I was listening to one of the most underrated of Rolling Stones albums today, Black and Blue from 1976, and was struck once again by how well they play, and by how Charlie Watts is always at the center of it. The album is really varied in terms of genre - there's disco ("Hot Stuff"), reggae (Eric Donaldson's "Cherry Oh Baby"), funk ("Hey Negrita"), swing ("Melody"), rock and roll ("Hand of Fate" and "Crazy Mama") and perhaps the greatest ballad that the band ever recorded, "Memory Motel" - a song that describes the emotional effects of touring with great acuity. (It's interesting that another candidate for the honour of best Stones ballad also uses m-based alliteration, "Moonlight Mile".) And throughout all of it is Watts' brilliant sound and time-feel (the former is the result of the latter, by the way). Here's "Memory Motel": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7so3BNXUE0I. Check out the beautiful playing of Billy Preston on keyboards, Richards' great vocal contributions, and the drum entry.

Howdy. Further to yesterday's discussion: The ability to maintain tempo, even as intensity rises or falls, is much more difficult than it sounds. It's a bit like the way that draftsmen can draw very straight lines freehand - much practice required. The greatest musicians in any style are always the ones with this quality. Glenn Gould, Jimi Hendrix, James Jamerson, John Coltrane, Ringo Starr. You can hear it in the music. The spaces between the notes are beautiful, thrilling, awe-inspiring. The difficulty in finding musicians capable of playing like this has unfortunately led to pop music essentially being played by machines. This might pass for a while - i.e. the time it takes for teenagers to buy a product en masse, make people famous, etc. but ultimately music made this way will not have the staying power of music played by humans.
So back to the Stones - to their credit, they know how good Charlie is, and at their best, they play with him. When they run into trouble, they don't. Sometimes, the band starts very strongly and then gets a bit out of control ("rushes", in Musician) as the track goes along. Sometimes they don't lock in with him at all.
On the Stones' website, there's a video of Charlie talking about jazz drumming, where he discusses, almost apologetically, the fact that what he knows he learned from copying, and he speaks with the humility found in all great musicians. But this is how all serious musicians learn. One of the paradoxes involved in music, and the other arts as well, is that the more copying someone has done, the more originality they end up contributing. (For a literary parallel, read T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent".) This also leads to the aforementioned humility.
Suggested listening: "Bitch", "A Day in the Life", "Little Wing", "My Favorite Things","Ain't No Mountain High Enough" (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell), The Goldberg Variations 1981 (cf. 1955).

Hi. This blog is about listening to music. The focus is on the listener, not the artist. It's about getting as much as possible out of music.
Here goes: Topic for consideration and/or discussion: Great rock bands have several things in common. First among these things - a great drummer. Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, the Beatles (by the way, if you are among those who don't think that Ringo Starr is a great drummer: 1. You're wrong. 2. Listen to the placement of the snare on "Lovely Rita". It's so beautifully behind the beat, and he holds it there - that is, his sense of tempo is almost unerring. Among musicians, this is known as having "great time." Much more on this as we go. 3. He is known as someone who almost never makes a mistake in the studio. Think of how many great takes have been wasted by playing errors. Not by Ringo. 4. Listen to the drum entry on "Hey Jude". 5. Do you really think that the three other Beatles and George Martin wouldn't have noticed that the drummer on all those tracks wasn't good? 6. Disregard John's statement about Ringo not being the best drummer in the Beatles. That was John being "iconoclastic" or, if you prefer, "idiotic". He was - by a mile.), and of course, the Stones. With all due respect, etc., Charlie is the best musician in the band. I very much doubt that they would have been famous without him. Suggested listening: "Let it Loose", "Love in Vain", "Jigsaw Puzzle".