Broken arms and broken cars

Okay, two important things have happened this morning:

1) The Garage now has a MySpace presence. It's a forum thingy where you can post about whatever. However, I must confess to not understanding MySpace at all, so it would be great if you could spread the word so I don't have to, and also keep the forum pretty friendly so I don't have to spend time moderating it.

http://groups.myspace.com/thegarageclub

2) I got the phone number of a hot girl. Because she drove her car into my shiny blue car, and made it so it's not so shiny any more. She says it my fault, where as I am pretty sure it's hers. Bugger. And it's probably not a good way to start a relationship either. Any lawyers out there?

Anyway, on with the post

I sat down at my drum kit today to get a bit of practice in during my lunch break (yup, I have one in my office – check me out) and I appear to have done some damage to my arm. Now I’m not a bad drummer, but I have zero technique. The blame for this can be firmly placed on my years as a drummer in various bad punk bands. There are two techniques for the punk drummer – hard and fast. Finesse might as well be a hair conditioner, and we all know how often punks wash their hair.

So now when I sit down to practice my paradiddles, ruffs and other things than drummers pretend to know about to disguise the fact that it is essentially just hitting things with a vague approximation of rhythm, I end up with busted cymbals, busted sticks and apparently, busted arms too. Worst still, it’s not even like it’s a cool scar that I can impress chicks with. Nope, it’s just a sharp shooting pain up my left arm which makes it difficult to hold on to my sticks (note – this is not a euphemism).

Being a drummer is not a position to be in if you want to be famous. Try and name some famous drummers: - Keith Moon, John Bonam, Lars Ulrich, er… Phil Collins? Not great is it. Now aside from why Keith Moon is famous (I’ll give you a clue, it rhymes with drugs) , John Bonam and Lars Ulrich are legendary because they played in legendary bands. I’m not denying their skill as stick wielders, but if Bonam had played drums for Cast, I don’t think he would be hailed as one of the greats. Because nobody, except possibly their mums, cared about Cast. My point is, that you can be an amazing drummer, but if your band sucks, you are never going to get the recognition you deserve. Lars Ulrich? Average drummer at best if you ask me, but he’s in Metallica, and I believe they’ve sold a record or too

Anyway, it’s not very cool to have favourite drummers, but I think two of the best around at the moment are (and this is the official way of referring to drummers) that bloke out of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and that bloke out of We Are Scientists. They seem to be one of the few players who saved up enough money so that when they’d learnt all of ‘Basic Indie - Rock Rhythms – You Can Be A Libertine’, they went out an bought the next volume ‘Clever Indie - Rock Rhythms – You Can Be Arty Like The Talking Heads’. But it’s not just a case of saving up all your fifty pees. I’ve seen the book, and the parts are tricky. These guys have skills. Clever, arty, holding the sticks in that backward way kind of skills.

So do I post WAS or YYY in the battle of the initials? I’m going with WAS because this video has a fawn in it. I can see no grounds for argument

We Are Scientists – Inaction



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