The (New) Best Drummer In The World
Welcome to the relaunch of The Best Drummer In The World! We hope you like the new look and feel of the site. And when I say we, I mean we’re now a WE. For the entire time I’ve had this site (almost 10 years, now in its 4th major phase), it’s been me fumbling my way through programming and reading and trying to figure out how to make it look cool and work in some way that makes sense. But it’s all been done by me and I think I suck at computer stuff. It would take me weeks to edit stuff. It never looked right, etc. I can’t tell you the number of times I would spend weeks rebuilding a new version of the site only to upload it and have it erase all my files and a million nightmares that I never dreamt of when I decided I wanted a website called The Best Drummer In The World. Well, I met this amazing dude named Nick. He’s an amazing photographer.(Check out his photography site here http://www.nicoletavenue.com/ ) Created a super successful video game. Built an iPhone app! And, he’s a drummer. I feel that I’ve found a missing link in this project and I feel the look and feel of the new site which you’re now looking at is the result. He rebuilt it in a week and with a couple of backend tweaks moved the site up to page 1 in Google search rankings. He rules and I’m so thankful to have found a kindred spirt who loves all things drums and drumming. With Nick now handing all the backend stuff and working together on the look, feel, and functionality of the site, it is allowing me to get out and do more interviews, review shows and recordings, and do all of the million things I had envisioned for the site. We really hope you enjoy the new era of the site and we hope you continue to use us as a resource for all things related to cool drum stuff. The editors (Ian and...
Jim Macpherson is a Rock Icon
Jim Macpherson is a rock icon. To me. And he should be to you, too. I’m going to try to put something into context here. Do you know that by the end of 1993, there were only 623 websites in existence? Literally, the Internet was a novelty. MTV “VJ” Adam Curry registered MTV.com and ran it himself as an unofficial side project. And a band from Dayton, Ohio called the Breeders (a side project for Kim Deal of the Pixies) released a record called Last Splash. 20 years have passed by since this happened. Drummer Jim Macpherson did not respond to an ad on Craigslist to join the Breeders. Joining the Breeders “I was playing in this band with my friend Nick and he said he knew where Kim deal of the Pixies lived. We could go put flyers in her mailbox for every show we had to see if we could get her to come. Kim saw us, asked Nick if he wanted to do some demos. He said ‘yeah’ and she said ‘well, can we get your drummer too’ and that’s how it all started.” “I was doing demos for Last Splash… Kim asked me, ‘Hey, you wanna see how you do with Josephine (Wiggs)? We got asked to do some shows and we’re going to need a drummer, and we’re going to make a new record. You want to see if it’ll work out?’ I said ‘yeah’.” “Kim kept telling me, ‘You’d have to be doin’ this to really play music because you realize there’s not a whole lot of money in this,’ which was true.” “I asked what were some of the shows and she said, ‘Well, Nirvana asked us to open for them in Ireland on the Nevermind tour.’ I just played Canal Street Tavern for 150 kids and my first show with the Breeders is in Dublin, Ireland in front of 15,000 people, opening for Nirvana.” “That was before we even recorded… talk about getting thrown in…” Recording Last Splash With the calculated pseudo-perfection of 80’s hair metal a couple of years in the grave, people were using this word grunge all of the time. Mostly because record labels, corporations, and media need to label things. So in January 1993, the Breeders came to San Francisco to record what would become their classic album Last Splash. “We had most of the tracks written and a good foundation down.” “One day me and Josephine would go in and lay down our tracks and then they (Kim and Kelley) would want to lay down their parts right away. So it was recorded on a song...
I Was A Teenage John Bonham
The above photo is taken from the 1984 Riverside High School yearbook in sunny WIndsor Ontario Canada. My home town. The kid with the shit eating grin with John Bonham beside his photo is yours truly. The full story is this. You know when they do yearbook photos in school? They herd all the kids down to the gym or auditorium where they’ve got the local photographer set up to take the photos. So our class gets called down and my mind starts plotting a little harmless scam. I already knew that to drink alcohol you had to be 19 or have a fake ID. So the concept of a fake ID was already known and here it seemed was an opportunity to get a real fake ID. So we waited in line and when I got to the front the administrator asked my name. I blurted out “John Bohnam” and the game was on. She didn’t even bat an eye. The guy took the picture and that was that. Except 2 weeks later after the company processed our student ID cards, I was sitting in homeroom waiting for Mr Cousineau (a former pro football player) to bust me for impersonating a drum god. He read through the cards that had been sent to him one by one. Since they were sorted alphabetically, I started sweating when almost instantly (Since Bonham starts with B) he looked up at me after after a few seconds and said something like “Ian it seems like somethings wrong with your card” I instantly ran up to the front of the class and basically snatched it out of his hand and said something like “oh, ok sir, I’ll make sure it gets fixed” making sure I got the card in the process. I acted like I was curious when I looked at it. I said something like ” Weird” as I starred at the most awesome piece of contraband I had ever seen : A student ID card with my picture and John Bonham written beside it. I knew I was about to be a legend. At least in my own mind. At lunch time, I went to hang out with all my stoner friends and waited until they had all shown and laughed at each other’s pictures when I unleashed my prize. I was a teenage John Bonham and I had the ID to prove it. This was met with awe. Or maybe we were all very high. But the story doesn’t end there. 2 other chapters would unfold over the next 2 years. The end of the year came and I wasn’t...
2012: The Year Of The Wurster
Since the world did not end a few days ago, anyone who writes about music and popular culture will now have to review the past year and tell us all who’s best. In the world of The Best Drummer In The World , it would be hard to find a better wrap up for the year than declaring Jon Wurster Drummer Of The Year 2012. Factually, this title could have been bestowed upon Jon for any of the past 20 years as he has played great drums on great records and toured with great bands for the bulk of these past 2 decades. Through the heyday of indie rock Jon recorded and toured relentlessly as the drummer of Superchunk to the point where even I refer to him as “Jon Wurster of Superchunk” But this title has become too narrow a moniker for Jon. As of 2012 Jon Wurster of Superchunk is also (very much in no particular order) Jon Wurster of The Mountain Goats, Jon Wurster of Bob Mould band, Jon Wurster the comedy writer, Jon Wurster playing with Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar, Jon Wurster recording with Spl:t S:ngle with Jason Narducy and Brit Daniel (Spoon, Divine Fits). Giving Jon 35 “days off” in 2012. I spoke with Jon a couple of weeks after seeing my first Mountain Goats show at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The Best Drummer In The World: With so many projects, was there a point where you decided to become “The indie rock go-to drummer”? Jon Wurster: “It just kind of happened. After Superchunk kind of ‘went on hiatus’ in 2002 I played in a couple of bands that were very different than Superchunk…more like ‘roots rock,’ which is the kind of stuff I played before I joined Superchunk. In Jan of ’86 I was living and playing in bands near Philadelphia. My brother was in college in Winston Salem, NC and I auditioned for and got a gig with this band from there called The Right Profile (named for the Clash song of the same name) who were a sort of cross between The Band and Exile-era Stones. I liked that kind of music when I was younger but by 1985-86 I was really into Husker Du, Replacements, Minutemen, R.E.M., that kind of stuff. I was 19 and within 3 months of moving down there and joining the band we were signed to Arista by Clive Davis. In the summer of 1987 we started making a record with Jim Dickinson and that kind of went south halfway into it. It just wasn’t sounding the way we, or JIm, for that matter,...
Guided By The Mountain Goats
Alright, here’s a confession. Or 2. I saw Guided By Voices on the side stage of Lollapalloza in Chicago on the Bee Thousand tour. Thats not the confession. I was in awe and somewhat confused. I thought, “Who are these older than me guys in striped spandex rocking out like TheWho?” Next day I ran out and bought their latest at the time album, Bee Thousand and listened to it once. Thats part of the confession. Once. The confession is, I was so in my own box that I listened to it once. I thought “I think these songs are good, but the production sucks”. Now, that’s a confession. I didn’t like what came to be my favorite band because the “drum sound” wasn’t to my liking? I suck. Later, when the production value of GBV improved to my satisfaction on Mag Earwhig, my guitar player was playing it on our way to practice and I asked “Who is this?” “New Guided By Voices was his reply. I ran out the next day and bought it and listened to nothing but Mag Earwhig for at least 3 months. At least 3 times a day all the way through. No exaggeration. Obsessed. I turned my best friend onto it and we would call each other and talk about what song we were obsessing over that afternoon. It was insane. And awesome. They were coming through Metro on tour and we went to see them. We were so pumped to be seeing them on this tour. Couldn’t wait to hear every song that we knew by heart by now. Then the unthinkable happened. We went to the show. 3 hours long. Probably 50 songs. All awesome. Not a single song from Mag Earwhig until the first encore. (It was “I Am A Tree”, in case you’re wondering) You have to understand what a shock it is to hear a 3 hour show filled with the greatest songs you’ve never heard. Sensory overload. Which became the name of the Guided By Voices game for years to come. Ran out the next day and bought literally all the GBV albums in the slot at the record store (A record store is a place where you used to be able to go and….) Alien Lanes, Under The Bushes Under The Stars, The Grand Hour, and of course Bee Thousand were all they had. Dove in and listened to NOTHING else for the next 18 months (year and a half of complete emersion in all things GBV to the complete exclusion of any other music except the bands I was playing in at the time)...
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