Thomas Dolby Potty Trains His Cat, and There’s Video Proof

in Life, Music | September 17th, 2015

One of our favorite curiosi­ties is the The Charles Min­gus CAT-alogue for Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat–a pam­phlet writ­ten by the mer­cu­r­ial jazz musi­cian that offers step-by-step advice on how to get your cat to use the loo. The one thing Min­gus did­n’t pro­vide is video proof that it could actu­al­ly be done.

That’s where anoth­er musi­cian steps in. Above, we have video of Thomas Dol­by’s cat, “Mozart,” in action. Dol­by, best known for his 1982 hit “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence,” is a teacher at heart. The son of an Oxford and Cam­bridge don, he’s now the Pro­fes­sor of the Arts at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. And, on his Youtube chan­nel, he explains how he pulled off the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble:

This is my cat Mozart, a Cor­nish Rex, pee­ing on the toi­let. Many believed this was not pos­si­ble, but it’s 100% real. When he was a kit­ten we tried to teach him to use the toi­let, using a DVD. We thought it was a no go. But then aged about 3 he sud­den­ly start­ed to do it. Now some­times when I get up in the night to pee Mo nips in ahead of me and I have to wait till he’s done. Next we need to teach him to flush! ~TD

If any­one is famil­iar with the DVD he’s ref­er­enc­ing, please iden­ti­fy it in the com­ments below.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

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Beatles Tribute Band “The Fab Faux” Performs Live an Amazingly Exact Replica of the Original Abbey Road Medley

in Music | September 15th, 2015

The Bea­t­les played their last sta­di­um gig in August, 1966 at Can­dle­stick Park, then stopped tour­ing alto­geth­er. At least pub­licly, they claimed that their new songs, com­ing off of intri­cate­ly-pro­duced albums like Revolver and Sgt. Pep­per, were just too hard to per­form live.

Enter The Fab Faux, the great­est of all Bea­t­les cov­er bands.

Fea­tur­ing Will Lee (bassist for the Late Show with David Let­ter­man), Jim­my Vivi­no (band­leader for Conan), Rich Pagano, Frank Agnel­lo, and Jack Petruzzel­li, The Fab Faux is all about one thing– per­form­ing live the most accu­rate repro­duc­tion of The Bea­t­les’ reper­toire. That includes songs that The Bea­t­les nev­er played live, and par­tic­u­lar­ly songs off of the intri­cate lat­er albums.

Above, you can watch them in action, play­ing the extend­ed med­ley (16 min­utes) that graces the sec­ond side of Abbey Road. Before you watch it, here are a cou­ple things you need to know:

This Fab Faux record­ing of most of side two of ‘Abbey Road’ is a live, in-the-stu­dio per­for­mance for a two-cam­era video shoot.… In the end, there were only three minor gui­tar fix­es and each sec­tion was record­ed in no more than three takes (most were two). There are NO added over­dubs with­in this per­for­mance. The audio is pure — and mixed by Joe Chin­ni­ci.

The video was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed for The Howard Stern Show. If you want to get a feel for how well The Fab Faux nailed it, watch their ver­sion played along­side the orig­i­nal below:

Relat­ed Con­tent

Audio: The Bea­t­les Play Their Final Con­cert at Can­dle­stick Park, 1966

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Abbey Road Stu­dios, Cour­tesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

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Sun Ra Plays a Music Therapy Gig at a Psychiatric Hospital; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

in Health, Jazz, Music | September 11th, 2015

For some time now it has been fash­ion­able to diag­nose dead famous peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es we nev­er knew they had when they were alive. These post­mortem clin­i­cal inter­ven­tions can seem accu­rate or far-fetched, and most­ly harmless—unless we let them col­or our appre­ci­a­tion of an artist’s work, or neg­a­tive­ly influ­ence the way we treat eccen­tric liv­ing per­son­al­i­ties. Over­all, I tend to think the state of a cre­ative individual’s men­tal health is a top­ic best left between patient and doc­tor.

In the case of one Her­man Poole Blount, aka Sun Ra—com­pos­er, band­leader of free jazz ensem­ble the Arkestra, and “embod­i­ment of Afro­fu­tur­ism”—one finds it tempt­ing to spec­u­late about pos­si­ble diag­noses, of schiz­o­phre­nia or bipo­lar dis­or­der, for exam­ple. Plen­ty of peo­ple have done so. This makes sense, giv­en Blount’s claims to have vis­it­ed oth­er plan­ets through astral pro­jec­tion and to him­self be an alien from anoth­er dimen­sion. But ascrib­ing Sun Ra’s enlight­en­ing, enliven­ing mytho-theo-phi­los­o­phy to ill­ness or dys­func­tion tru­ly does his bril­liant mind a dis­ser­vice, and clouds our appre­ci­a­tion for his com­plete­ly orig­i­nal body of work.

In fact, Sun Ra him­self discovered—fairly ear­ly in his career when he went by the name “Sonny”—that his music could per­haps alle­vi­ate the suf­fer­ing of men­tal ill­ness and help bring patients back in touch with real­i­ty. In the late 50’s, the pianist and composer’s man­ag­er, Alton Abra­ham, booked his client at a Chica­go psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. Sun Ra biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed tells the sto­ry:

Abra­ham had an ear­ly inter­est in alter­na­tive med­i­cine, hav­ing read about scalpel-free surgery in the Philip­pines and Brazil. The group of patients assem­bled for this ear­ly exper­i­ment in musi­cal ther­a­py includ­ed cata­ton­ics and severe schiz­o­phren­ics, but Son­ny approached the job like any oth­er, mak­ing no con­ces­sions in his music.

Sun Ra had his faith in this endeav­or reward­ed by the response of some of the patients. “While he was play­ing,” Szwed writes, “a woman who it was said had not moved or spo­ken for years got up from the floor, walked direct­ly to his piano, and cried out ‘Do you call that music?’” Blount—just com­ing into his own as an orig­i­nal artist—was “delight­ed with her response, and told the sto­ry for years after­wards as evi­dence of the heal­ing pow­ers of music.” He also com­posed the song above, “Advice for Medics,” which com­mem­o­rates the men­tal hos­pi­tal gig.

It is sure­ly an event worth remem­ber­ing for how it encap­su­lates so many of the respons­es to Sun Ra’s music, which can—yes—confuse, irri­tate, and bewil­der unsus­pect­ing lis­ten­ers. Like­ly still inspired by the expe­ri­ence, Sun Ra record­ed an album in the ear­ly six­ties titled Cos­mic Tones for Men­tal Ther­a­py, a col­lec­tion of songs, writes All­mu­sic, that “out­raged those in the jazz com­mu­ni­ty who thought Eric Dol­phy and John Coltrane had already tak­en things too far.” (Hear the track “And Oth­er­ness” above.) But those will­ing to lis­ten to what Sun Ra was lay­ing down often found them­selves roused from a debil­i­tat­ing com­pla­cen­cy about what music can be and do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Jack Kerouac’s Poetry & Prose Read/Performed by 20 Icons: Hunter S. Thompson, Patti Smith, William S. Burroughs, Johnny Depp & More

in Music, Poetry | September 7th, 2015

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Last year, we fea­tured a few read­ings and per­for­mances of the work of Jack Ker­ouac by musi­cians like Pat­ti Smith, John Cale, Thurston Moore, and Joe Strum­mer. Those tracks got laid down for 1997’s Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness, a trib­ute to the author of On the Road and The Dhar­ma Bums and an Amer­i­can cul­tur­al pres­ence as res­o­nant as they come. Now, you can lis­ten to the whole thing on Spo­ti­fy (whose free soft­ware you can down­load here) and rev­el in ren­di­tions of Ker­ouac’s poet­ry and prose by an even wider selec­tion of beloved alter­na­tive musi­cians: War­ren Zevon, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Ved­der, REM’s Michael Stipe, Son­ic Youth’s Lee Ranal­do show up on the ros­ter, to name but a few.

It also fea­tures con­tri­bu­tions from a great many sub­cul­ture-defin­ing non-musi­cians, includ­ing writ­ers like Hunter S. Thomp­son and William S. Bur­roughs, come­di­an Richard Lewis, actor Matt Dil­lon, poet Mag­gie Estep, and a gen­uine Beat emi­nence like Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti. It even brings in cul­tur­al fig­ures who, though known for oth­er pur­suits, also estab­lished enough of a side career in music to hold their own in the record­ing stu­dio, like John­ny Depp and The Bas­ket­ball Diaries author Jim Car­roll. We even hear Ker­ouac as inter­pret­ed with the help of no less a life­long musi­cian — and no less unex­pect­ed a musi­cian on an album like this — than Aero­smith’s Steven Tyler.

“Four­teen of the 25 tracks on this 79½-minute disc are drawn from Ker­ouac’s poet­ry book Pomes All Sizes,” writes All Music Guide’s William Ruhlmann. “The rest come from his nov­els (noth­ing from On the Road, though) and let­ters, with some unpub­lished work also includ­ed.” Ruhlmann points out Ker­ouac’s own lack of enthu­si­asm for rock and pref­er­ence for jazz, high­light­ing Ranal­do, Zevon, Dil­lon, and Lewis’ con­tri­bu­tions as clos­est to the man’s own sen­si­bil­i­ty. But alto­geth­er, he writes, they “present a good sam­pling of Ker­ouac’s lit­er­ary con­cerns, and, whether appro­pri­ate or not, the record­ings demon­strate his exten­sive influ­ence” — a per­fect demon­stra­tion of how the cool of one era can inspire the cool of anoth­er.

Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness will be added to our list of col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Poems Read by Pat­ti Smith, John Cale & Oth­er Cul­tur­al Icons (with Music by Joe Strum­mer)

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Research Shows How Music Lessons During Childhood Benefit the Brain for a Lifetime

in Education, K-12, Music, Science | September 4th, 2015

As a some­time musi­cian, it’s only nat­ur­al that I want my four-year-old daugh­ter to take an inter­est in music. Sure, it’s a fun bond­ing activ­i­ty, and sure, there may be a bit of a stage dad lurk­ing inside me at times. But I’m also con­vinced of the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits play­ing a musi­cal instru­ment can have on one’s per­son­al devel­op­ment. New sci­ence, it seems, backs up this intu­ition. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed last year on a recent study from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty which found that “Music train­ing not only helps chil­dren devel­op fine motor skills, but aids emo­tion­al and behav­ioral mat­u­ra­tion as well.”

This may not come as a sur­prise. And yet, the details of the study pro­vide insights our intu­itions about the pow­er of musi­cal edu­ca­tion may lack. For one thing, as you can see in the CNN report above, the ben­e­fits of learn­ing to play music as a child can last for decades, even if some­one hasn’t picked up an instru­ment since those ear­ly lessons. As Dr. Nina Kraus, direc­tor of Northwestern’s Audi­to­ry Neu­ro­science Lab­o­ra­to­ry, explains, good musi­cal tim­ing is strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with read­ing skills and gen­er­al men­tal acu­ity. Accord­ing to a co-author of the study, James Hudzi­ak, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont, ear­ly musi­cal train­ing was shown to have “accel­er­at­ed cor­ti­cal orga­ni­za­tion in atten­tion skill, anx­i­ety man­age­ment and emo­tion­al con­trol.” These brain changes can accom­pa­ny us well into old age.

Anoth­er, Cana­di­an study, pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary in the The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, found that child­hood music lessons boost the abil­i­ty of old­er adults to hear speech, a skill that begins to weak­en lat­er in life. The study found “robust” evi­dence that “start­ing for­mal lessons on a musi­cal instru­ment pri­or to age 14 and con­tin­u­ing intense train­ing for up to a decade appears to enhance key areas in the brain that sup­port speech recog­ni­tion.” Even music lessons tak­en lat­er life can help reha­bil­i­tate the brains of old­er adults. “The find­ings,” writes Sci­ence Dai­ly, “under­score the impor­tance of music instruc­tion in schools and in reha­bil­i­ta­tive pro­grams for old­er adults.”

Music teach­ers cer­tain­ly need this kind of evi­dence to bol­ster sup­port for ail­ing pro­grams in schools, and musi­cal­ly-inclined par­ents will cheer these find­ings as well. But before the stage par­ent in you begins enrolling your kid in every music les­son you can fit into the sched­ule, take heed. As Dr. Kraus dis­cov­ered in the North­west­ern study, forc­ing kids to show up and par­tic­i­pate under duress won’t exer­cise their brains. Real, active engage­ment is key. “We like to say that ‘mak­ing music mat­ters,’” says Kraus, “because it is only through the active gen­er­a­tion and manip­u­la­tion of sound that music can rewire the brain.” While musi­cal train­ing may be one par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy­able way to strength­en cog­ni­tion, it isn’t the only way. But even if they don’t stick with it, the kids will­ing to put in the hours (and yes, the longer the bet­ter) will expe­ri­ence pos­i­tive change that lasts a life­time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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30 Minutes of Harry Potter Sung in an Avant-Garde Fashion by UbuWeb’s Kenneth Goldsmith

in Books, Music | September 2nd, 2015

potter ubu

Last month, we fea­tured poet, pro­fes­sor, and WFMU radio host Ken­neth Gold­smith singing the the­o­ry of Theodor Adorno, Sig­mund Freud, and Lud­wig Wittgen­stein — heavy read­ing, to be sure, but there­in lay the appeal. How dif­fer­ent­ly do we approach these for­mi­da­ble the­o­ret­i­cal texts, Gold­smith’s project implic­it­ly asks, if we receive them not just aural­ly rather than tex­tu­al­ly, but also in a light — not to say goofy — musi­cal arrange­ment? But if it should drain you to think about ques­tions like that, even as you absorb the thought of the likes of Adorno, Freud, and Wittgen­stein, might we sug­gest Ken­neth Gold­smith singing Har­ry Pot­ter?

Per­haps the best-known mod­ern exem­plar of “light read­ing” we have, J.K. Rowl­ing’s Har­ry Pot­ter books present them­selves as ripe for adap­ta­tion, most notably in the form of those eight big-bud­get films released between 2001 and 2011. On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, with evi­dent­ly no bud­get at all, comes Gold­smith’s 30-minute adap­ta­tion, which you can hear just above, or along with his var­i­ous oth­er sung texts at Pennsound. Here he sings, with ever-shift­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment and through some oth­er­world­ly voice pro­cess­ing, what sounds like the final nov­el in the Har­ry Pot­ter series, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows.

“She tells a good sto­ry” — thus has every adult Har­ry Pot­ter-read­er I know explained the appeal of Rowl­ing’s chil­dren’s nov­els even out­side of the chil­dren’s demo­graph­ic, espe­cial­ly as they await­ed Death­ly Hal­lows’ release in 2007. Hav­ing nev­er dipped into the well myself, I could­n’t say for sure, but to my mind, if she tells a good enough sto­ry, that sto­ry will sur­vive no mat­ter the form into which you trans­pose it. The Pot­ter faith­ful hold a vari­ety of opin­ions about the degree of jus­tice each movie does to their favorite nov­els, and even about the voice that reads them aloud in audio­book form, but what on Earth will they think of Gold­smith’s idio­syn­crat­ic ren­di­tion?

Update: Ken­neth shot us an email a few min­utes ago and filled out the back­sto­ry on this record­ing. Turns out the sto­ry is even more col­or­ful than we first thought. He writes: “I was a DJ on WFMU from 1995–2010. In 2007, J.K. Rowl­ing released the sev­enth and final Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows. Pri­or to the book’s release the day I went on the air at WFMU, some­one had leaked a copy to the inter­net, enrag­ing Scholas­tic Books, who threat­ened any­body dis­trib­ut­ing it with a heavy law­suit. I print­ed out and sang in my hor­ri­ble voice the very last chap­ter of the book on the air, there­by spoil­ing the finale of the series for any­one lis­ten­ing. Dur­ing my show, the sta­tion received an angry call from Scholas­tic Books. It appears that their whole office was lis­ten­ing to WFMU that after­noon. Noth­ing ever came of it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)

The The­o­ry of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein & Sig­mund Freud Sung by Ken­neth Gold­smith

Read Online J.K. Rowling’s New Har­ry Pot­ter Sto­ry: The First Glimpse of Har­ry as an Adult

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bernie Sanders Sings “This Land is Your Land” on the Endearingly Bad Spoken Word Album, We Shall Overcome

in Music, Politics | September 2nd, 2015


Sooo…. Let’s talk Bernie Sanders. No, I don’t want to talk about Bernie vs. Hillary, or vs. an increas­ing­ly wor­ri­some grand­stand­ing dem­a­gogue whose name I need not men­tion. I don’t want to talk Bernie vs. a younger civ­il rights activist groundswell… No!

Let’s talk about Bernie Sanders the record­ing artist.

Yeah, that’s right, Bernie made a record in 1987, a spo­ken-word album of clas­sic hip­py folk songs like “This Land is Your Land,” “Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone,” and—fittingly giv­en his roots as a civ­il rights campaigner—“We Shall Over­come,” also the title of the album. Sanders, a pas­sion­ate demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist and stal­wart advo­cate for eco­nom­ic jus­tice, was also so pas­sion­ate about this music that he want­ed to add his voice to the choir. “Appar­ent­ly,” writes Dan Joseph at MRCTV, “every­one in Sanders’ inner cir­cle thought the record­ing was a pret­ty good idea. That was until they real­ized that Sanders had no musi­cal tal­ent, what­so­ev­er.”

This is no exag­ger­a­tion. Gawk­er quotes Todd Lock­wood, a Burling­ton musi­cian who helped pro­duce the record: “As tal­ent­ed of a guy as he is, he has absolute­ly not one musi­cal bone in his body, and that became painful­ly obvi­ous from the get-go.” Hell, it nev­er stopped William Shat­ner, and Shat­ner is the go-to com­par­i­son for the Sanders’ awk­ward “singing.” (It’s “pos­i­tive­ly Shat­neresque,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds.) Hear for your­self above in the Sander-iza­tion of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

Bernie earnest­ly reads the lyrics in his native Brook­lyn accent over a back­ing track that sounds like an out­take from the frus­trat­ing­ly great/terrible Leonard Cohen/Phil Spec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion Death of a Ladies Man. The con­trast between the over­pro­duced music and Sanders’ heart­felt and com­plete­ly unmu­si­cal deliv­ery is pret­ty weird, to say the least. Hear sev­er­al more sam­ples above, from Todd Lockwood’s Sound­cloud. And if for some rea­son you want to lis­ten to the whole album, and pay for the plea­sure, buy Sanders’ We Shall Over­come at Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Ginsberg’s Hand­writ­ten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burling­ton Snow” (1986)

Neil Young’s New Album, The Mon­san­to Years, Now Stream­ing Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Drums & Bass Make the Song: Isolated Tracks from Led Zeppelin, Rush, The Pixies, The Beatles to Royal Blood

in Music | August 31st, 2015

There may be no more crit­i­cal inter­play between two musi­cians in mod­ern music than that between bassists and drum­mers. As jazz bassist Chris­t­ian McBride put it in a recent NPR inter­view, “the bass and drums should work as one instru­ment. It deter­mines whether it’s funk or jazz or coun­try or rock ‘n’ roll. It all depends on what rhythms are com­ing from the bass and the drums that make a par­tic­u­lar music what it is.” In funk and jazz, these rhythm play­ers tend to get a lot more cred­it. Most people—even die hard fans—would be hard pressed to name one coun­try bassist or drum­mer. In rock and roll, we’re used to laud­ing lead singers and gui­tarists. And cer­tain­ly clas­sic duos from Jag­ger and Richards, to Page and Plant, Roth and Van Halen, Mor­ris­sey and Marr and a lengthy list of oth­ers each have earned their vaunt­ed places in music his­to­ry.

Yet as a fan, I’ve always been drawn to unsung bass and drum combos—like The Smiths’ Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, Jane’s Addiction’s Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins, and many oth­ers in bands whose flam­boy­ant lead­ers tend­ed to over­shad­ow their rock sol­id sup­ports. This is not the case in many oth­er groups of super­stars. McBride gives us the exam­ples of Boot­sy Collins and John Starks in James Brown’s band, and bassist Sam Jones and drum­mer Louis Hayes from Can­non­ball Adderley’s ensem­ble. Today we look specif­i­cal­ly at some famed rock rhythm duos, and lis­ten in on iso­lat­ed tracks from some of their bands’ most well-known tunes. We begin with the absolute­ly clas­sic pow­er­house rhythm sec­tion of John Paul Jones (top) and John Bon­ham, whose grooves anchored the riff machine that was Led Zep­pelin. Just above, hear their push and pull on “Ram­ble On.”

As it turns out, Zep­pelin were big James Brown fans, and Jones has specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the funk influ­ence on his play­ing. Jones and Bon­ham, in turn, have influ­enced thou­sands of rhythm play­ers, includ­ing per­haps one of the most famous of bass and drum duos, Rush’s Ged­dy Lee and Neil Peart. Just above, hear Lee’s fuzzed-out bass work in tan­dem with Peart’s expert time changes and break­downs in iso­lat­ed tracks from “Vital Signs,” a song from their ear­ly-eight­ies new wave-inspired album Mov­ing Pic­tures. Rush is cer­tain­ly not everyone’s cup of tea, but more rock and roll drum­mers than not prob­a­bly cite them as an influ­ence at some point in their careers. Though it wasn’t appar­ent to me in their hey­day, even such a min­i­mal­ist band as the Pix­ies had a Rush influ­ence, specif­i­cal­ly by way of drum­mer David Lover­ing. His locked grooves with bassist Kim Deal more or less defined the sound of the 90s through their influ­ence on Nir­vana, Weez­er, Radio­head, Smash­ing Pump­kins and count­less oth­ers. Hear their iso­lat­ed rhythm tracks from Doolit­tle’s “Wave of Muti­la­tion” below.

It’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to point out that per­haps the most famed rhythm sec­tion in rock his­to­ry comes from its most cel­e­brat­ed band. But Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr often get remem­bered more for their song­writ­ing and per­son­al­i­ties than for their rhythm play­ing. Ringo’s tak­en his share of unde­served flak for his no-frills style. I’ve always found him to be an espe­cial­ly taste­ful play­er who knows when to add the per­fect fill or accent, when to lay back and let the song dom­i­nate, and when to get out of the way entire­ly. Starr’s thought­ful drum­ming per­fect­ly com­ple­ments McCartney’s high­ly melod­ic walk­ing basslines—captured as well on the George Har­ri­son-penned “Some­thing,” below, as on any­thing else the band record­ed.

Again, it’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to cite the num­ber of bands influ­enced by the Bea­t­les, though it’s hard­er to name rhythm sec­tions direct­ly inspired by McCart­ney and Starr’s dynam­ic. Nonethe­less, their DNA runs through decades of pop music in all its forms. The oth­er three duos above have direct­ly inspired a more spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non of bands made up sole­ly of bass and drums. One such band, the UK’s Roy­al Blood, has won numer­ous awards (and praise from Jim­my Page). See them per­form a live ver­sion of “Fig­ure It Out” below.

Oth­er bands like Death From Above 1979 and Om have huge­ly devot­ed fol­low­ings. (See a dis­cus­sion of more bass-and-drum-only com­bos here.) With the suc­cess of these bands—along with the rise of elec­tron­ic dance music as a dom­i­nant form—it’s safe to say that killer rhythm sec­tions, so often over­shad­owed in rock and pop his­to­ry, have pushed past tra­di­tion­al lead play­ers and, in many cas­es, tak­en their place. I’d say it’s about time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCart­ney, Sting, Dea­con, Jones & Lee

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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