Drummers

Babysitter Bassist Baby Issue

by Enormous on October 15, 2009

I was chatting to Walt, bassist with indie band The Babysitters yesterday. I have been trying to poach him for a few weeks now, using all my powers of manly seduction. I think Walt is a thoroughly agreeable chap and a very good musician – the kind of very good musician that would fit right into place in the Enormous line-up.

He has said before that he would love to join the band, but, apart from his duties with the Babysitters, he was telling me that his wife is due to give birth soon and that he would not really have the time or the energy to properly commit to Enormous. Stupid women. Stupid babies. What happened to rock ‘n’ roll?

Aside from his skills on the bass guitar, Walt is a clever and very witty man. I mentioned this to him during our conversation.

‘Yeah, bass players are traditionally regarded as being even dumber than drummers, aren’t they.’

‘That’s true, Walt,’ I told him. ‘And drummers, by definition, apart from being incredibly stupid, are also very, very annoying. All of them.’ I then remembered an old muso joke: ‘Hey, Walt, what did the bass player get on his IQ test?’

‘Tell me, Davy.’

‘Dribble.’

‘Ha, ha.’ Then he outdid me. ‘Here’s one for you that demonstrates the point even better.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Did you hear about the drummer who arrived at the gig only to discover he had locked his keys in his car? It took him an hour to get the bass player out.’

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Distant Drums

by Enormous on May 28, 2009

Sonny Starr, drummer with the Modern Men rang me last night begging for studio time again.

‘Can you hear me OK? I’m in Dubai!’

‘Good for you, Sonny,’ I shouted over a bad line, ‘but I know what you’re like. Besides, I keep telling you, the studio is too small for a big kit like yours.’

‘I got rid of that, Davy. I’ve just bought one of those cool little Fibes kits. Four-piece.’

My ears pricked up. I love those old 70s drum kits. They are quite unusual: they are made of fibreglass and have a lovely fat, heavy punchy sound that reminds me of the Sweet or Slade. They are quite sought after.

‘This Arab swapped it me for some speed.’

‘You smuggled speed into Dubai!?’

‘Nah. Of course not.’

I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Minty did.’

‘Minty?‘

‘New bass player. Very cool. Bit, though, you know . . . mental.’

‘When you say an Arab swapped the Fibes kit for some speed, Sonny, were you sure no one was watching you? From any parked cars or anything?’

‘Hee hee. Don’t worry, Davy-Boy, it’s only crrrss zzrkkk crkkz.’

‘I can’t hear you, Sonny. Tell me . . . oh, look, it doesn’t matter.’ I carried on shouting into the phone. ‘You definitely are not coming into the studio! Especially with Minty in tow, and especially with a set of drums you acquired using nefarious means from an Arab in Dubai – even if it is an old Fibes kit.’

‘You need some excitement in your life, Davy. Remember what it’s like being in a band?’

‘I’m in a band.’

‘No, you know, I mean . . . a proper band. On tour.’

‘I have enough excitement in my life at the moment, Sonny, thank you very much.’

‘Really? I doubt it. What you gonna do right now after talking to me, for instance?’

‘I’m about to take Audrey for a walk.’

‘Hah! See what I mean? You should be coming with us to this secret booze club near the Australian embassy where they have topless belly dancers.’

‘. . .’

‘You’d love it! Nelson Galaxy would. What you doing after your stupid walk?’

‘I’m going to listen to a little Burt Bacharach and then go to bed.’

‘With your Marks and Spencer’s pyjamas on?’ The line was still bad but I could tell he was laughing on the other end of it. ‘I saw Bacharach on the telly over here the other night,’ he went on, ‘and I’ll tell you this . . .’

‘What’s that, Sonny?’

‘He’s not little.’

‘Very funny. I wish I’d said that.’

‘Don’t worry, Davy, you will. See ya.’

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Morning Starr

by Enormous on February 12, 2009

Sonny Starr, punk drummer extraordinaire, has just paid the studio an early morning visit. Once again, he came to ask me for some advice.

‘I’ve given up playing the drums, I’ve given up punk,’ he paused for effect, ‘and, you’re not gonna believe this, but . . . I’ve formed a synthesizer trio.’

‘That’s totally amazing, Sonny,’ I sniffed, ‘and I’m incredibly happy for you, but I’ll have to bid you farewell and get cracking upstairs.’

‘You busy on a mix or something?’

‘Not really.’ Now it was my turn to effect a careful pause. ‘Thing is, you see, after what you’ve just told me, I think I’m ever so slightly about to slip into a coma.’

He went on excitedly: ‘We’re called Sonny La Rue and the Modern Men. You’re looking at the singer.’

‘The singer? Where is she?’

‘No, it’s me. I’m the singer.’ His smile was so full of pride I feared he was about to fall over.

‘But you can’t sing; you have a voice that sounds like a goat in distress.’

‘That never stopped you, Davy.’

I had to admit, he did have a point.

He carried on as I was closing the door on him: ‘I’ve just bought an old Prologue synth and I was wondering if you knew how to get a nice violin sound out of the thing.’

‘Impossible,’ I informed him. ‘You just can’t make a nice violin sound on a synthesizer; violins can’t do it, why should a synth?’

I watched him wander confused and disappointed down the street towards the bus stop. Audrey brushed up against my leg. ‘Looks like the weather is improving at last,’ I told her.

Clouds that had earlier seemed a permanent feature in the winter sky were melting away to reveal a promising orange sun hanging low on the horizon. ‘Come on, girl, time for a nice cup of Earl Grey.’

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Sex Addict

by Enormous on November 28, 2008

As Audrey and I were returning from the Co-op this morning, I was worrying whether I was a sex addict – I realised that, on average, I think about sex two or three times a day – when OAP drummer Reg popped his big head out of the newly-refurbished Starlight Café and demanded we join him inside for a refreshing cup of Earl Grey.

He was wearing a white cotton tabard and a matching cap. ‘I’ve got a part-time job here,’ he explained, ‘to help me pay the bills.’

As we were chatting and he was waiting for ‘the eleven o’clock rush’ he couldn’t stop drumming his fingers on the new pine counter. ‘That’s rather annoying, Reg,’ I told him.

‘I know,’ he sighed.

(All drummers do such things constantly. Don’t ever take a drummer to a Chinese Restaurant; as soon as he gets hold of the chopsticks there will be prawn balls everywhere.)

I asked Reg about the odd décor in the quiet little Derbyshire café – log furniture and red embroidered tablecloths featured heavily which gave the place a vague Alpine feel; I half expected a tiny man in leather shorts to appear clutching a bowl of sauerkraut and a glistening pink sausage.

‘Nothing to do with me, Davy,’ he said. ‘I would have gone for black and chrome, like my old Premier kit.’

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Starmaker

by Enormous on September 15, 2008

I recorded Reg and his drums yesterday.

It was an easy job: I simply used a spaced pair of AKG414’s on the whole kit and close-miked the bass drum with a D112. In spite of what he had been telling me, Reg doesn’t play very loudly – in fact, he hardly touches the skins – so the resulting sound levels in the Big Arena tiny terraced-house studio were not unmanageable.

He asked me to accompany him on electric bass while he ran through a couple of his blues-style compositions. I overdubbed some guitar parts and we did a rough mix of the finished tracks at around ten o’clock last night.

If I told you that the elderly rocker was pleased with the results I would be indulging in riotous understatement. He was beside himself with overwhelming joy; he was practically writhing around the floor of the control room in ecstasy. I think I even heard him quietly weeping when I went downstairs to fetch his drum cases. And at one point he referred to me as Sugarplum – the pet name he had for his wife who is ‘sadly, no longer of this world’.

I promised him I would do a proper mix of the tracks later this week.

‘Wait till they hear these down at the allotments!’ he gushed.

He then asked me a question that was not totally unexpected – an earnest enquiry that often arrives at the end of a recording session: ‘Do you have Simon Cowell’s contact details, Davy?’

As for myself, I’ve had enough. I’m off to start a new life in Panama.

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Hendrix In Nottingham

by Enormous on September 4, 2008

I was in Nottingham yesterday buying some Doc Martens when I noticed a heavily tattooed man cleaning the big front windows of Debenhams department store in Slab Square. It was none other than disgusting punk troubadour Hendrix Sikboy.

Dressed in black leather and sporting a huge peroxide hairdo, he was shouting the lyrics to the Sex Pistols song Pretty Vacant at passing shoppers as he went about his soapy work. I thought he hadn’t seen me but I was wrong. ‘Madman!’ – he calls everyone Madman – ‘Mr Lawrence of Arabia! Dogshagger! Hendrix is a punk rock window-cleaner! Been buying yer new booties?’

‘Hello, Hendrix. No, you can’t book the studio.’

My friend, the drummer Sonny Starr used to play for The Sikboy Federation, Hendix’s old band for whom I once had the misfortune of hosting a three-day recording session. They were a nightmare in the studio: drinking and vomiting, defecating on toilet seats and urinating on visiting black men. Their band motto was We Shag Dogs.

Unfortunately, amongst many other depraved things they did at the time to bolster their notoriety, they actually did abuse Alsatian dogs in this way. They had various video nasties of themselves raping and torturing the poor animals.

‘Bye, Hendrix. I already told Sonny I don’t want anything to do with you.’

‘Dogshagger!’

Many people expect recording studios to be rather glamorous environments, don’t you know.

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Cosy Power – In Which Davy Lawrence Finally Loses The Will To Live

by Enormous on August 29, 2008

The day I have been dreading for ages has arrived. Reg has been hard at work practicing on his new drum kit and wants to book into the studio to record some ‘hot tracks’.

As Audrey and I were passing his house this morning, he erupted from his front door and pulled us inside. The interior was just as I had expected: very tidy but covered in dust. In fact, how one little house can contain so much dust is beyond the laws of science. There was a lot of dust.

As he gabbled on excitedly about using the studio, Reg couldn’t help drumming nervously on his thighs with an expensive pair of maple sticks. He was approaching his new leisure pursuit with all the methodical precision of an enthusiastic amateur. He noticed me frowning. ‘I’ve been practicing,’ he said under his breath while trying to count a racy eight-beat tempo.

‘I can see that.’

The room we were standing in had a massive fireplace. ‘You could roast a small Frenchman in there, Reg,’ I told him. ‘Who’s that?’ I pointed to a framed photograph on the dust-covered marble mantelpiece.

He put down his drumsticks and reached for the picture. ‘That’s me with the wife – God rest her soul – and my very first kit. Thirty-five years ago. I used to play all the time – couldn’t stop me. Right little Cosy Power, I was. Back then.’

Reg is really annoying, but I like him a lot. The last time I saw my father was when I was fifteen and since then I have, I suppose, been searching for a suitable replacement. Reg would make a good father; he would certainly keep you entertained.

I looked at the faded photograph. In it, a twenty-something Reg was staring lovingly at a gorgeous wooden Gretsch four-piece drum kit. Standing next to him was an incredibly beautiful young woman with red hair and Irish freckles. Her face was turned towards the camera. There was a look of murder in her determined eyes. ‘I really miss her,’ he whispered, almost inaudibly.

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