Off You

Been working on "Off You".

Here's a helpful live version. Two basses and one electric guitar. She plays some of the chords in much higher positions than I was (the Cm and Dm in particular).

You Make Lovin' Fun

That Thing You Do

For reference








This is only a few of them...there's a whole page of links. Who knew?

Dave...on Drums

Cannonball Cover

http://wn.com/Cannonball__The_Breeders_Guitar_Cover#/videos

Holy crap this is awesome.



It's so freaking clear to see what they are doing. Love it.  More here.

Check out this one with him playing in a room with himself

Slap Bass

I don't really like slap bass and don't care to play it. But I have to learn a little for this song. This guy does a decent job of showing how it is done. Slap  part starts at 1:25

Full Pixies Concert from Brazil 2010

Looking for Breeders Chords

Huffer


Son of Three


Saints


Cannonball


Driving on 9

Son of Three

First song! Son of Three

I'm starting with this song because I have already figured out the bass part.

Goes to figure that I can't find any live footage of this song though. And apparently also no guitar tab/chords.



Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Dig, bitch, dig!


This is pretty helpful. There's a moving part lower on the neck and then there's a part where everybody is hanging out around the 12th fret a bunch of the time. Kelley seems not to be playing power chords but barre chords. It's a pretty bass line driven song after all and so I guess it is good that I'm starting with that. The only hard part about the drums is how repetative they are and how hard it is to keep that kind of beat consistent for a whole song.

BBC 7 Ages of Rock Documentary

Not sure this is gonna work...but...
better link perhaps here for full "Left of Dial" segment

Blondie Detroit 442

This will be fast and hard

Greece May 1989

Pixies, Greece, May 1989, right after Doolittle was released:


Whole concert playlist of videos (19 songs) here.

Rapture

It takes a while for them to pan to Burke long enough to see what he's doing. Again, the recording seems more finessed than this performance.



I'm beginning to think that not even Clem Burke reproduced Clem Burke's recordings live. And so I shouldn't feel too bad about not nailing something precisely right so long as the feel is correct in general.

Call Me

From the recording I was convinced that Burke played a jazzy shuffle on the hi hat with his right hand on this. I've now seen multiple videos where he plays two handed on the hi hat. I wonder if he changed it at some point. I kind of like the way I hear it on the album better, though admittedly that is harder to do with enough force to come out at a live show.

Blondie

We are a go for playing a Blondie tribute for Halloween...in addition to the Flaming Lips tribute.

I don't actually have a band to do this with yet...which seems kinda crazy, but also I'm not real worried about it. The key piece, besides the lead singer which is nailed down already (MW), is the keyboard player. I don't know many keyboard players. I asked Dr. K, but I think he's leaning against doing it. Which is too bad. I think he could pick it up with nearly no rehearsals. Keeping my fingers crossed. Looks like KS is in on bass and I'm gonna try to convince CT to play guitar. Not sure if we need a second guitar or not. Suppose I should figure that out.

I had been a little worried about learning the drum parts, but I'm starting to feel better about it. The whole reason I wanted to do this was to learn Clem Burke's drum parts...particularly the open hi hat stuff. I don't know if I'll nail everything perfectly by October, but I think I can get the point across.

Maybe I'll even get as good as this kid:
Call Me


Dreaming

Olivia Newton-John

The last couple of days I've been on a nostalgia trip.

From about 1981 until about 1984 Olivia Newton-John was the most important person in my life. Like so many situations in my life...I conflated my sexuality with other burgeoning interests. I was a preteen and first discovering pop music...and also first discovering my sexuality. I'm sure there were plenty of men who found Olivia Newton-John good looking back in the day...but if she wasn't a lesbian icon (though not a lesbian herself) than I don't know who was.

Now the music is dated. It was mass produced country...then pop...in its day. And now that seems old and quaint. She wasn't cool then...and now she's kitsch-y.

But when I loved her I loved her with no sense of irony.

What IS ironic is that I've drifted far, far away from liking vocalist-centered music, particularly with female vocalists. I'm not a fan of bands that aren't bands...but are rather studio musicians backing a big name star.

But in the way that repeated listens in one's formative years will do...I still like the songs. I have every word memorized whether I want to or not.

I've always thought it was throw-away music...but last night I listened to it in a different way. The backing bands were high quality studio cats. They are right on the mark. They are so good that you don't notice them. They fade into the background. But without them the music doesn't exist.

Some of the drum parts are simple(Let Me Be There and If You Love Me Let Me Know)...




but some are more unexpected than you'd think (Heart Attack puts the crash on 2)...



and Make a Move on Me has an almost jazzy shuffle groove.


So much of this would be done with drum machines today (particularly the post Grease stuff). It is refreshing to know a real person was playing these drums even when they are machine precise.

There's actually a fair amount to be learned here. About serving the music. About dead on pocket playing. About how to make music interesting without being distracting. They were there for nothing more than to highlight the voice and to create hooks and grooves that would sell records. They did an excellent job at it.

For the record...my favorite ONJ lps (in chronological order), more here:

Clearly Love (1975)
Come On Over (1976)
Don't Stop Believin' (1976)
Making a Good Thing Better (1977)
Totally Hot (1978)
Xanadu (1980)
Physical (1981)

Planet of Sound

EDIT 2/23/2011: I have gotten the part. It is now in the complete fakebook.

This SEEMS like a ridiculously easy song...but because of that no one has posted the full tab online. Most videos tend to not stay on Kim...but this one keeps her in frame and you can actually make out the part pretty well...at least where the shifts and transitions are...


EDIT:
Found 120 Minutes...she's not in frame the whole time, but it is a better close up when she is. Around 0:36 seconds there's a clear shot of her part. Also...Black Francis signals sound guy for more lead vocal in the monitor.


Super clear shots of the guitars (same part as bass in the "tough" section) in Brazil...plus you get to hear Joey and Charles detune.


Paradise:

Bonzo

I've never been a Led Zeppelin fan. I didn't dislike them...they just were never on my radar. A few years ago I could not have identified a Led Zeppelin song on the radio. I had no idea.

As soon as I started trolling Craig's List for bands to join as a drummer I came across the "looking for a John Bonham-type drummer" ads. There were lots of them. Clearly a large segment of people held John Bonham (Led Zeppelin's drummer) up as the best example of rock drumming available.

I resisted forming an interest in Bonham because it seemed so cliche. But as time passed I became exposed to the man's work, and Zeppelin's music. I don't love their music, but I don't hate it either. I can appreciate it for what it is, but it isn't likely to be recreational listening for me any time soon.

That said, I HAVE come to appreciate Bonham's playing. Not because it's loud (he HAD to hit hard because it was a new age of amplified guitars prior to drums also being mic'ed) which seems to be why lots of people like him. I'm particularly interested in his use of the right foot with the bass drum. These days, if you want to play something complicated on the bass drum...you get a double pedal. Bonham never played with a double pedal, but he did some really interesting things with the bass drum. He also utilizes the left foot with the hi hat in interesting ways and uses ghost notes in interesting ways. He was, I admit, a pretty awesome drummer.

However...I think people who post for Bonham-esque drummers to join their bands are total posers. In the future I may use that request as a reason NOT to reply to an ad. It's nearly as bad as "must have pro gear." Only an asshole would say such a thing.

For a long time I assumed that I'd never be able to play drums like Bonham...and I was ok with that. I've learned to play "The Ocean" and I've tried to learn "Immigrant Song" (because it is a pattern often used in rock)...but I haven't tried much beyond that. For shits and giggles last night I pulled out the "Mothership" 2 cd set and my sheet music of Bonham's greatest hits and sat down to see where I'm at.

The Ocean


Immigrant Song


Much to my surprise, I was able to play much of the stuff...or at least an approximation. And the things I couldn't play I imagined that I could pick up with practice. It didn't seem insurmountable any more. Not even "Good Times Bad Times"...which at one time I thought was the most difficult drum part ever written.

Good Times Bad Times


Change happens so slowly over time. It always surprises me when I'm suddenly aware of it.

Dig for Fire

This song is a major pain in the ass. For some reason we don't seem to be able to communicate the timing to each other at all at the start. Every time I or the others think we've got it nailed, it's still wrong.

Here's a live version from Santiago, Chile last year. I think it is a useful video because it shows DL counting off the time and then his part...and how the others enter. It's hard to figure from studio recordings because there's no count off for when to start counting.

Finding the Groove: Playing Behind, Ahead, On-Top

So there's these concepts of playing behind, ahead, or on-top of the beat. It has never come up in real life for me before, it's just been something I've read about in magazines. But last night someone asked me to play "behind the beat" (note to myself...this was for the second half of "Movin' On"). I guess it's time to start thinking more about this.

Here's a decent video:


Honestly, this is a very advanced concept. I'm not sure that it is necessary in the situation it was brought up to me. What I really think was happening last night was that the guitar player was rushing and that I was playing inconsistently (not staying one tempo) because I'm not used to playing slowly and because I was unfamiliar with the song. That stuff needs to get fixed first...and then...yeah...laying behind the beat would be ideal for the song in question.

I don't feel like we are rehearsing the tunes hard enough to get to that point, though. We basically play through things once...once a week. That's not rehearsing, that's playing. To get to a fine point like playing behind the beat...we need to be working more...like take an entire 3 hour rehearsal on one song and really work it rather than just play it. Right now most all of the advancement I am making with these songs is in my private practice by myself. Working on groove in that situation (where I'm playing with a recording by myself) is tough. If we really want to groove as a band...that's a group effort. We have to know the songs stone cold like the back of our hands...and then we can work the finesse. I think musical communication is pretty strained in this situation, though, so I'm not sure how we'd get to that point. We don't all have the same language or means to communicate. So we can't just talk to each other or write something down and have it be resolved. If we aren't able to communicate musical concepts well to each other in those ways, there needs to be more room to explore and screw up together. Jam it out...change things...jam it out more...fix it...come together. For now, that isn't happening.

So I think the main thing I have to do is learn the songs inside out the best that I can under the circumstances. That's the best shot I can have at getting to a groove point. For now, I'm still just barely holding on to the basics. Groove is a good prize to keep my eye on...but I kind of have to be patient with myself and acknowledge that beyond me just needing more practice and experience...the situation isn't ideal to foster such subtleties either.