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Next message Ben Howard posted on Thursday, 10 November, 2005 - 09:28 pm
Saw Herbie and Richard again recently in Beverley (East Yorks.). Several sky numbers played and this must be the nearest to a sky concert around. A really nice evening of guitar music. Would suggest anyone interested in sky gets along to one of their concerts. Great that SG is adding comments to the site again. If HF and RD can perform together, surely it wouldn't be too much for Steve, Tris and Paul Hart to tag along!!? No big trucks, just an 'unplugged' gig. Well we can dream!
Next message Bill D posted on Thursday, 10 November, 2005 - 09:54 pm
'Sky Unplugged'? :-)

Kinda defeats the object of Sky but good music is good music.
Next message Tim posted on Friday, 11 November, 2005 - 12:01 am
Unplugged is an advertising slogan. What it usually means is that the plugged-in guitars have piezo transducers rather than electro-magnetic pickups.

Why's that better than plugging your telecaster straight into an AC30 amp?

Grrrrrrr...
Next message Chris posted on Friday, 11 November, 2005 - 04:48 pm
...or Stratocaster, for that matter.

I suppose Tristan could do an 'unplugged' without it affecting his sound too much. I wonder if he's still got that massive Premier kit that he played in sky? How many toms did he have? Six, seven, eight? A HUGE sound!!!
Next message Tricky posted on Saturday, 12 November, 2005 - 07:21 pm
Only 8 ? Nah !

How many Toms ?
Next message Tim posted on Sunday, 13 November, 2005 - 12:28 am
Tricky, running the cursor over your pic brings up the question 'how many toms?' I think the answer is six.

Please don't ask me to label the rest of Tristan's kit. I might know the difference between my G-string and my soundhole, but as to the difference between a hi-hat and a Charleston pedal...

Now as to whether playing un-plugged would affect Tristan's sound. For Health and Safety reasons many drummers practice (and sometimes even perform) with ear protectors. Playing unplugged (no ear plugs!) might not affect their sound, but it's more likely to affect their hearing.
Next message Bill D posted on Sunday, 13 November, 2005 - 01:03 am
Tristan is clearly at the high of the evolutionary scale of drummers but that doesn't stop the jokes about the rest...

Q: What do you call a guy who hangs out with a bunch of rock musicians?
A: The drummer.

Q: How do you know when the drum kit is balanced?
A: The drummer drools out of both sides of his mouth.

With apologies to all good drummers everywhere! :-)
Next message Tricky posted on Sunday, 13 November, 2005 - 09:24 am
Damn! Made that too easy. This has been taken from the Wienybuds Videostars compilation VHS. More on that elsewhwere...
Next message Tim posted on Sunday, 13 November, 2005 - 08:05 pm
Too easy! Was it meant to be a trap (or at least a snare)?

And then there was the guitarist who got lost on his way to a gig. He stopped and asked a group of three people at the crossroads which way he should go - left said one, straight on said another, right said the third. Who should he believe - the good drummer, the bad drummer or the unicorn...

(Classical music fans tell this joke about viola-players, forgetting that Bach and Dvorak - amongst others - played viola.)
Next message Chris posted on Monday, 14 November, 2005 - 10:01 pm
I make it seven mounted toms and one floor tom - so it IS eight!!! The drum he's hitting in the pic is the snare and the only other drum, not clearly visible, is the bass drum. So, Tris is playing a ten piece kit. I think Premier used to make a kit at about that time called the Elite, which was roughly the size of Tristan's, but I can't say for sure whether this is what he is playing.

Interestingly enough, when I played the drums, I would sometimes shove cotton wool into my ears. Not as daft as it sounds as when you hit the snare drum (which tends to be the one that is hit the most) the ear receives something not unlike a short sharp shock of almost industrial noise proportions. So I am told. And I can quite believe it. Even now, I do have some problems with my left ear (certain high frequencies cause quite an unpleasant reverberating affect) and I wonder if this is due to damage it received during the ten years or so that I was playing?

I believe that there is some basis for the drummer jokes (yep, I've heard 'em all!). I'm raking my memory (such as it is!) and I seem to think that it had something to do with the fact that drummers (maybe military drummers?) were not originally classed as musicians. This then fell into the hands of the rock band jokers, who decided to twist it around a bit in order to get a laugh at the expense of the poor old drummer! This, I think, is along the lines of how the joke(s) originated.

Chris.

P.S. Do my eyes deceive me or is Tristan playing in a pair of shorts? The mind boggles! Which reminds me of one or two other amusing anecdotes which I'd better not relate in this thread... Well, not tonight anyway...
Next message Tim posted on Tuesday, 15 November, 2005 - 12:53 pm
Presumably the Union of Drummers staged some sort of 'strike action' (ahem!) to gain professional recognition.

Drummers aren't the only ones not always counted as musicians - financial records from the courtly orchestras of Bach's time don't list the trumpet-players as musicians, but in a category all of their own.
Next message Chris posted on Tuesday, 15 November, 2005 - 07:41 pm
I remember seeing a photo of Ian Paice (from Deep Purple) wearing a T-shirt which proclaimed 'Drummers are revolting'. Perhaps this was, indeed, the 'strike action' that you allude to, Tim? Or maybe it meant something entirely different. In which case, I feel slightly offended...

;o)

P.S. How come I've never heard any trumpet player jokes...? Why should they be let off?
Next message Tim posted on Tuesday, 15 November, 2005 - 08:37 pm
If you go to http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/jokes/ you'll find a few but to be honest the trumpet ones aren't that funny. This sites from the Massachusets Institutes of Technology. (I guess that's why there's so many "how many ******-players does it take to change a lightbulb" jokes, what with all the lights all going out in Massa...). The same jokes are also on Harvard and Oxford University pages, which must say something about the academic life.

Don't tell them to your friends all at once, or you soon won't have any friends. :-)

The reason there's so many drummer jokes is because drumming is misunderstood. Copy three notes from a trumpet player and you'll be told you're copying, copy a drummer and everyone will tell you it's OK, the rhythm's not copyright.
Next message Bill D posted on Tuesday, 15 November, 2005 - 11:13 pm
Perhaps the most famous drummer joke was when John Lennon was asked: "Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?"

He answered: "Best drummer in the world? He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles".

Harsh.

Not true either.
Next message Tim posted on Tuesday, 15 November, 2005 - 11:59 pm
Another Beatle, ukulele-player George Harrison, said that Ringo Starr was one of the two best drummers in the world. That can't have been a joke, as the other one was Levon Helm.

Two singing drummers - now there aren't many of those. Did Phil Collins ever sing and drum at the same time? Did Tristan Fry sing?
Next message Bill D posted on Wednesday, 16 November, 2005 - 10:25 am
John Lennon can't have thought that Ringo was that bad because he (and George and Paul) kept getting him to play drums on his albums. (George also got Herbie Flowers to play bass for him, to keep this on-topic.)

Phil Collins said that he (RS) did things that he (PC) still couldn't do, even although Ringo couldn't do a drum roll. Cozy Powell admired him too.

Trivia: What track had Paul, George and Ringo all performing on it, after the break-up of the Beatles?
Next message Chris posted on Wednesday, 16 November, 2005 - 01:06 pm
Surely it was Free As A Bird - a hitherto unreleased John Lennon recording (maybe a demo) that had been recorded in about 1977? Yoko (in a rare moment of generosity) allowed the other three to add themselves to the original recording. I have a feeling that McCartney may have written an additional verse and the whole thing was produced by Jeff Lynn. And I'm probably completely wrong.
Next message Bill D posted on Wednesday, 16 November, 2005 - 01:25 pm
Sorry, I meant before 'Free As A Bird', 'Real Love' and other stuff they did for 'Anthology'.

Yes, FAAB and RL were demos. And it was all produced by Heff Lynne. But no prize.

The song was 'All Those Years Ago'. George wrote it for Ringo but re-wrote it about Lennon, after his death. Ringo played drums on it. Paul and Linda did backing vocals. So there was a Threetles record back in 1980!
Next message Chris posted on Thursday, 17 November, 2005 - 01:11 am
Strangely enough, in my capacity as rubbish actor, I appeared in a film about the early years of The Beatles called, All Those Years Ago. It was written and directed by Stuart Hall and was filmed in various locations including the Jacaranda Club in Liverpool. I did some 'crew' work originally, then was 'promoted' to an 'acting' role. I played the thug who beats up Stu Sutcliffe. I had one line of dialogue but definitely couldn't quote from it before the watershed! (Spoken in my best cr*p scouse accent!) The film was obviously an amateur film, but Stuart was (and is) a huge fan of The Beatles (especially Lennon) and I believe the script was pretty accurate. We had some fun making it and I think that most people who saw it enjoyed it. There was a website somewhere devoted to it, once upon a time, but I don't know if it still exists. It was, after all, all those years ago. (Eight, to be precise!!!)
Next message Bill D posted on Thursday, 17 November, 2005 - 02:25 pm
Is that the same as the film that has John Altman (Nick Cotton from Eastenders) as George Harrison? The one I saw was called "The Birth of the Beatles" but it could have had another title.

I thought it was better than 'Backbeat'!
Next message Chris posted on Thursday, 17 November, 2005 - 04:13 pm
No, not the same. Strangely enough, the general consensus of opinion is that Birth of the Beatles is superior to Backbeat. There is, however, a scene in it which is quite funny in which the actor who plays Paul McCartney slips (or trips) as he's leaving a room. It was obviously a genuine slip, or whatever, not intentional, but they left it in. I have a feeling Birth... was a BBC film, but I'm not sure.
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