Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - )

Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - ) Aug 26, 2020 23:40:38 GMT

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Post by petrolino on Aug 26, 2020 23:40:38 GMT

My Top 20 Punk Drummers (Ranked)

# "The Family" : The Brothers Ramone

Jeff Hyman ~ Joey Ramone ( Sniper / Ramones)

Thomas Erdelyi ~ Tommy Ramone (Ramones / Uncle Monk)

Marc Bell ~ Marky Ramone (Dust / The Voidoids / Ramones / Misfits)

Rich Reinhardt ~ Richie Ramone (Ramones)

Clem Burke ~ Elvis Ramone (Blondie / Chequered Past / Adult Net / The International Swingers)

Chris Ward ~ C.J. Ramone (Guitar Pete's Axe Attack / Ramones / Los Gusanos)

“It was a disaster. His drumming style wasn’t right. It was very loose, like in Blondie, not as rigid as we need. Double time on the hi-hat was totally alien to him.”

- Johnny Ramone assesses Clem Burke's drumming as Elvis Ramone

'Cretin Hop' - Ramones

20) Scott Krauss (Hy Mya / The Finns / Pere Ubu / Home And Garden)

"This one friend of mine was telling me that there's this really weird band down [DEVO] in Akron. He said, "You're not going to believe this but they all wear these uniforms and sing about the de-evolution of the human race." So we go down to check this out and it was at a little club called the Crypt. It was definitely one of the weirdest bands I've ever seen. I kept wondering, "Aren't these guys afraid of getting beat up?"

I don't know how it all got worked out, but sometimes they'd come up to Cleveland, and we'd take turns headlining. They got into a bunch of philosophical discussions, Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh versus David Thomas and Allen Ravenstine, and it was pretty interesting. I think they got the impression that Pere Ubu was never going to make it because we didn't care whether we made it or not. And we thought they were going to the other extreme."

- Scott Krauss, Nadir-Novelties

'On The Surface' - Pere Ubu

19) Topper Headon (London SS / The Clash)

"Topper Headon remains a hugely underrated drummer, so it comes as a surprise to learn that he arrived at the profession by accident. Aged 13, a broken leg put paid to his footballing ambitions and it was a doctor who suggested the drums as a way of venting his frustration. Within six months he was playing for a jazz band in a Dover pub.
When he later moved to London with his new wife Wendy, he was sacked from various drumming jobs for not hitting the drums hard enough, a legacy of these jazz beginnings. Drowning his sorrows at the Rainbow Theatre one night, he met The Clash's guitarist, Mick Jones, who was on the lookout for a replacement drummer.
Headon agreed to an audition but didn't bother going; he'd briefly been in Jones' previous band, the London SS, "but they were all long hair and afghans and stuff". He bought that week's edition of the NME, however, "and who's on the cover, but Mick, Joe and Paul [Simonon, bass player], and it was like... 'Oh, I'll be down in a minute, then!' I went in there and went bang! bang! bang! – I had to relearn my whole drumming style." He ended up with his hands covered in blood blisters but he'd got the job on a wage of £25 a week.
Being part of The Clash meant Headon had to give up his previous existence. Having set off for the audition in casual clothes and with long hair, he returned home dressed in punk gear, his head sporting hacked spikes. His name was changed next; Simonon rechristened him after deciding their new drummer looked like Mickey the Monkey from the children's comic, Topper. "I wondered: am I doing the right thing? I'd only been in the band a week – I'd had to deny I was married. It was quite intimidating, you had to ditch all your mates and be part of the gang."'
There was no room for Headon's marriage, but he bonded with the band through sheer industry and application: life became an endless cycle of touring and rehearsing.
It was some time before his drumming skills were fully appreciated by The Clash. His strength and stamina were obvious but his ability to play jazz, soul and funk weren't needed to begin with. Sandy Pearlman, the producer for the band's 1978 second album Give 'Em Enough Rope, was astonished by Headon, calling him "the human drum machine". "I was really on top of my game then," the musician recalls. "I didn't make mistakes. I really could drum." If Headon was gradually encouraging The Clash to play the sort of music he liked, he was also being introduced to reggae by the rest of the band. "I loved drumming, so I just thought, 'Right, I'm going to learn reggae now.' That's the way I was – I've got an addictive personality. All I ever did was drum, drum, drum. Then I went on the road and discovered booze. All I did was drink, drink, drink. Then Mick turned me onto coke and all I did was coke."

- Mark Lucas, The Independent

'Rudie Can't Fail' - The Clash

18) D. H. Peligro (Dead Kennedys / The Feederz / Three Little Butt Hairs / Red Hot Chilli Peppers / Jungle Studs / Nailbomb)

“John Frusciante was an absolute, you know, this interstellar, transcendent, incredible virtuoso musician. And after Hillel Slovak died, he became our guitar player, this 17-year-old kid. And we jammed with him and there was actually a Bay Area guy named D. H. Peligro, who played with the Dead Kennedys, he was in our band for a short while [in 1988] – a great drummer. And yeah, it really was a new opportunity and John gave us so much and he’s someone that I love so deeply.”

- Flea, Alternative Nation

'Riot' - Dead Kennedys

17) Rick Buckler (The Jam / Time UK / The Highliners)

"There was some really great drumming going on at that time, people like Ian Paice with Deep Purple, John Bonham with Led Zeppelin, Paul Hammond with Atomic Rooster. They were all a big influence on me. I knew I couldn’t play that way – there was no way I could be as good as Ian Paice [laughs], you know what I mean? But I still loved to listen to what they were playing. And I suppose like most musicians you pull off little bits: I like that — I’ll have a go at that —. You figure out your own way to do them.
Even though these drummers were in what was referred to as progressive rock bands, I still loved the song thing – the three-minute single, which was a lot more engaging than a fifteen-minute rock classic. Even then I thought that was a bit overblown. People started to go back to what I think really matters – a great song from a great band."

- Rick Buckler, Modern Drummer

'Burning Sky' - The Jam

16) Stephen Morris (Joy Division / New Order / The Other Two / Bad Lieutenant)

"He may have been usurped by a drum machine on the notorious introduction of New Order’s biggest hit ‘Blue Monday’, but Stephen Morris is still a hero. As drummer for both Joy Division and New Order, his style adapted from doomy post-punk to danceable new wave, keeping both in the realms of the dancefloor."

- Emily Barker, New Musical Express

'A Means To An End' - Joy Division

15) Jay Dee Daugherty (Mumps / Patti Smith Group / The Roches)

"I was never a great drummer. Never had the chops. My secret was I just hit the damn things harder than anyone else. My influences were Jay Dee Daugherty from The Patti Smith Group, Scott Krauss from Pere Ubu, Dee Pop from Bush Tetras, and Gun Club. And man, Doug Scharin from Codeine has the most beautiful, powerful, minimalist vibe … he takes my breath away."

- David Rat, International Times

'Revenge' - Patti Smith Group

14) Budgie (The Spitfire Boys / The Slits / Siouxsie And The Banshees / The Creatures)

“I started playing when I was 13 or 14 and I did cabaret bands in the North-West of England. At the weekends we’d go out and as a kid you’d be late for school on Monday morning because you’d been out until 3 o’clock with all the old folk. And you had to be careful about the bingo sessions. You did three sets a night – a slow set, a medium-paced set and dance set, faster. It was all the classics, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, Ray Charles, and so I was learning waltz time, medium-paced pop stuff, and then rock’n’roll which was the fast set. But I wanted to be John Bonham. I’d heard pop songs but that was the first serious rock drumming I’d heard.

When two guys knocked on my door and said, ‘You play drums?’ I said, ‘No I don’t. I’m an artist.’ I was at art college, ‘I’m going to be a painter.’ I was at college, I had turned my back on music, David Bowie was out there having his clothes pulled off, I was into Marc Bolan but I had left it behind for a couple of years and these guys said, ‘We’re playing tonight, we’re supporting Siouxsie And The Banshees.’ I went, ‘What’s this?’ I’d heard Blondie’s Plastic Letters and The Clash, the first album, but what was also happening was Kraftwerk. There was electronic music coming from Germany and I found that was becoming a bigger influence. There was this thing, here comes the drum machine, what’s going to happen to drummers? I’d only just learned how to drum properly, or thought I had, and suddenly all this dance music was coming in. It was threatening but it was also, what could we take from that?”

- Budgie, Louder

'Christine' - Siouxsie And The Banshees

13) Brian Glascock (The Strangers / The Gods / Toe Fat / Carmen / Captain Beyond / The Motels)

"Session drummer Brian Glascock is the brother of bassist John Glascock (1951–1979), who Richie Blackmore called " ... a brilliant bass player, the best in the business in rock". Like his late brother, Brian is a master technician on his instrument."

- Colin Treadwell, Drum Art

'Careful' - The Motels

12) Zeeek Criscione (The Shirts)

"We all know about the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Blondie, Television ... the seventies list goes as far as you care. Later, when CBGB’s became establishment, more and even bigger names would grace its tiny stage (bathrooms to the left, downstairs). Beginning in the eighties, the club became in demand as a showcase and a film set, thankfully without losing its social street welcome or basic perspective (no velvet ropes here, just the occasional police barricade). Even Spinal Tap would feel honored to play there. But in the seventies’ Golden Age there was another lively layer, of bands that, for various reasons, didn’t make the household-name grade.
The Shirts (from Brooklyn, as the description went) was one of these, along with the Laughing Dogs, Manster, the Rudies, the Tuff Darts, Mink deVille, the Miamis, Orchestra Luna, the Sorrows and many more who had what it took but didn’t benefit from the right roll of the dice. In many ways, the Shirts’ erratic progress through hope, failure, despair, experiment and success mirrored the experiences of many others at the time, trying to survive while carving a musical identity in what in retrospect looks like a remarkable and special hothouse. And the Shirts tackled it with a basic, honest, earthy family attitude. No artsy posing here. The Shirts were (are) from Brooklyn."

- Mike Thorne, The Stereo Society

'Teenage Crutch' - The Shirts

11) Johnny Blitz (Rocket From The Tombs / Dead Boys / The Tribe / Raw Dog / Highschool Hookers)

"My band Thundertrain was on the ascent in Boston that year. With a couple of singles getting steady airplay, some Marshall stacks and an amazing following of nubile babes, we were headlining clubs all over the northeast. One night we rolled into the Rat in Kenmore Square for the first show of a 4-night engagement. Jim Harold, the owner, told me in his office that the opening band had just driven 700 miles from Cleveland and were down in the dressing room. The Dead Boys.

Neither of us had ever heard of them. Not expecting much, I went down into the basement club and was confronted with an amazing sight. Sprawled out on the stage, over tables and on the floor was the hungriest, skinniest, sickliest looking band I’d ever seen. Dressed in their shiny pants, pointy boots, scarves and mascara they were even cooler looking than my own band. They were eager to meet me. Cheetah Chrome - the lead guitarist introduced himself. He was very familiar with "Hot For Teacher!" -Thundertrain’s latest record. He asked me if they play through our gear. They had driven to Boston in a small car, bringing only their instruments. No roadies. In fact they didn’t even have a bass player. Since they seemed pretty nice, we said sure. Drummer Johnny Blitz sat down at Bobby’s drums and exploded into action. He looked like a punk, but he had a lot of muscle and was a virtual one-man-band. Guitarist Jimmy Zero was mild mannered and resembled actor Christopher Walken. Gaunt and very cool. Turned out he shared my love of monster movies. Jimmy told me he corresponded with Forrest Ackerman, editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine". Zero had an amazing collection of monster stuff, including an actual Dracula ring from the Lugosi estate.

Rounding out the crew was frontman Stiv Bators. I found him sitting in the corner of the dimly lit dressing room. Looking intelligent in his reading glasses. He was quietly going over band expenses in a little book. He introduced himself, as "Steve" The name change hadn’t happened yet. It was apparent that he, like myself, was also deeply committed to the pursuit of a "Stones" lifestyle. They had recently changed their band name (from "Frankenstein") and still wore their hair long like all bands did. They were on a quick visit thru NYC and Boston to test the local waters. When Bators hit the stage and the boys launched into the sound check I was taken aback. The mild mannered bookworm and his nice guitarists became the most viscous and jarring thing I’d ever seen on a stage."

- Mach Bell, Glam Punk

'Not Anymore' - Dead Boys

10) Jerry Nolan (New York Dolls / The Heartbreakers / The Idols)

"Hailing from Brooklyn, back when it was still a gang town, Jerry Nolan (1946-1992) was an indisputable force in shaping the look and sound of the city’s biggest glam and punk rock bands. As the drummer for The New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, Nolan set the pace, crafting the face of hard rock during the 1970s – a distinctive combination that was at once raw, rough and rugged, yet highly dandified and charismatic.
“Jerry saw Elvis when he was really young, back in 1956. It reminded him of the gangs he saw in New York,” says Curt Weiss, author of Stranded in the Jungle: Jerry Nolan’s Wild Ride – a Tale of Drugs, Fashion, The New York Dolls, and Punk Rock (BackBeat Books), which released its Kindle edition yesterday. “For Jerry, gangs and rock and roll were interchangeable. It was a secondary family. He never had a dad; his mother kept divorcing, remarrying, and moving around. The only constant men in his life came through gangs or music.”
Nolan, who had learned to sew and cut hair, created what he described as a “profile,” which allowed him to stand above the crowd. “People thought he was in a band even when he wasn’t,” Weiss notes. But soon enough, he was. He joined The New York Dolls in 1972 after drummer Billy Murcia died of asphyxiation following efforts to revive him after a drug overdose while on tour in England."

- Miss Rosen, Another Man

'Baby Talk' - The Heartbreakers

09) Gina Schock (Edie And The Eggs / The Go-Go's)

"Charlotte Caffey came up with “We Got the Beat” by herself, on the piano, and worried that she’d be thrown out of the band for writing a pop song. Instead, the Go-Go’s recognized a good tune when they saw it, scored a record deal with a small outfit, and began to attract crowds in L.A. as punk died off. Still, major labels turned them down: Girl groups didn’t sell. But Miles Copeland, the founder of I.R.S. records, manager of the Police, and brother of Police drummer Stewart, saw things differently: “All girls? Punks? From L.A.?” He says. “Even if they were crap you would almost want to sign them. But they were good!” The band went to New York City to record Beauty and the Beat and exploit the Macy’s towel department. While making the album, though, Caffey became a full-blown heroin addict. Later, at a rock festival in Brazil, “Charlotte was so out of control that Ozzy Osbourne threw her out of his dressing room,” recalls Gina Schock, “and that’s pretty f***in’ bad.”
A second knockout hit, “Our Lips Are Sealed,” and an accompanying music video made for $6,000 left over from the budget for a Police video launched the girls into the pop stratosphere. “None of us took it seriously. We wanted to get arrested and get that on tape,” says Belinda Carlisle. So everyone jumped in the Electric Fountain in Beverly Hills and frolicked mightily, but no one paid any attention. The thrown-together video became a mainstay of early MTV, and Carlisle’s ability to smile and sing at the same time signaled that the Eighties would be like the sunny spring after an endless winter. Thirty-eight years after the Go-Go’s did it, they remain the only all-female band that played their own instruments and wrote their own songs to make it to the top of the album chart.
The Copeland connection earned the Go-Go’s a critical gig opening for the Police on their world tour, which didn’t work out quite the way anyone planned: One day in Atlanta, Sting came into the girls’ dressing room with a bottle of Champagne to tell them that their album had just surpassed the Police’s Ghost in the Machine on the charts. “They were the greatest opening act of all time,” says Stewart Copeland. “Their songs were so bright that they would just light up the room.”

- Kyle Smith, National Review

'It's Everything But Party Time' - The Go-Go's

08) Lucky Lehrer - (Circle Jerks / Wasted Youth / Redd Kross / Bad Religion)

"Roger Rogerson, our bass player, had dreams. I was a “peripheral visionary.” I could see the future, but only sideways. I thought punk was a sort of a joke that would last a year or so. Not that I don’t love the music! But I saw irony, humor, and a good way to sleep with a lot of weird chicks. I was all in for the party. Most of punk garage bands had novice musicians and I didn’t think the scene would last. Wrong again!

Roger was AWOL, hiding from the Navy. He used a number of aliases, including "Dowding." I highly suggest people buy the book The Prodigal Rogerson by J. Hunter Bennett. In a few short pages they’ll learn the story of our enigmatic bass player in the golden age of hardcore punk."

- Lucky Lehrer, No Echo

'Murder The Disturbed' - Circle Jerks

07) D.J. Bonebrake (The Eyes / X / The Flesh Eaters / The Knitters / Auntie Christ)

"I make funny faces when I play. I had a drum teacher who told me I should sing along when I play, so that's what I did. I get into it. It's kind of like scat singing, like what jazz pianists do. But that's why I think musicians are interesting: they all have funny little things about them that makes them different."

- D.J. Bonebrake, Music Radar

'Riding With Mary' - X

06) Alan Myers (Devo / Swahili Blonde)

"In praise of Alan Myers, the most incredible drummer I had the privilege to play with for 10 years. Losing him was like losing an arm. I begged him not to quit Devo. He could not tolerate being replaced by the Fairlight and autocratic machine music. I agreed.

Alan, you were the best - a human metronome and then some. A once in a lifetime find thanks to Bob Mothersbaugh. U were born to drum Devo!"

- Gerald Casale, Twitter

'Fountain Of Filth' - Devo

05) John Maher (Buzzcocks / The Invisible Girls / Flag Of Convenience / Penetration)

"We’re almost 40 years on from our first gig with the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. Buzzcocks are still talked about here, there and everywhere and cited as an influence by bands old and new. We created some great music and it played an important part in many peoples’ lives.
I got a reminder of that the other day. I have a drum kit set up in the workshop. I was having a blast on it before heading home. A total stranger suddenly appeared at the window. I stopped playing and he shouted: “I love Buzzcocks!” I went outside to have a chat with him. He told me how Buzzcocks had changed his life and did I realise what a difference we’d made? Makes you think about your involvement when someone turns up on your doorstep on a remote Hebridean island and feels the need to express their feelings like that! What I’m saying is I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact I was a part of something very worthwhile that continues to resonate. I can now admit to myself and others, I’m proud to have played a part in it.
Also, my enthusiasm for playing drums has been fired up again. Initially it was the 2012 Back to Front reunion shows that got me back behind the kit and since then I’ve continued playing and finally got involved in a couple of projects that have seen me back in the recording studio."

- John Maher, Louder Than War

'You Say You Don't Love Me' - Buzzcocks

04) Stewart Copeland (Curved Air / The Police / Animal Logic / Oysterhead / Gizmodrome)

"I’ve created a Stewart Copeland playlist in case you want to follow the references below :

- Signature Hi-Hat Intro Fills - If you listen to “Shadows In The Rain”, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and “One World (Not Three)” the exact same hi-hat fill is played on each song. When something works, use it!

- Use of Delay - I don’t know any other drummer who, before Stewart Copeland, had the brilliant idea of using delay effects on their drums with such deceptive results. Check out the infamous “Walking on the Moon” (especially after 3.14..he goes absolutely nuts!) and the intro of “Regatta de Blanc”. Also, on “The Other Way Of Stopping” if you like delay on toms.

- Displacement - If there is one thing that makes Copeland stand out from any other drummer, it’s his way of displacing the beat. The way he creates “illusionary” drum patterns is out of this world. In “The Bed’s Too Big Without You” listen how he leaves beat one empty. He plays on beat 2 and 4 the rim click and then he accentuates beat 3 with the kick, creating a different kind of movement to the whole song.

- Ride Cymbal and The Use of Accents - You definitely know Stewart Copeland is in the house when you hear him playing accents on the bell of the ride cymbal. He rarely plays straight 8th of 16th notes both on the hi-hat or the ride. He always uses accents to spice up the groove underneath of what’s going on around him. For this, check out “Contact” or the outro of “Message in a Bottle” (from 3.43 onwards)

- FLAMtastic - If you want to learn how to play anything by Stewart Copeland, then learn how to play flams. Yes, because that’s the “fill” he plays the most on his songs. You can find them usually on downbeats. Very often on beat 4, or if not on each beat, like in the intro for “Driven to Tears” or “Next To You” or in “Roxanne” just before Sting starts singing the first verse.

- Crazy Fills! - Stewart Copeland main characteristic is probably to be able to surprise his listeners with some crazy drum fills. Check out these ones:

“No Time This Time” intro and outro are insane! At around 2.35 on “Voices Inside My Head” Copeland plays a series of crazy snare rolls and crossed rhythms on top of the main groove. In “Man In A Suitcase” 0.16 sounds like a simple drum fill, but the fact that he ends it on a small little splash cymbal, makes everything even cooler! In the first 25 seconds of “Demolition Man” I wished the first verse never started, because Copeland was on fire! Check out also the drum solo in “One World (Not Three)” towards the end, starting at 3.40.

These are just some of the things that I love about this incredible drummer. Even if I tried to emulate his playing I don’t think I could ever get anywhere near, since his energy and unique attitude came out directly through his playing."

- Chris Castellitto, 'Deconstructing The Genius Of Stewart Copeland'

'Roxanne' - The Police

03) Rat Scabies (London SS / The Damned / The Germans / The Gin Goblins / Professor And The Madmen / One Thousand Motels / The Sinclairs)

"New Rose is widely credited with being the song that launched the punk/new wave movement in the mid-1970s, and was covered by the likes of Guns N’ Roses and even Depeche Mode. But it might never have existed had it not been for a perhaps unlikely fanbase: Belgium’s French speakers.
“The group that preceded the Damned was called Bastard, and we could not get gigs or any contracts in the early 1970s in England. Most of the music was so bland that no one in the business in London or anywhere in England was interested in an angry rock’n’roll group called Bastard,” said Brian James.

“We were influenced by Iggy Pop and the Stooges at a time when most rock had gone all weird. One of our band members got a job in 1973 at a recording studio in Brussels so, rather than split up, we all decided to move over with him. We started gigging around Brussels and other parts of French-speaking Belgium, and we won over a cult following. That kept Bastard alive and allowed me to come back to England in the mid-70s and keep my interest in rock music. Indirectly, we have Belgians, French-speaking ones not so much the Dutch speakers, for me eventually writing New Rose. Before Belgium I was on the verge of giving up,” James said.
The appeal of the track spread far beyond Brussels. Even in conflict-torn Belfast, groups like the Damned inspired teenagers such as Paul Burgess to form bands. Burgess, founder of Ruefrex’, drummer and now novelist said: “My God … New Rose! If you were 17 and immersed in music then the energy and defiant insolence of Brian James’s song, set to a three-chord two-and-a-half minute package, was like mother’s milk. It was a perfect storm of rebellion, belonging and purpose where none had existed before.”
James believes the contemporary era of X Factor-style manufactured pop stars and bands who don’t write their own songs calls for another punk-style pushback. “Back in 76, New Rose was a kick up the arse for the music industry. Which is why I am proud of the song and the way it’s getting recognition. This business needs another giant kick up the behind now,” he said.
Vive Le Rock sells 20,000 copies worldwide and is regarded as the biggest punk magazine on the planet. Its owner, Eugene Butcher, said James was a trailblazer. “He was a pioneer of angry guitar rock’n’roll while everyone was singing about dragons and wizards and playing banks of synths. Brian turned up the heat with incendiary guitar riffs. He remains one of the greatest guitar players of the punk era.”
New Rose starts “Is she really going out with him? Ah! I got a feeling inside of me / It’s kind of strange like a stormy sea / I don’t know why, I don’t know why / I guess these things have got to be.” But James insisted it was a never a love song.
“The rush of it – especially Rat Scabies’s drumming at the start and the opening riff – was like the heralding of a new era,” he said. “To be honest, I never thought about the lyrics. I just wrote them down. They were certainly not about a girl as I didn’t have one at the time and love was not on my mind. I suppose the words just fitted the tune. Afterwards I realised the lyrics were about this new era, this new emerging punk scene.”

- Henry McDonald, The Guardian

"We suffered for our art. Now it’s your turn!”

- Rat Scabies

'New Rose' - The Damned

"In 2018, Rat Scabies released his debut solo album, P.H.D. (Prison, Hospital, Debt), a mostly instrumental affair that included a trio of Shinbone-sung tunes. Beyond the enduring power of Scabies’ drumming and wide spectrum of genres, the album totals more than the sum of its parts. Scabies played every instrument on the album.
But it is truly with The Damned and that original pop-anarchic lineup of Scabies, Captain Sensible, David Vanian and Brian James that launched Scabies’ life. Like any truly great rock’n’ roll band (Stooges, Dolls, MC5), they were revered and reviled. The drugs and booze, the urinating at will, the calling out of tired old rock dinosaurs, and so on. The Damned lit the flames with unadulterated chaos, sing-song revelry and reckless abandon. More importantly, they could flat outplay any band, anywhere. Scabies’ Keith Moon, drug-induced rock-star tomfoolery reared, all the way from the drumstool of his burning kit at live shows. But the musicianship stood tall, and Scabies kept a mean and versatile beat."

- Mark C. Horn, Tuscon Weekly

"It’s terrible with all of the sickness and death and sadness. But, on the other side of the coin, I really like the silence of not having sirens and airplanes constantly flying by. The birds are singing and it’s pretty cool. If the pubs were open, it would almost be the perfect existence."

- Rat Scabies addresses the COVID-19 pandemic and British lockdown response at PunkNews

'I Just Can't Be Happy Today' - The Damned

02) Clem Burke (Blondie / Chequered Past / Adult Net / The International Swingers)

"MUSIC lovers may claim that certain drum beats have ‘blown their minds’ but now scientists have revealed how drumming can re-shape the brain with positive outcomes for health and wellbeing.
A University of Chichester study has explored what happens to our brains when we learn. The study specifically focused on the networks of the cerebellum which sit below and behind the main structure of the brain and associated with plasticity: the ability to change as the result of experience.
Reference is made to the unique requirements of drumming and, specifically, the physical and mental challenge of playing a set pattern whilst integrating tempo, volume and timing. A better understanding of the physical changes which happen in our brains when we learn could lead to interventions which may have a positive impact on neurological disorders such as autism and dementia.
The investigation is a collaborative venture between iconic Blondie drummer Clem Burke, the University of Chichester, King’s College London and Hartpury University, funded by the Waterloo Foundation. It is part of a ten-year investigation under the name the Clem Burke Drumming Project, which has also explored the health benefits of rock drumming for primary age school children with additional education needs.

The findings from the recently study were recently discussed on a Sky Arts documentary, 'My View: Clem Burke'. The importance of the ability of the brain to learn how to synchronise multiple limbs, either working collectively or independently, will be highlighted in relation to future investigations.
University of Chichester senior lecturer Dr Marcus Smith, a Reader in Sport and Exercise Physiology and the co-founder of the Clem Burke Drumming Project, said: “Drumming is a unique activity that is both physically and mentally challenging. It acts as a potent intervention in experimental trials that seeks to provide insight into how humans learn and subsequently behave. Drumming appears to provoke subtle adaptations in sensitive brain structures that have a profound effect on physical capability and psychological behaviour. Following a recent study working with young autistic children aged 12 to 16 years, I was struck by a parent’s comment that her son was able to brush all of his teeth independently, for the first time, because of the increased strength and range of movement he had developed in his wrist since learning to play the drums. Research that makes a difference is important to me. In terms of a therapeutic benefit of drumming there is still much work to be done but the potential benefit for those with neurological disorders, such as dementia, is exciting and will become a focus for future collaborative research projects.”

- University Of Chichester

'Bermuda Triangle Blues' - Blondie

"Yeah. It’s great to play with pretty much our contemporaries and some of the bands that came after us. I mean Devo, they’re all friends of ours from back in the 70s. They used to play at Max’s Kansas City and we used to see them when we played in Cleveland. And over the years, I actually just saw Mark Mothersbaugh at a birthday party for [inaudible 00:03:07] Berry the other day. Yeah, they’re friends. And funny enough, it’s not really been publicized. Echo and the Bunnymen have a new record coming out I think in June and somehow they asked me to play drums on the majority of it, so I recorded that before Christmas with them out in the English countryside. I did the newest Echo and the Bunnymen record that’s not out yet. So yeah, it’s great and it’s great to play and you get to see a lot of the other bands, which is always kind of fun for me."

- Clem Burke, Event Santa Cruz

'I Know But I Don't Know' - Blondie

01) Billy Ficca (Neon Boys / Television / The Waitresses / The Washington Squares / Heroes Of Toolik)

"Tom Verlaine and I, our guitars meshed together immediately. I had studied a kind of classic rock guitar, where you do whole step bends, half step bends. When I was a teenager, I had a friend who knew Jimi Hendrix, and Jimi gave this guy lessons, who passed them on to me, and I met Hendrix and watched him play, so that’s where I was coming from.
Tom played with a completely different style. He used the classical vibrato. It’s technical to describe, but it’s like on a violin: you move your wrist back and forth, the finger doesn’t move, but the pitch goes up and down. I don’t know where he got it. It was more like a sitar player, but that was Tom’s style, this magnificent classical vibrato. He’d never do whole step bends, always micro-bends. But our two styles just suited each other beautifully. Between the two of us, we had all the different guitar aspects you could want. I was playing much more classical rock, Tom was playing his odd, in-between thing. But if Tom would show me something, I could play it.
The next thing was convincing Richard Hell to play bass. Tom couldn’t do it. Richie said, “I’m not a musician. I can’t do it.” When Tom wasn’t around, I asked him what the problem was. He said, “Listen. Playing with Tom is like going to the dentist. Except you’d rather go to the dentist.”
Tom and Richard had tried to do a band before.
I said, “But Richard, you’ve got the look. You look like a combination of Elvis Presley and some movie star. You can learn, we’re going to rehearse a lot.” And the compliments got to him. So then we had three.
I got together with Tom to talk about drummers. I had a couple in mind, but Tom was insistent the best rock’n’roll drummer he knew was a friend of his, Billy Ficca. I was a little miffed he wasn’t willing to try a few drummers, but we called Billy down. Billy was in Boston, and he’d just left his band, so he had nothing else to do, so he came down, and we started rehearsing. Three days into rehearsals, Tom called me aside and said, “I’m about to pull my hair out. I can’t stand it. Billy’s turned into a jazz drummer.”
And Billy was all over the place – but in a good way. I said to Tom, “Look. All the greatest guitarists we know, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix – they all had crazy drummers.” The Who had Keith Moon, Zeppelin had Bonham, just down the line. You know, without a crazy drummer, a guitar solo can sound wimpy.
We started rehearsing and we were having a great time. But Tom was already getting frustrated with Richard Hell, because Richard never practiced. That’s one reason why we ended up having weeks of like six, seven days of five-hour rehearsals. Which of course didn’t hurt, but it didn’t make us better, either, between Richard’s lack of skills on the bass – and I loved Richard’s bass-playing, I thought he was like Paul McCartney – and Billy on the drums going nutzoid.
Sad to admit, when Christmastime came, and Billy left for a week to go visit his father, we did audition other drummers behind his back. We tried Clem Burke who wound up in Blondie, we auditioned a couple of people who’d play in The Ramones. And they were great players. But it was rehearsing with them that made us realise that no one fit like Billy. Billy’s playing, I think, is a very strong reason why Television is still thought of as a great band."

- Richard Lloyd, 'Friction : The Making Of Television's Marquee Moon'

“To me, it’s all kind of like dance music. A drummer’s job really is to get people to dance, or to move — or to at least think about moving. Doesn’t matter if I was playing fast folk with the Washington Squares or the weird, kind of ska things the Waitresses would occasionally do. My job was the same. And really, that’s what a drummer’s body does when you’re playing — you’re dancing. The way the limbs are working, the way your body moves across the kit … it’s a dance.”

- Billy Ficca, Modern Drummer

Television in rehearsals in Terry Ork's loft in 1974

"By changing the language of jazz, psych and garage into a mesmerizing journey that was simultaneously raw and hypnotic, 'Marquee Moon' paved the way for every ambitious rock record to follow in the next 40 years. While that all might sound like a formula for an esoteric mess, guitarist/frontman Tom Verlaine, his six-string foil Richard Lloyd, and the indomitable rhythm section of Fred Smith on bass and Billy Ficca on drums could just as easily write catchy songs. The album’s longest track, its title cut, comes across as a sort of sonic response to Verlaine’s old girlfriend Patti Smith and her 1975 solo debut masterpiece 'Horses' in its patterns and rhythms. Otherwise, the record fits in equally well with the Soho free-jazz loft scene as it does with the gyrating punk of CBGB.
“[Jimi Hendrix] is where I got a lot of what I do on guitar,” Lloyd told me when I interviewed him for Jambase about his 2009 solo album, The Jamie Neverts Story, a collection of Hendrix covers.

“I don’t think, either in Television or my own work, that anybody would have spotted a Hendrix influence. But I didn’t want one to show up. When I teach students, I teach them to play more like themselves. You’re gonna have to find your own voice on that guitar. What Hendrix and Velvert [Turner, Hendrix’s only known guitar student,] taught me is very, very important to me. Both of them are gone, and all I have is the memories. And the fact that I was around then, that’s why I feel like I owe them, as a payment of a debt, to cover some of Jimi’s songs, put it out and let some of that influence—that has always been there—finally show itself.”
Finding their own voice was precisely what Television accomplished on 'Marquee Moon'.
The band chose acclaimed English engineer Andy Johns to produce the album on account of his work on such early-’70s classics as Mott The Hoople’s 'Brain Capers' and 'Goat’s Head Soup' by The Rolling Stones. However, according to an insightful and neck-deep interview conducted with Lloyd by Scottish author Damien Love for Uncut, a lifestyle clash with Johns and Television produced studio tension from the outset.
“Andy is a real child of rock ’n’ roll,” Lloyd tells Love. “He was used to being with people who are also rock ’n’ roll, and you can imagine whatever that means in the 1970s. He was used to people who didn’t mind taking it very slack in the studio. You know: you’ve got a 2 o’clock start, and the engineer shows up at 4.30, and the guitarist shows up at 5 and the singer rolls in at midnight. But Television were not like that. We were punctual. And serious.”
“He’d say things like, ‘Is this a Velvet Underground trip? What kind of trip is this?’ ” Verlaine recalled told writer and renowned New York avant-garde musician Alan Licht for the liner notes to Rhino’s 2004 expanded edition of Marquee Moon. “And I’d say, ‘I don’t know; it’s just two guitars, bass and drums. It’s like every band you’ve ever done.’ ” So he said, ‘O.K., I’ll come back after Christmas.’ So he came back and all of a sudden he totally loved the record. He said, ‘Jesus, this is great.’ And he kept comparing all these cuts to all this classic British hard rock.”
Once they got on the same page, Johns and Television created a literal master’s class in the kind of crisp yet sharp production that enhanced the angularity of their rhythms without losing their sense of melody and pop appeal. The only other group who was close to doing what they achieved was Be-Bop Deluxe in the realm of progressive rock. And the inventive ways they captured some of those one-of-a-kind guitar sounds transcend any other production work on any other record in 1977 outside of Fleetwood Mac’s 'Rumours'.
“We wanted to rent a rotating speaker to get the sound for [‘Elevation’],” Lloyd explained. “But the rental people wanted way too much. So Andy came up with an idea. He took a microphone, and while I did the guitar solo to ‘Elevation,’ he stood in front of me in the studio, swinging this microphone around his head like a lasso. He nearly took my f*cking nose off. I was backing up while I was playing.”

- Ron Hart, The Observer

'Guiding Light' - Television

"It would be a stretch to characterize some of the more meditative pieces on Heroes of Toolik’s latest album, Like Night, as dance music. But Ficca’s dance moves across the cymbals on songs like “8 Miles” and “You Will Not Follow” fill the wide-open spaces tastefully, with washes, pings, and sweet overtones lingering and blending nicely with the rest of the ensemble. It’s a top-down approach to drumming that comes from a love of jazz greats like Tony Williams and Elvin Jones. “Not only did those guys swing, but listen to how they played the cymbals,” Ficca says. “It’s beautiful. That’s why I’ve always been really into cymbals. But not smashing the hell out of them. Just hitting a really nice cymbal the right way and letting it fill some space. I think it’s one of the nicest sounds there is.”

- Patrick Berkery, Modern Drummer

"Tom Verlaine has a prediction. This week, as he prepares for the release of his first album ('Television', 1992) with the band Television in 14 years, Verlaine feels sure of one thing. "The record will fail, exactly like the others did", he says.
Commercially, maybe it will. Television - the outfit that helped kick-start the whole CBGB's punk scene in the mid-'70s - saw its previous albums (1977's 'Marquee Moon' and the next year's 'Adventure') flop at the cash register. Aesthetically, though, they loom large. With the intricate, syncopated guitars of Verlaine and Richard Lloyd fighting over a muscular rhythm section (bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca), Television's virtuosity stood out in a world of punk minimalists. But the group's history was curt: By the end of the '70s, it was outta here."

- Jim Farber, New York Magazine

Drumming to 'See No Evil'