Radar Love and Playing with Others

I did something stupid last night. Actually it's maybe something that would not have been stupid if I'd done it a month ago, but now it is a bit stupid. A "big mistake" as I like to say.

Big mistakes usually work out for me ok though.

I signed up to play Radar Love at the Madison Music Foundry student recital.

Wait for it...on Dec 12th. That's less than two weeks away.

Radar Love is in the Hal Leonard Classic Rock Playalong Book. It is a tune that I've heard for years, but never took much notice of. When you look at the drum chart, though, as a beginning/intermediate drummer you get blown away pretty quickly. I thought for sure that I'd reviewed the song here before, but I don't find it in the archives. It's one of those songs that I thought, "Now when I can play THAT, I'll be good" immediately followed by "I'll never be able to play that."

In the intervening months (because indeed that first look was less than a year ago...the compression of time really blows me away sometimes with this drum thing...even though it feels like I'm not advancing, I've come a long way in just the last year) I've returned to the song a few times, and it has begun to seem less daunting. A key issue was mastering (well, KIND of mastering) the "train beat" which gave me fits when I first tried it and isn't as big of a deal now. Another daunting portion is the drum breakdown section...which sounds really impressive. It isn't really that hard, though I still haven't quite mastered it. Something about playing the toms sounds more impressive than it is.

Anyway, the song seems doable now, but it still represents a challenge. I've meant to take on that challenge but haven't had a real reason to push it. But having to play it with a live band (with no rehearsal) in front of an audience in less than two weeks is probably a pretty good incentive. Like I said, if I had decided sooner (read: if I had the nads) to sign up, I would have had more practice time and that probably would have been a good thing. That said, as I've written, I've been in a drum lull lately, and this is probably a good fire to light under my ass.

Learning the song is one thing. The venue is another. Basically I will be playing with other students from MMF...all ages and playing levels. Oh...and there will be two drummers. And we will never have met each other or played together before. Get up on stage at the High Noon in front of an audience heavily parent-leaning and play.

This presents its own set of issues. Best case scenario, the kids rock and blow me off the stage and I just ride along. I suspect this will not be the case, however. I'm not saying that they won't be good and that they won't know the tune. Surely they will. And that may be a problem. Most of them will be teens or pre-teens, and eager to show off their "chops." Many of them may have never played with other musicians before.

Last night I heard a few tracks off of the Rock Workshop cd. MMF has a program where you lay out cash and your kid gets to join a rock band for 6 weeks. At the end they record a cd and have a show. The recital I'm playing in is the opening act for the Rock Workshop show. I guess I always assumed that kids that were motivated enough to do such a thing would be really good. And I'm not saying they aren't good...and aren't millions of miles ahead of where I was at their age...or maybe even am now in some respects. What surprised me about the recordings wasn't that they played poorly individually...it was that they played poorly TOGETHER.

I guess this is something that I've taken for granted...learned by osmosis. How to play WITH other musicians. I actually thought that I wasn't very good at it because I don't feel like I listen to the other musicians as well as I should. But I've been playing in ensembles since I was 12...in rock bands since I was 22ish. I guess over that time I've learned to "play nice" with others...though it's never been a focus.

I guess that's what maturity gets you, if not chops. I think this is what all those pro drummers lament wishing they knew then what they know now.

So yeah, the recording was all over the place. Sounded like 4 different songs.

And, I fear, so will sound Radar Love. Only worse...because the Rock Workshop had 6 weeks of playing together with an instructor. We're gonna have nothing. And Radar Love isn't exactly a simple tune. There are lots of odd transitions.

Enter the drummer...or in this case...drummerS. It occurs to me that learning the tune is one thing. Learning it perfectly the way that Golden Earring played it would be awesome. But playing it that way at this recital might be counter-productive. Probably what this performance needs is a rock to hold things together. There are lots of parts in the recording of Radar Love where the time keeping does some kind of non-traditional rock things. For starters, the song swings, so counting time is a little weird...and there are places where there's no bass drum beat and/or no snare. It's a little jazzy. Which sounds cool...but could really fuck with a 12 year old who's never played in a band before.

I'm considering, partially because it would be a little quicker to learn it this way, but also because I think it would make the performance go oh so much smoother, adding a bass on 1 and 3 and a high hat on 2 and 4 throughout most of the tune...whether it is in the original recording or not. There are places this isn't appropriate and I wouldn't do it. But there are long stretches where I think it would help things significantly. Throw my "chops" on the sword for the greater good. It's only parents watching anyway.

Here it is in all its glory...it'll be the main thing I play for the next 12 days.


Just to make me feel really good about this...JoeDrums...who is awesome...says "This was a very difficult drum part" (for the record, he's added some of the time keeping stuff I spoke about too):