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Shit,
what were they called now... They were on Sub Pop, had a single
called 'Noel, Jonah and Me' and were a duo. One girl singing
and playing guitar, one boy on drums. Anyway, they were really
cool, and I saw Paul King (once and former King of the 80s pop
mullet) interview 'em on MTV's 120 Minutes. The drummer said
something like "I liked our last album photo coz I looked
like the drummer from The Jam on the cover of "'This is
the Modern World’” (or something--I'm not an authority
on Mod Revival sleeve art neither).
Anyway, I remember being impressed because A) he was admitting
that he thought rock photography was cool (and it damn well
is--hell, Pennie Smith's pix of The Clash did more for that
band's legend than their entire recorded output put together)
and B) he was, so far as I could interpret, acknowledging the
fact that drummers look cool as fuck.
Just like the way I think about music as something to be read
about first and experienced aurally second, so too am I starting
to 'see' the vast majority of rock records, esp. your cool and
scuzzy and biscuit-tin cheap variety, in the pounding of the
drums and the arched back and muscles of the tubthumper. For
an action that looks like it takes a lot out of you physically
it's the least posey position imaginable. Certainly less so
than spreading your legs to fretwank that geetar, or stride
with mic-twirling munificence before the front rows. Just sitting
down--but making those sounds--has an ease about it that
is just so hard to explain. Maybe it's the control element.
Unlike the modified electrics of a guitar or a laptop or what
have you, it's so obvious where the sound is coming from. It's
from that big hollow cylinder in front of them, it's from that
shiny sliver of tambourine tin to their right. Now give 'em
the sticks and wham! bam!
Oh sure, some say it's dumb, and that the drummer of a band
is somehow inevitably the most banal, that drumming is primitive
and therefore stupid. Pffff! It's a dumb action, this percussion
thing, yeah sure--but in the same way that laughing at townies'
tucked-in-socks trousers is dumb, or happy guilt-free sex on
a summer's day is dumb, or going to a shitty romcom at the flicks
just to laugh constantly and noisily throughout is dumb, i.e.
it feels fiiine and comes natural. And it can be communicated
to, and enjoyed by, others with all the ease and instantaneousness
(um, sic?) of our human instinct for rhythm.
Which would bring me to staggeringly unoriginal theories about
music and sex, if I could be bothered being pretentious about
it, which I can't, or at least not tonight.
Also, thanks to the Exceptions Rule, drummers who stand up are
even cooler, and bands with two drummers are catapulted even
further in the looking-and-sounding cool stakes (which is what
I'm talking about here, hence, and only hence, Rialto's status
in my mind as sex gods). Adam And The Ants of course had two
drummers, and sometimes they both stood up, so hypothetically
the next time I see one of their videos I shall experience death
by sonically-induced hyper orgasm.
The recent so-called rock 'revolution' (like, who's been overthrown?
who's died? what's changed?) depends on the drummer. Each kick
and beat and percussive sound is a kick and punch out of the
paper bag of chart pop and/or indie stereotype mediocrity, and
the drum sounds are worth a million guitar chords, or three
at least, which is all these -and any decent rock band- should
ever need to know. The beat is everything. The beat is human.
The beat is the heart and the hips and the groin. Anything else
is just layers and flavours (romantic? joyful? scuzzy? sexy?
angry? kewl?). The beat is sassy and it's loud and, unlike a
guitar, doesn't have a switch that can reduce the volume. Neat-o!
Oh, the band's name was The Spinanes.
| David
O. MacGowan, January 2003 |
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