Joe's weekly reflections on the greatest teenage rock 'n' roll cover
band to ever come out of Rockledge, PA in the mid-'00s, covered on the blog one song at a time.
"Moby Dick"
originally by Led Zeppelin
I am so, so sorry about this.
Actually, let's examine that feeling real quick. Guilt. I guess I'm feeling guilty because I have attempted to frame this blog column as nostalgia for a group effort in building community, both with three members of Burholme and with the friends and family who supported us in our hobby, and now here I am forcing you to watch a five-minute video that's just me. Like, Kev's dad literally has to zoom in the camera at one point, so specific is the focus. So I'm sorry for that.
I don't know if I'm necessarily apologizing for the content of the video. It's embarrassing, for sure, but only in your typical ways—how I was young and silly and thought that taking off my shirt during a drum solo was a good/funny idea and so most of what you end up seeing is all hair and shoulders. Watching now, I don't think I have to apologize for the drum solo itself, or the skill level presented. I'm certainly not asking anyone to be blown away it, and there are plenty of arguments that this is just fucking hackery. But I have to assume that, for the 99% of people reading this blog and watching this video, their own knowledge about what makes drumming "good" is thankfully not at a place where they can look at this thing and say "this is a bad drummer." I'm not saying I'm good, I'm just saying I'm good enough to bamboozle.
It's so fucking difficult to judge yourself honestly. Validation usually arrives externally, and even then, I'm not all that comfortable with it. Consternation arrives from both directions (inside and outside), and fits better, in a fucked up way. It would be a lot easier for me to dismiss this thing as a shitty drummer thumping his way through a pale imitation of a famous drum solo. It's a lot harder to say that this is pretty good. It's good but I don't have the vocabulary to explain why it's good, and so if I say "it's good" without backing it up, then I just come off looking like a egotist. I swear it's not that. I'm totally comfortable with being wrong in this context. Please, tell me this is a bad drum solo. I'm just saying that I watch this video sixteen years after it was recorded, and I don't get the same "this is so fucking embarrassing how bad it is" vibes that I would get from literally any other video of me from any point in the '00s.
Actually, let's examine that feeling real quick. Guilt. I guess I'm feeling guilty because I have attempted to frame this blog column as nostalgia for a group effort in building community, both with three members of Burholme and with the friends and family who supported us in our hobby, and now here I am forcing you to watch a five-minute video that's just me. Like, Kev's dad literally has to zoom in the camera at one point, so specific is the focus. So I'm sorry for that.
I don't know if I'm necessarily apologizing for the content of the video. It's embarrassing, for sure, but only in your typical ways—how I was young and silly and thought that taking off my shirt during a drum solo was a good/funny idea and so most of what you end up seeing is all hair and shoulders. Watching now, I don't think I have to apologize for the drum solo itself, or the skill level presented. I'm certainly not asking anyone to be blown away it, and there are plenty of arguments that this is just fucking hackery. But I have to assume that, for the 99% of people reading this blog and watching this video, their own knowledge about what makes drumming "good" is thankfully not at a place where they can look at this thing and say "this is a bad drummer." I'm not saying I'm good, I'm just saying I'm good enough to bamboozle.
It's so fucking difficult to judge yourself honestly. Validation usually arrives externally, and even then, I'm not all that comfortable with it. Consternation arrives from both directions (inside and outside), and fits better, in a fucked up way. It would be a lot easier for me to dismiss this thing as a shitty drummer thumping his way through a pale imitation of a famous drum solo. It's a lot harder to say that this is pretty good. It's good but I don't have the vocabulary to explain why it's good, and so if I say "it's good" without backing it up, then I just come off looking like a egotist. I swear it's not that. I'm totally comfortable with being wrong in this context. Please, tell me this is a bad drum solo. I'm just saying that I watch this video sixteen years after it was recorded, and I don't get the same "this is so fucking embarrassing how bad it is" vibes that I would get from literally any other video of me from any point in the '00s.
Whether you think it's competent or that it sucks, let's agree that it looks fun, at least. I don't know if I was ever a "good" drummer, but here, I was at my best (and so if you think that it's bad, imagine all the worse drumming I did before and after!). I recall my friend and unequal drumming peer Felix being in the audience for this set, and him tipping his cap. Felix was the best drummer I've ever met, and he could've performed an exact copy of the drum solo I had just done using only his left hand, so obviously this wasn't him showing, like, deference or anything. He was just being nice, and I appreciated the gesture. I don't remember much about this Burholme concert (despite what a 30-post blog column might have you believe), but I vividly remember the public sign of approval I got from Felix. That dude would go on to get higher degrees in his drumming education, and is a professional drummer today, with an IMDB page and everything. He has long forgotten about Burholme's "Moby Dick" in the Pres B.V.M. church hall circa 2007, because he went on to do so much memorable drumming that it's all washed away in the decades. But his approval meant a lot to me then, and I won't forget it.
There was a shoutout to Felix and to my other friend and drumming peer Drew P. in the audience during this solo. Bit of an inside joke, I'd say. The three of us, plus maybe three or four other senior drummers from our class at LSCHS (who very reasonably declined an invite to Burholme's last show), had a few months prior performed a "drum ensemble" piece at the Spring Jazz Band concert. Six or seven drummers, all with different interlocking parts, playing in harmony (as harmonic as a bunch of pubescent dudes banging drums can be, anyway). I forget the name of the song. I bet Drew would remember. Part of the song was the staccato sixteenth notes, two in a row, followed by an eighth-beat of rest, over and over, and during the rest, we'd all yell "Sha!" or "Ha!" It wasn't extemporaneous, the SHAs and HAs were on the music sheets. But we got a kick out of that. This explains why I'm repeating the gesture in "Moby Dick" at certain points. It's fun to yell, sure, but it was also a reference to a in-joke drumming thing.
I'm not going to bore you with explaining every little piece of this drum solo. There's not much more to explain. It's not like I mapped it out beyond "here's where I take off my shirt." The cowbell stuff was obviously a crowd-pleasing thing, resonant of that SNL joke that I hated then and hate now. There's at least one subsection where I'm consciously attempting to echo John Bonham from his Royal Albert Hall performance of this song (accents on a snare roll then mirrored by thumps of the bass drum during the same snare roll). And then there's one point where I'm hitting something with my sticks off-camera. If you look at literally any other video from this night, you'll see that it's these weird peppermint/holiday poles, or something. I don't know. They were clearly just there on the stage when we got there, and we left them on stage because we thought that would be funny. Anyways, I'm hitting them at one point, even though they aren't "drums" in the traditional sense.
I don't know if it was a conscious reference, but I'd like to think I was referencing another Burholme performance of "Moby Dick." This wasn't the first time I performed the solo in concert, and it's probably not even the most well-known Joe K*** version of it. A few months prior, Kev had his own band perform at his own graduation party (we all took a turn playing at our own party, and we'll flash back to my and Mike's respective parties at some point later), and we were set up in front of his open garage, where Kev's dad's vintage car was on display, freshly waxed.
I was close to blackout, is the thing. After setting up the equipment and doing a sound check, the three of us went up to Kev's bedroom with a case of Lionshead to "pregame" the party. If you know me at all, it does not surprise you that I went overboard with the pregaming, and ended up dropping a double-digit number of light beers into my eighteen-year-old stomach. Very, very sloppy drumming that day. Disastrously, "Moby Dick" continued as planned. I did my usually hack drum roll shtick, I'm sure. But there was one point where I thought it would be funny to start drumming on shit that wasn't part of my drum set. The side of the garage and whatnot. Then, I stood straight, wound up, and was ready to smack that fucking classic car with my Vic Firth American Classic 5A plastic-tipped drum sticks, when the entire party, every aunt and uncle and up to and including most fearfully Kev's dad, stood up and yelled "NO!" like I was ready to kill Kev's dog or something. I don't remember if I actually hit the car with my drum stick or not. Don't ask Kev, he'll say "yes" regardless of whether it happened or not. Our boy loves to EXAGGERATE.
This harks back to the idea of just having fun. This was fun. It was all fun. I'm not here to tell you to watch a short five-minute video of a sweaty shirtless boy playing a drum solo because I think it's good drumming, I'm just here to tell you that it looks fun. I had fun. That's it. That's all. I appreciate the fact that I have this artifact of a time, many years ago, when fun looked like this.
There was a shoutout to Felix and to my other friend and drumming peer Drew P. in the audience during this solo. Bit of an inside joke, I'd say. The three of us, plus maybe three or four other senior drummers from our class at LSCHS (who very reasonably declined an invite to Burholme's last show), had a few months prior performed a "drum ensemble" piece at the Spring Jazz Band concert. Six or seven drummers, all with different interlocking parts, playing in harmony (as harmonic as a bunch of pubescent dudes banging drums can be, anyway). I forget the name of the song. I bet Drew would remember. Part of the song was the staccato sixteenth notes, two in a row, followed by an eighth-beat of rest, over and over, and during the rest, we'd all yell "Sha!" or "Ha!" It wasn't extemporaneous, the SHAs and HAs were on the music sheets. But we got a kick out of that. This explains why I'm repeating the gesture in "Moby Dick" at certain points. It's fun to yell, sure, but it was also a reference to a in-joke drumming thing.
I'm not going to bore you with explaining every little piece of this drum solo. There's not much more to explain. It's not like I mapped it out beyond "here's where I take off my shirt." The cowbell stuff was obviously a crowd-pleasing thing, resonant of that SNL joke that I hated then and hate now. There's at least one subsection where I'm consciously attempting to echo John Bonham from his Royal Albert Hall performance of this song (accents on a snare roll then mirrored by thumps of the bass drum during the same snare roll). And then there's one point where I'm hitting something with my sticks off-camera. If you look at literally any other video from this night, you'll see that it's these weird peppermint/holiday poles, or something. I don't know. They were clearly just there on the stage when we got there, and we left them on stage because we thought that would be funny. Anyways, I'm hitting them at one point, even though they aren't "drums" in the traditional sense.
I don't know if it was a conscious reference, but I'd like to think I was referencing another Burholme performance of "Moby Dick." This wasn't the first time I performed the solo in concert, and it's probably not even the most well-known Joe K*** version of it. A few months prior, Kev had his own band perform at his own graduation party (we all took a turn playing at our own party, and we'll flash back to my and Mike's respective parties at some point later), and we were set up in front of his open garage, where Kev's dad's vintage car was on display, freshly waxed.
I was close to blackout, is the thing. After setting up the equipment and doing a sound check, the three of us went up to Kev's bedroom with a case of Lionshead to "pregame" the party. If you know me at all, it does not surprise you that I went overboard with the pregaming, and ended up dropping a double-digit number of light beers into my eighteen-year-old stomach. Very, very sloppy drumming that day. Disastrously, "Moby Dick" continued as planned. I did my usually hack drum roll shtick, I'm sure. But there was one point where I thought it would be funny to start drumming on shit that wasn't part of my drum set. The side of the garage and whatnot. Then, I stood straight, wound up, and was ready to smack that fucking classic car with my Vic Firth American Classic 5A plastic-tipped drum sticks, when the entire party, every aunt and uncle and up to and including most fearfully Kev's dad, stood up and yelled "NO!" like I was ready to kill Kev's dog or something. I don't remember if I actually hit the car with my drum stick or not. Don't ask Kev, he'll say "yes" regardless of whether it happened or not. Our boy loves to EXAGGERATE.
This harks back to the idea of just having fun. This was fun. It was all fun. I'm not here to tell you to watch a short five-minute video of a sweaty shirtless boy playing a drum solo because I think it's good drumming, I'm just here to tell you that it looks fun. I had fun. That's it. That's all. I appreciate the fact that I have this artifact of a time, many years ago, when fun looked like this.
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