Shakespearean by inclination, Coates saw no objection to rewriting the Bard’s great tragedies to suit his own tastes. In one unforgettable reworking of Romeo and Juliet, in which he played the male lead, he tried to jimmy open his bride’s casket with a crowbar. Costumed in a feathered hat, spangled cloak and billowing pantaloons – an outfit he wore in public as well – he looked singularly absurd. Coates was frequently hooted and jeered offstage for his inept, overblown performances. Quite often he had to bribe theatre managers to get a role in their productions, and his fellow