we keep on keepin’ on telling it like it was

Es­ti­mated reading time is 1 minute.

MY AT­TEN­TION re­mains fo­cused on Tell It Like It Was, my new pub­li­ca­tion on Medium. And Tell It Like It Was re­mains fo­cused on music—mostly music of the ’60s but we will get into the rock & roll and rhythm & blues be­fore and after that decade eventually. 

In the past week, Lew Shiner and John Ross pub­lished pieces on drum­mers: Lew with “Jack Sper­ling, King of the Big-Band Drum­mers” and John with “Give the Drum­mers Some!” and “Honey Lantree, R.I.P.”

John’s first ar­ticle takes us from his abuse of plastic rulers as a youthful air-drummer through a look at five fa­mous per­cus­sion­ists be­fore fo­cusing on Gina Schock, the under-appreciated drummer for the Go-Go’s.

His second piece is a tribute to the re­cently de­ceased Honey Lantree, who stood out as a fine drummer for a fine band, the Hon­ey­combs, who had one big (fine) hit during the British In­va­sion of 1964, “Have I the Right.”

Here are links to these three fine reads:

Jack Sper­ling, King of the Big-Band Drummers
Give the Drum­mers Some!
Honey Lantree, R.I.P.

In Lew’s piece on Jack Sper­ling, he makes this ob­ser­va­tion about drum­mers: “It takes a cer­tain kind of person to play drums. When it comes down to it, the drummer has to im­pose his or her will on the band, to say, ‘My rhythm, right or wrong. Follow me or get off the bus.’ You could look at that as con­fi­dence or as ar­ro­gance, de­pending on the drummer and how char­i­table you might be feeling. For sheer ag­gres­sion, you’d be hard put to match Ginger Baker, or Keith Moon, or John Bonham.”

If you haven’t read the in­tro­duc­tion to Tell It Like It Was, now’s a groovy time: HERE

 

 

 

Leave a Comment