(12-14-2010 09:04 AM)Arno Sluismans Wrote: [ -> ]The only logical explanation is that he was thinking he was a knight. Dude's wearing a ring mail!
Hahaha! Very nicely put!
I don't know how well your guys' eyesight is, but Rick's ring mail vest is, should I say, the bomb dot com.
(12-14-2010 06:18 AM)Arno Sluismans Wrote: [ -> ]Nick was always the awesome, headbanging rock 'n' roll drummer, which always looks great to me. Then when he grew older, he became very much like David, but he still starts dancing behind his drums when the music gets really great (during Comfortably Numb's second solo on Live 8, for example).
I LOVE Nick's drumming. No matter what, it always looks like he's having the time of his life. A smile never leaves his face.
Yep. Also, his drumming is far better live than in the studio. Even better.
That is true. I think some people perform better under stage pressure.
(12-14-2010 09:04 AM)Arno Sluismans Wrote: [ -> ]The only logical explanation is that he was thinking he was a knight. Dude's wearing a ring mail!
You mean chain mail.
However I agree with you -- Rick looks.....shall we say......effing horrible, but it's still endearing.
(12-14-2010 09:49 AM)hunter21291 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know how well your guys' eyesight is, but Rick's ring mail vest is, should I say, the bomb dot com.
I LOVE Nick's drumming. No matter what, it always looks like he's having the time of his life. A smile never leaves his face.
Don't you start using that phrase now! It's bad enough when my sister uses it.
Now as to your point about Nick's drumming, you're spot on. He was always the one in the band having the most fun, even when things were at their most tense. I loved how midway though Comfortably Numb at Live 8, he ripped the headphones off that were playing the click track and just went it from memory. That was probably the coolest moment, outside of that 2nd solo for me.
(12-14-2010 12:35 PM)Arno Sluismans Wrote: [ -> ]Yep. Also, his drumming is far better live than in the studio. Even better.
Nick was a fabulous drummer and never gets his due, I don't think. He wasn't Bonham, Moon or Peart, but he wasn't a stick in the eye either. If you can, get your hands on some boots from the Animals tour -- his drumming on Dogs in particular, is outstanding. Truly.
Ring mail, I think... Though it's a bit difficult to see. Could be a chain mail. :P
About his drumming... I've said it so, so often: music is more important than technique. If you listen to music and rate it by rating the musicians' technique, then you're simply 'doing it wrong'. Music has to sound right. I've compared Mason to Slipknot's drummer (I couldn't give less of a flying f*ck for what his name is, honestly) once; technically, the Slipknot guy blows Mason away, but musically he's a useless pile of nothing. Just like Ringo Starr, Nick Mason is one of the best drummers in history purely because he's able to always play exactly what he's meant/supposed to play. There are very, very few drummers who can do that.
I'll quote Steve Smith on this one:
"Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity. Ringo's popularity brought forth a new paradigm in how the public saw drummers. We started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. One of Ringo's great qualities was that he composed unique, stylistic drum parts for The Beatles' songs. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and still identify the song."
That's what identifies a good drummer, in my opinion.
I agree with you in that sometimes technique is often times mistaken for actual talent, when it takes far more than that to be any good. I've always felt that playing with feeling, regardless of your instrument, is more important than knowing all the right names for the scales or whatever that corresponds to what you're playing.
Take David on guitar for example. He's not the most technically proficient guitarist out there, and he's even admitted as much numerous times. He doesn't play fast, he doesn't do a lot of flashy or showy movements and he's not running up and down the fretboard at 100mph trying to look cool. However what he does with that guitar is nothing short of magic for me, and I'd take him 100 times out of 100 over anyone else out there, past or present. That's not saying other guitarists like Clapton, Page, Hendrix or Beck were crap, just that David plays with more emotion and that means more to me.
Same with Nick on drums. Could he do the Moby Dick drum solo? Doesn't matter -- he did what he needed to do and he did it better than anyone else would have sitting behind the kit for the Floyd.
Yep, Dave is my favourite guitarist by far as well (although there are some songs I wouldn't want him to play. But these are rare exceptions, like While My Guitar Gently Weeps). He does know "the right names for the scales" and all that though. :P He wouldn't be nearly as good if it weren't for his suppreme musical insight. Remember that he and Rick did pretty much all of Pink Floyd's arrangements - you don't do that without knowing the theory.
Same goes for Nick, Rick and Roger. I'm not very certain about Syd, because the music during his era was far less sophisticated that the music you hear in Atom Heart Mother and everything that follows. The point is, though, that Pink Floyd's advantage was that they were not just talented musicians, but also educated very properly. There aren't many bands in which each member knew 'everything' about music - most bands leave such things to their songwriters and producers.
(12-14-2010 02:17 PM)Arno Sluismans Wrote: [ -> ]Yep, Dave is my favourite guitarist by far as well (although there are some songs I wouldn't want him to play. But these are rare exceptions, like While My Guitar Gently Weeps). He does know "the right names for the scales" and all that though. :P
I don't know about that. I have an interview he did right around the time OAI came out and he was talking about learning to play the saxophone with his oldest son, Charlie. He remarked that when the sax teacher would tell David to run through such-and-such scale or run through the scale himself and then say what the name was, he told the teacher he never knew the specific names for the scales, but he did know musically what notes he was supposed to be playing. Which I found fascinating. I'll try to dig that up if I can, it's somewhere on my hard drive.
Really? That would put him in the same boat with Paul McCartney and John Lennon, actually. Yet again.