Thommy Price Defeats Neil Peart in Drum Battle
The headline of this article is 50% meant for effect. Thommy Price and Neil Peart have never, to my knowledge, set their drums up face-to-face and had it out. If you’re a Rush fan (and I am, being a both a drummer and a Canadian), I apologize for shocking your system with such a bold statement. But we’re going to put some things into perspective with this one. Thommy Price is as rock solid a drummer as there is. Give a listen to just a few of his drum parts from the massive catalog of hits that he’s played on – including Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” and Joan Jett hits galore – and you’ll soon realize that the Thommy Price rock groove is in our DNA. The Thommy Price groove was designed to shake asses. It doesn’t require complex time signatures and roto toms. It’s solid four-on-the-floor, tom fills, pocket, all swing. And shake asses it does. And this is the point. If the aforementioned drum battle is only played for those who can appreciate Rush, then half the population is excluded from the vote. Sorry, no girls like Rush. And, not all guys like Rush. I do, but I’m only one vote. And don’t ask me to choose. I’m trying to be an impartial referee here. And let’s add another factor to the Thommy column: he plays for Joan Jett. Now, this article is about Thommy, but let’s really put this into perspective. Joan Jett isn’t just a girl in a band. She’s definitely not just “a female musician”. Joan Jett is the SOURCE of women in rock. She is ground-zero. Joan Jett is as ROCK as Keith Richards. She IS rock. And as musicians and fans know, there is no great band without a great drummer. So if Joan Jett IS rock, then Thommy Price is the backbone of rock. Do the math. You’ll see I’m right. The Best Drummer In The World: I’ve heard that you’ve been on the road since you were 15 years old. How did your career get rolling? Tommy Price: I started on the road at 15 or 16 in cover bands on the Jersey Shore, and then once I got out of high school I actually went on the road for months at a time. As in “out of New York City.” I was in a band at 17 years old on RCA Records that was produced by Jimmy Iovine called Flame. That was my first real big thing. We did a full record for RCA, and that opened a lot of doors for me. Later on I joined Mink Deville and started going...
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...
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)...
Road Reality Check
This could be titled dreams vs reality. What is the yardstick of your life? What do you measure it by? I used to think I had a good grasp on this. The answer was basically “doing things I believe in” This meant drumming, playing in bands, helping others, making art, starting some business of my own. All things I’ve done too many times to count. Then reality hits. The phrase “You’ve got to face reality” is a common one. But what does that really mean? What IS reality? I think it depends on who you ask. Talking to a friend the other day we agreed that there is never any good news in the papers or on the news. So from this reality it would seem the world is totally in chaos and everything is falling apart and that there are these two parties who are claiming to have leaders who know what should be done to fix things. On and on it goes with this thing called reality. My current reality is composed of a hotel room, actually I’m writing this in the empty continental breakfast room in the hotel. We played a great show in New York City last night, but that reality is gone. So it seems reality has nothing really to do with the past. I guess you could say “I had a reality last night that was pretty good….” but seems to indicate that the past is a reality. But it’s gone, so that can’t really be much of a reality. I’m in this hotel, alone and my girl is mad at me because I’m away and it’s not looking like we’re going to make any real money on this tour. That is part of my current reality because I’m connected to someone I love and my attention is on her. But I’m still in a hotel lobby getting ready to pack up and head to Boston for tonights show. I think that reality is basically the future. The future however doesn’t really exist yet. The gig tonight may be amazing and sell out and we could make more money than we thought and things will work out. But all that potential exists in the future. We are always able to change the future. We can’t really change the past although we can learn from the past. But the past happened the way it did because of decisions we made at the time about the future. We look at the present and decide into the future something we hope will be an improved state. And sometimes we mis estimate. Life seems to be a...
The Make Break Point And Free Parking
The term “viable” means basically, “able to support oneself”. This applies to any activity in life. Even street drumming. I worked out that it would take $66 a day to make street drumming “viable” at 20 days a month. Pay the bills, keep the lights on. Well, A couple of things didn’t get factored into this equation, like parking. Do you know it costs $5 an hour to park in San Francisco? So if I make $20 an hour drumming on the street. I need to play for about 3 1/2 hours to make that $66, but now you add about $20 to park and I have to play for 5 hours to clear $66. Something like that. Yesterday I pulled up to the Ferry Building at about 5pm, didn’t have enough change to put an hour on the meter, so sat there and waited until 6, when parking becomes free. Only, I had to pick my girl up from work at 7. So I had an hour. 20 min to push drums down the street, find a place to set up. Set up, play, tear down, push cart back to car. 30 min playing time, maybe. Fuck it. Went for it. Push cart, set up, start playing. Super dirty homeless guy immediately comes up beside me doing crazy man dance. Tough call on the street because you can’t really kick people out who have no other place to go. Being a street musician, you’re kind of on their turf and it comes with the territory. However, people were repelled by this dude and that meant nobody wanted to come close enough to drop a buck in the case. 10 min later, he left. So 20 min to make it worthwhile. Few people dropping a couple of bucks. This well off gentleman standing a couple hundred feet away watching the rocking. 10 min later he walks over, big smile, says “somebody’s got to make this worth your while, you’re killing it” drops a $20 in the case. I played for about 25 min and made $24. There’s a lot to be said for “Just DO IT” Don’t do dumb stuff. Don’t hurt other people. But definitely DONT sit there wondering IF, or SHOULD I? Get out there and DO. Someone will eventually dig it. Faith in mankind...
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